Pickin' N Grinnin'

For a while I've been looking around Second Life for a banjo that I could purchase and use as a musical prop for some of my outfits.   Try as I might, I could not find anything that I liked, the banjos I did find were just alpha textures on a board and I wanted a little more than that.

So, since I claim to be a builder, I figured I'd take a stab at making one on my own.   I can be a bit picky when I'm building something, so it took me a while (about a month) to finish, but I think it came together pretty nicely for a first try.   I'm still not quite 100% satisfied with it, so there may be a version 2.0 one of these days, but for now here are some pictures of the silly thing.  

Opinions welcome, please let me know what you think in the comments.

Banjo Front

The banjo face is a free texture from Orhalla Zander, the Creator of Calleta's Hobo Railroad Infohub, the other textures used are also free textures that I've picked up over the year I've been in-world.

Banjo angled

This is a view at an angle, I tried to get a fairly accurate rendition of a banjo by looking at several pictures I found on the Internet.  It contains 108 prims, a little steep, but I wanted to try to build it like it would be built in real life and without relying on texture magic.

Banjo back

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a banjo if I didn't put an animation in it, so I slipped in a freebie guitar animation and script.  I still need to get some banjo music and set up a little scripted menu of songs for it to play.

Banjo angled

Banjo case

And what banjo would be complete without a banjo case?   I actually built this case in one Saturday afternoon as a prop for a Drama Libre event, being a little anal retentive, the banjo actually will fit in the case.   It's not quite as bad as the banjo, being only 81 prims as shown.   And in keeping with the purpose I had in mind for the case, I went ahead and scripted it to be a tip jar using a freebie tip jar script.

Banjo case and barrel

This is the completed prop that I created for the Drama Libre event.   The coins and paper money in the case were re-purposed from a couple of freebie items.   The barrel was also from freebie pack of warehouse items.

Pickin' N Grinnin'

And here's the final result.  Didn't win the contest, but had fun making the case and putting together the outfit.

Pickin' N Grinnin' at Drama Libre - Underground with Xerxes and Peachy.