Get kissed – Vain Inc. Valentines hunt

We are pleased to announce that we take part in the Vain Inc. gridwide Valentine hunt. We made an exclusive version of our San Jose sofa – 7prims, seats up to 5 avatars and contains 4 poses per avatar. Ivanova made a spring-like design with fresh green patterns dubbed geogreen. Please check by our mainshop to get your copy.

New Fat Packs for San Jose and Berlin

GREENE concept is pleased to announce the availability of the “fat packs” of their “Berlin” and “San Jose” furniture ranges. The fat packs include a menu that allows the owner (or everybody) to change between 12 (San Jose) or 10 (Berlin) designs.

The “San Jose” is a horseshoe shaped upholstered bench which seats up to 5 avatars. The “Berlin” chairs seat up to 4 avatars. Both are ideal for informal meetings or get togethers on lounges, offices, clubs or shops – but also does well in private homes. Lightweight with only 7 prims in case of the San Jose or 4 prims in case of the Berlin’s, they randomly assign high quality sittings animations to their users. The textures are highly detailed hand drawn patterns.

Both fat packs are available as copy/no-transfer or no-copy/transfer:

San Jose fat pack copy/no-transfer: 1000 L$
San Jose fat pack no-copy/transfer: 800 L$
Berlin fat pack copy/no-transfer: 900 L$
Berlin fat pack no-copy/transfer: 600 L$

OnRez Storefront: http://shop.onrez.com/GREENEconcept_Helfer
SL Exchnage: http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=144745

Linden Love

I could not believe my eyes, when I checked the recent sales statistics, and saw that Whump Linden has bought two pieces of furniture from us. Whump works as a web developer with Linden Lab and is about to furnish an in-world office for himself. He found GREENE concept via the “History of a virtual couch” article on New World Notes, and chose a Berlin with Holstein/cowhide design and a San Jose bench in anthracite.

As some of you might know, every Linden is supposed to have a selfmade pet teddybear they hand out to residents for special achievements, favours or when they feel like it. Whump Linden has a rather nice bear with fireworks strapped to his back. The bear utters some funny lines when clicked. The photo shows the bear visiting the new GREENE concept shopfloor. Read more on Linden Bears in Voodoo Buwan’s article over at REZ magazine.

The showroom is open

Sure, when it comes to heavy lifting, it’s me who makes things happen. She-boss simply tossed me the finished products, and He-boss preferred the white-collar “work” of listing them on the web. And both “graciously” left the showroom floor to me. And here am I, trying to put the 12 San Jose’s up for display. Didn’t work out of course. So I had to build boxes, push the furniture around, pack and pile boxes, paint them, label them, arrange them. Sheesh, I’m sweaty all over… AND they made me work on a Sunday!

However I think I arranged the San Jose’s nicely, and I put the two I like most on display. Now it’s up to She-boss to finish the vendors. And guess who they will call when it’s heavy lifting time again? Yeah, me…

Well, I’m off for the shower. Check out the showroom and if you are so inclined – buy one (or two or three) of our furniture.

Cheers, GC

San Jose colors and patterns

As our San Jose informal meeting couch/sofa is released and available for purchase, I wanted to make a post with a picture of all the different colors here.

These are all twelve designs we have available. There are a variety of colors. Hopefully, we have enough to please most people. They were a joy to make.

GREENE concept at SL5B

I’m very pleased to announce that two GREENE concept San Jose’s are on display during the 5th birthday celebrations of Second Life (SL5B). My friend Trinity of REZ Magazine was gracious enough to use two Ocean colored San Jose couches for their booth at the celebrations.

We’re live!

Three months ago, Ivanova and myself started to talk about creating a furniture business in SL. On March 27, we paid the first rent for our workshop, and in those last three months we were very busy making concepts, building prototypes, working on textures and designs, making budgets, discussing prices etc. And now, finally, we went live!

Last night we uploaded 24 versions of the “San Jose” couch to our OnRez and SLX storefronts, and this morning we set them live. And soon the workshop floor will be converted to a store as well, so the furniture can be bought in-world as well.

To start with, we have 12 designs for the San Jose’s, named Anthracite, Cotton, Denim, Green, Jade, Mint, Ocean, Poppy, Red, Royal, Suede and Velvet. Each design features fitting wooden endcaps, and a metal handle. It seats up to 5 avatars, and randomly selects one of 3 poses (by Pillow Talk). The seating order is left, middle, right, middle-left, middle-right, but sitting on the endcaps places you directly to middle-left or middle-right. We tried to make the seating as natural os possible, and there’s a lot of subtle random details in the seating as well.

Right now, there are two versions of the San Jose. The no-copy/transfer version will be sold for 350 L$, and is perfect as a gift. For 800 L$ you get a copyable version, which in turn is not transferable. All models are full mod, so you can tweak the hues or add custom scripts inside. We would advise you however to not modifiy the scripting component unless you have a copyable version.

The San Jose’s are available at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beachwood/174/204/60 as well as on OnRez and SL Exchange.

Sit Targets

As the “San Jose” benches near their completion, a lot of detail work needs to be done. We aim for a natural looking seating pattern, so the benches will add subtle random changes to the positions. The image shows Ivanova tweaking the different positions. When I came into the workshop and saw the candy colors she assigned to the parts, I could not help but wonder if we should venture into a delicately textured candy colored San Jose as well. It would certainly fit into a lot of playful homes. What do you think?

San Jose’s nearing completion

We had a heyday yesterday, putting out the whole range of the San Jose meeting benches for the first time, and finalizing (or so we thought) the fabric/wood combinations. Even though I am the “commercial mind” behind GREENE concept, I share the same obsession for quality as Ivanova, and working in graphic design for 18 years now made me value details very much. So there always seems to be an improvement to be made, a texture to be shaded a notch more, a detail to be enhanced. But as Ivanova said the other day – a line has to be drawn somewhere. So the San Jose’s will be finished soon.

Why the name San Jose? The benches are ideal for informal meetings. I see them in lounges, clubs, offices, exhibition spaces. That does not mean they can’t fit into private homes, but for me the San Jose is a “Web 2.0″ piece of furniture. And what is more “Web 2.0″ than San Jose, entrance to the Silicon Valley?

Benchma(r)king

As the “San Jose” informal meeting benches near their completion, we decided to make a test run last night and see how the sit targets work when the bench works under full load. First Ivanova rezzed our grumpy-as-evah green sidekick. Then I asked my friends Trinity and Zylina over. The seating arrangement worked out well, the spacing of the avatars was pleasant and not too cozy. We briefly discussed whether a 6th seat target should be included, but that would have been too tightly packed. We also did not get any script errors, which was nice too.

After that we ran the available designs by Trinity and Zylina, and they both were full of praise. Since I know them as honest friends, I think they meant it that way.

The image shows the San Jose in the new “Poppy” design, other available flavors include Anthracite, Cotton, Denim, Green, Ocean, Red, Royal, Suede and Velvet. More images on Flickr.