Sinamatic is now vMotional. I changed the name for a couple of reasons.
One , there’s a sea change going on in Second Life. I don’t agree with LL’s implementation of their rating system at all. They made a series of mistakes from the beginning (mixing pg and mature sims willy nilly and a don’t ask, don’t tell policy towards underage users coupled with unrestricted access for free accounts) that they are now trying to ham handedly fix. It’s not the need for the fix I disagree with, but the incredibly poor roll out of the new policies. I am very unhappy with the upheaval, the confusion and the added expense their policy changes are going to cause. But, in the end, it’s their party , so if I wanna play, I play be their rules. A name with a less “strip club” feel seemed to be in order.
More important and compelling though than fitting in to LL’s new world order was the fact that I feel the name Sinamatic was not a very good reflection of the style that had evolved in my animating. “Sinamatic” was just a play on a the name of an alt I had thrown together on a whim. If I had known how much blood sweat and tears I would end up pouring into the process of animating, and the almost foolish delight I get from the finished products, I would have thought much longer and harder about names.
As it turns out I’ve been thinking about renaming my business for months now. I knew I was not happy with Sinamatic but could not come up with something I liked more. I would tell myself I needed to just live with it. A promise that would last for all of a week before I was testing names out again, checking domains, searching movie titles and magazine covers for inspiration.
But it was from my clients that true inspiration came. While talking with a customer about my animations, they told me how the animations made them feel. I realized that that’s what’s really important. Not the techincal aspects of the animations, but the emotions they evoke. With that insight in mind, I was able to come up with a name I loved really .
I’ve always liked a little word play in names and so vMotional rhyming with emotional was perfect, but the root word, “Motional” actually relates to motion and the ‘v’ stands for virtual. So it kind of means virtual motion but is suggestive of the feeling I try to bring to my animations.
Rebranding Sinamatic has generated an enormous amount of behind the scenes work, changing artwork, renaming products, setting up a new blog on a new domain! So please be patient with me while I get things sorted out. I know it’s confusing when some things are named one way and other things are name another. All your landmarks will continue to work normally, though and searching on “vmotional”, “sinamatic” or “sin toshi” should lead you to the right spot.
Long live vMotional!