I'm reasonably new to SL, still learning things but have hopefully got past that 'there's a newbie' behaviour ;-)
My hobby is digital art, 2D skins, textures and mattes. My original idea was to produce 2D framed pictures for sale as one offs, which is what I did. Unfortunately my inquisitive nature kicked in, and I wondered if my 2D textures could be wrapped around something with a prim in it.
I tried it and to my amazement it worked, not only that but I saw my artwork in a new light. or should that be a new shape? some of the effects I liked some I didn't but it effectively gave me a new burst of interest in art in SL. I'm now learning to build simple shapes like pottery just to custom paint with my artwork, I now also apply it to vehicles and aircraft.
In my A Corp gallery I have an attack helicopter on the roof custom painted with one of my abstract camouflage effects, inside I have paintings, painted pottery, surfboards a jetski and a quad bike and I may well add a car.
These vehicles and aircraft are not for sale as I don't own the copyright on them, but I do use them as an advert for my work , and I really enjoy trying new uses for my artwork as textures . One thing that really pleased me today though was opening a new small gallery and having a collector buy 3 paintings a piece of pottery-that was a real buzz -I'm used to selling my work but have only sold work to 2 collectors who but 3 or so items at a time, usually people buy 1 painting or a few pieces of pottery.
The only cloud on the horizon for me is the debacle over vat, I live in England and we're a part of the EUssr. While, for me, it's not a large amount I have to pay I resent the way LL went about this whole debacle, but for some who own large sims and are paying between 17.5% and 25% in extra taxes they're saying enough is enough and many are selling up. From the European blogs there could be as many as 40,000 people from the EUssr leaving SL.
It's a shame over what happened with the way the Lindens handle these things, they've known for a year what they were going to do and they give us a few hours notice in some cases by sending out an e-mail at midnight GMT.
I would love to turn this hobby into a real business and base it in SL and the Web, but I have to keep an eye on what's happening with the vat. if I earn enough to cover it I won't feel the pinch, but if I don't earn enough I will consider going to HiPiHi even though I don't like the Chinese politics or their bad human rights record. Between a rock and a hard place comes to mind here :-(