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With the passing of January 27th. Virtual Vikki as an online character turned two. While the creation of the 3-D model started back in 1993 with an idea, and formed into her own web site in 1995, it was not until last year that she developed into a character with any real 'depth'. This page will chronicle projects in Vikki's second online year. The name is also a play on the famous David Gerold Book "When Harlie Was One" which was recently updated to version 2.0. It is a novel about artificial intelligence.

If you have any other questions, or want to get on my Virtual Vikki mailing list of upcoming products, please e-mail me.

Some of you may have been wondering what happened to the Twilight gallery Gift Shop. Well I've run out of space on my web server. (20 megs goes sooo fast!) In fact I've recently begun overhauling the entire web site removing unnecessary and bulky pictures and other odd files. If you want to download the best images of virtual Vikki there is another site where you can do this. The Squeaky Clean Furry Archive (now called Yerf! has several of my pictures. It was current with several of my better pictures as on 7-98. I update it far more often that I update my own web site. The following link will take you directly there. Keep in mind that this site may be down occasionally or very busy so please keep trying. Check out Virtual Vikki Pics at Yerf! for many of your downloading needs!

Even more of my art can be found the the VCL at http://velar.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Richard-Hallock/index-by-date.html

One of the most complicated projects that I have been working on started last year but was only completed in January on 97. This project was the creation of a CD-Rom of all previous Virtual Vikki art. The project started back in the summer when I realized that I was not only filling up bunches of floppy disks but handfuls of zip disks with my scratch and test files. I though a CD would be the best way to gather them together into one easy to reference volume.
This turned out to be more of a task that I though t would be. At first I bought a zip disk and started sorting images. I quickly filled that zip disk up and had to start another. About that time I mentioned the idea to my other furry friends on #Furry and they expressed interest in having such a CD. AT this point I decided to make the project another commercial one like my t-shirt project. The local college campus had a CD-R device and could burn me several CD's.

I decide that the CD Jem case should look like a Music CD. I though I might be able to make up any loss by selling any extras I had of these. It took a while to come up with the title design for the CD-Rom. At first I had a hard time. The idea of a surf group called Virtual Vikki and the California Dune Buggy Authority stuck in my mind but eventually went away. My next idea was "The Virtual Vikki Experience" but the ending album cover made Vikki want to choke to death on her own vomit. (Sorry.. a little Hendrick Humor there.)

In the end I decided that a rap CD would be the best. I remembered seeing this old 2LiveCrew CD with a beach setting and decided that a sort of parody would be interesting. Unfortunately I could not locate a copy of this cover to use as a reference so I had to go on what I would remember of it. The name of the CD was announced as "As Yiffy As She Wanna' Be!" and the recording group was "2VoopGroup"I asked other artists if they could help me out on drawing the two furry characters in the background. One said he would help and did a quick sketch and then kept me waiting for two weeks saying that he was working on the art when he actually had no intention of doing the art. Another artist stepped in to help, but instead of doing the two characters, he did everything else. I ended up turning to my wife at the last second as the campus print shop is closed in early December and I had to have the covers printed. I posed some characters in Poser and she redrew them into furry characters. The background and surfboards were created using Bryce 2. I was going to do a full color insert but could not find clear CD holders. I did manage to get neon orange plastic CD cases for the back which ended up being a fake list of songs on the CD. Many of the furs from #Furry helped me come up with the names for the songs. The Tracks were as follows:

1. Voop - There It Is!
2. Furry By Nature
3. Hyooman Killer
4. U Can't Fluff Dis"
5. Two Turntables And A Microfur
6. There Is No Track Six
7. Yiff, Yiff, Baby
8. 2Mephit To Quit
9. Things that make you go Purrr
10. Poofie Grande
11. Don't Go Chasin' Cadillacs
12. As Yiffy As She Wanna' Be!

As a way of saying thank you to the others who helped me I made them all 'members of the band" and included their names and favorite things to play on the inside of the cover. This project made me seem so commercialized that I removed the name Virtual Vikki from the inside and back jacket covers and am known simply as "DigiVoop Formerly Known as Virtual Vikki" or TDVFKAVV for short. I have also replaced my name with the easily recognizable symbol shown to the right. I'm still working on the American Standard Code for Information Interchange people to assign a keyboard character (and there are several blank ones) to my new easily recognized symbol.

The DigiVoop Formerly Known as Virtual Vikki
Lead vocals, and small toys

Che Foxy Fox
Trombone

Vulpio
Turntables, Doom II

Dandy Donkey/DongDong
Fun-Keyy Slap BXas, and Dumb

El Kyootae Gordy Skwirlo
Accordion, Bagpipes, Peanut Butter Jars

Konnflake Elyssakittie

Backup Vocals, Triangle, Keyboards, and Nintendo

Ton-Def Erl
Second Fiddle, House


I really did not advertise this project enough and my messages out to the general Internet population were a bit late. I was happy to get several orders at the last second (two sent by Federal Express!), so more CD could be produced on the cutting day. I took all the extra CD's to ConFurence8 in Late January and managed to sell every last one I had to spare. Also at ConFurence 8 I had a great time spotting people wearing my t-shirts. After a while I started snapping pictures of them. Since I forgot to ask them about putting these pics up on the web I have blocked out their eyes. It was a wired experience walking around and spotting other people wearing a shirt with my design on it. Even more strange I sold some to staff members where I wok and occasionally they show up to work wearing my shirt. This is a real mind blowing experience. I almost made some shirts promoting the CD-ROM but ran out of time. I did produce a set of prints 11x15 inches in size with a 10.5x10.8 inch CD cover design. I even had custom labels made up for the CD's. This CD label art was, at the time, the only piece of Virtual Vikki art not included on the CD-Rom as I designed it after the CD's were pressed. These labels did note that this was a CD-Rom. Now before you think I'm making a profit off of all of this there are a few things I want you to know. All of my projects are designed to break even. Some projects will never do this, so other project prices are inflated to accommodate these losses. The color printing of the labels for the CD's ran me about $100. The color laser printer in my area is very expensive. To offset this loss I have created other projects (a large print of the CD cover), and dummy CD cases with a blank CD in them. The profit from these other projects help me to take up the loss from the CD-Roms. Eventually I will break even on the CD project. This is after all just a hobby for me. Everything I create is a signed and numbered limited edition piece of art.

One of the things that I learned while working on this project is how hard it is to apply those round labels to the CD's without a device. The test labels I created for the mockups of the disk were far larger than the ones I ended up using on the actual product. They covered the entire readable surface of the disk and all the way in to the clear part of the hub. They also came on die cut sheets for easy printing in the ink jet printers. I think that I picked it up as a sample at a computer conference. After finally having the disks pressed I was handed a handful of CD labels on wax paper with only a 1/8 inch margin (not evenly cut either) on all sides. Needless to say they did not go through the printer at all. Each of these labels had to be taped to a sheet of heavy paper then hand fed through the printer to assure that it did not jam. If you were wondering why it took so long to get the disks out after ConFurenece 8... this was the reason. The final CD's (shown here at ConFurence 8) were rather unique. Each had a tiny full color "Virtual Vikki Seal of Approval" on the back. The jem cases themselves had a back which was made from fluorescent orange plastic. I though it added a bit to the drab once color back inserts. I received such a positive response from this project that I am already starting work on another CD-Rom of my art for next year. This one I plan on making a dual format (or perhaps two separate versions as 300mb is far too limiting) so that more people can view it. This does not in any way mean I am 'selling out'. It just means I want more people to see my art. Vikki is upset about this as "She doesn't do windows!" The name of the new CD-Rom will be Briefcase Full of Fur by The Bit Brothers This CD will have a blues feel to it. I can also have myself on the cover. I'll be the fat Bit Brother and Vikki can be.. uh.. well the thin Bit sister. I may also include an audio section, or a Quick Time music video of the the first Track "Lord, I got my head in the microwave oven... but I just can't smell no gas!"

Another interesting protect was my wall clock. I decided to make a clock out of virtual Vikki. This clock would have a swinging like pendulum tail which would wave back and forth. I also wanted to make the eyes move, but could not figure out a reasonable way of doing so as the clock mechanism was too far away from the face to make the movement practical. I started working on the design shortly after getting a color Epson 600 printer. Now I started developing more of my art with the idea of printing it out. This had an effect on my color composition in my art as well.

The basic body and tail of the clock were rendered separately and then Erlinda stepped in and modified the hair into several different styles. Two of the different hair styles were released onto the net as pictures as in the end I could only narrow the field down to two hairstyles that I liked.

Finding the right clock mechanism eventually took me to Chico as this was the only place locally that seems to carry clock mechanisms for art projects that have functional pendulums. The one I ended up with was just perfect as the pendulum mechanism is powered by an electromagnet and not connected to the clocks inner workings. As a result it did not matter how long or what the pendulum weighed.

The designs were then printed out, and using this really strange spray glue, mounted to a sheet of white foam core. Using an xacto knife with several blades, I cut my clock out of the foam core and Erlinda touched up the edges of the foam core so that they were matching colors to the character. I used a glue gun to attach the tail to the clock mechanism, and to build up a wall mount. I still have yet to finish the second clock as I did not buy to mechanisms. If there is enough interest in this sort of thing I might produce a few, otherwise I will just put the second one in the next ConFurence art show. Right now the finished product, which is a little over 16 inches tall, is hanging on the wall (shown to the right in a rather jerky animated GIF) swinging it's tail happily and keeping me informed of what time it is.

Other Virtual Vikki (and related) Art Pages

Vikki Go To The Movies	The Vikki-Cam
VV's Funeral / The D-Files	The Twilight Gallery
Vikki's latest projects and CD's	Time Machine Page

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