Ex Machina - A hidden Gem

Ex Machina is the translation of love for creative expression by Hattie Panacek, a long time builder, creator, and designer with a background in art history and architecture.

Joining at the dawn of Second Life®, she started RampArt as her creative outlet, which is still well remembered by almost every old grumpy avatar (the early residents of SL who still are around and active after years) for her most fabulous and impressive landmark castles in the prim days of SL.

With the arrival of mesh, Hattie took a hiatus from SL to learn all about how to create and texture the new mesh objects. An art she mastered to perfection, before returning recharged to SL and starting her new brand "Ex Machina", focused often but not exclusively on the early industrial age, steampunk, Victorian/Neo Victorian times, diesel punk, dystopian nostalgia and fantasy. Which also earned her the nickname: "Mother of Boilers"

Hattie's builds go through a rigorous process, starting with in dept researches of the subject, collecting ideas and references for the look from real objects, sketching it out with prims in SL to check for usability and dimensions, then creating the mesh parts, optimizing them for use in Second Life®, going through the tedious work of UV unwrapping, designing the textures and finally bake them to perfection.

Her favorite tools are blender3d, Photoshop, Quixel Studio and recently the evolving Quixel Mixer

But it doesn't stop here: the flagship store showcases most of her architectural works in real size, which you might have noticed previously in form of some event builds and scattered all over the grid. And for your convenience you can also find the Ex Machina products on the marketplace, in the smaller satellite store and occasionally at some selected events. Check out all the amazing decor and buildings that are offered by Ex Machina.

This also leads to her large bespoke builds, executed to the highest SL standards, even if she usually doesn't executes custom builds. Among them are the: We Love Role Play building, the new Nutmeg / RKKN store and the Wicca's Originals store to mention some.

Ex Machina is a good example for the saying: "Avatars never get old, they just get better!"