the shared experiences that are constant and so unique to second life. IL: You have multiple businesses in Second Life! Which store was your first? Why did you select the name Zanzo? Out of the skins, shapes (which are HOTTTT lol), eyes, hair, fashion, pre-fabs (I am tired just typing all of that!) which is your favorite to create? Do you tend to begin in one area and branch out into others? Drusus: Zanzo is very much a co-operative effort with my partner Theodore. In many ways it’s his child more than it is mine – he keeps me on trend and theme, he makes sure we are constantly trying harder to improve our product and many of the concepts we develop come from his personal tastes. Any designer will tell you that making a thing is sometimes the easiest part of the production cycle. The creation of vendors, scripting, the effort you have to put into promotion, customer enquiries, store management – these are all weaknesses on my part but are easily picked up by Theodore. The parts of Zanzo I really enjoy are the design, the creation and the building, all of which I indulge in to an extreme. This is
probably why we have so many sub-brands, we experiment with new concepts and if they work they stay, if not they eventually get phased out. I usually enjoy whatever I’m doing at the time; KKPW our home ware store is always fun, it’s sort of whimsical and tongue-incheek. I hate making hair, really hate it. IL: How did you begin creating skins and shapes? What is your favorite part? Drusus: I made my first skin after being in Second Life for six months. It was awful and I still cringe when I think about it. People thought it was good enough to sell, but it just wasn’t a viable idea until we founded the shop six months after that – and by then I’d moved on in technique and style. My favorite part of skin design is closing Photoshop and going somewhere else – they are frustrating beasts, some days are really good and you get loads done and other days you work for an hour on a few pixels and nothing goes right and you scrub the canvas clean. The shapes in store are all created by Theo – He loves making them, styling them and photographing them whereas I can’t imagine