Playboy Bunny Time!

Here's a sneak peek of my upcoming body shapes for adults, so stay tuned! Body shapes, as usual, will include a style card. I therefore can't credit anything in this post.

Glam Punk Style

Hair: booN
Eyeliner: Nuuna's face tattoo
Eyeshadow: L.Fauna
Lipstick: Damned
Neck Corset: FK! Designs
Top: F.A.D.
Skirt: HOC Industries
Elbow Warmers: [Hate This]
Socks: League
Chain Belt: CARGO
Fishnet Tights: Vextra Messing
Ankle Boots: [whatever]
Leather Cuff: Ha!
Gloves: F.A.D.

Noob Make-Over - Inventory's Female Action Avatar

I started my business creating female body shapes and I have been selling them until now. We shape makers aren't mostly taken seriously by many and they mostly just roll their eyes, or smirk when the discussion is about shape sellers. Like we don't have the right to sell something we spent time on, so others wouldn't need to waste theirs anymore.

Like ANYONE can really create great looking body shapes, by just playing around with the sliders.

Oh really?

Really?

What those people need to realize, especially if they are gonna spend a great part of their Linden dollars on skin, is that the shape IS as relevant as the skin as well. Cuz a beautiful skin would be worthless, if the shape is crap.

Vice versa is somewhat different. Let me show you, to make a point. Since we love make-overs, kinda like, pimping things up, I thought of going back to the default avatars in our inventory.

This is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge one can have, since the starter avatars are like so fugly, it almost seems to be impossible to give them a decent look.

Now if anyone would like to do the same, sorta like a blogger challenge, pick a default avatar from the inventory's library and give it a make-over using ONLY clothing and accessories (incl. eyes and hair etc.) from the library as well. No freebie stuff, promo or sale hunting.

Imagine if a noob have got NO L$ at all and just wants to do a quick make-over on the spot, without teleporting all over the place, nor browsing SLM. This noob wants to look a bit decent, before showing herself to others.

I already did something similar years ago, which you can read here.

Since it's kinda fun, I thought I'd do it again! This will be a series, cuz I don't have all time in the world to do more than one avatar per blog post.

So I'm starting here with the Female Action Avatar from the Inventory, located under Library --> Clothing --> Initial Outfits.



 Here you can see the comparison, and how a better shape can make a huge impact.

My pet peeve aside from bad eyebrows, is the short arm syndrome, which the majority of female avies suffer from! Even those who got gorgeous avies still have short arms like WTF?! Just look at the well-known SL Fashion Feeds. Mostly great pics with cool styles, but oh no! Short arms!!!

Go stand up in RL and look at where your arms end, while you are standing. They definitely do not end on the upper hips level, that is if you have "normal" arms in RL.

Sorry about the cankles, but you really can't do anything about it, cuz it happens if the feet are size 0, which have been the standard in SL. Best solution is of course mesh feet.

This is another issue with the cankles, when wearing system pants. That's another reason to go mesh all the way. Scupties are like wanna-be mesh but didn't work out. So you need to adjust thousand parts of your outfit, to make it look right. With mesh, it's just one piece, no adjusting needed (if rigged).

All items worn are found in the inventory's library:

Hair: Medium length and layered - Truth
Skin: Female Action skin - Adam & Eve
Shape: C-Stylez by CanTell Mizser
Shoes: Male Student Shoes - Damen Gorilla (size modified)
Pants: Girl Next Door jeans - Kaejo DaSilva (color modified)
Eyes: Evergreen eyes - Sachi Vixen
T-Shirt: Male Student top - Adam & Eve

The Price of Tiering Down

As I have mentioned on my previous post, I recently tiered down my mainland parcel from 9216m2 to 5120m2 after maintaining it for more than 6 years.

Now this is the price, when you sell your land and your new neighbors move in (the weird fugly tower and Taj Majal have already been there since years btw), click on images to enlarge:

 

Great flat one dimensional fugly builds, hello 2006! Hey we got mesh and materials now! Please for fucks sake.... update your stuff! And kindly stop hurting people's eyes!

Opposed to how it used to be (got a new store by the way):

My view when all was clean and pleasing to the eye:

 

My current view:

Thank the SL Gods for Firestorm's derender feature, now my place looks like this again:

Unfortunately, my customers and visitors won't have the pleasure of seeing it the way I do. I wish we were able to share our region settings including derendered objects. But that would be impossible I guess.

I know one needs to own a whole region to enjoy a better view. You see, it isn't actually that difficult to buy an island or a whole region. The problem is maintaining it, cuz tier is just ridiculously expensive.

When I was dividing my parcels, preparing to sell them, I happened to make a simple mistake regarding a single 512m2 plot, cuz I got group land and my own, which confused me a bit. You know it happens easily if you haven't done that since years. For that mistake of exceeding 512m2 for a few seconds, my tier for that month jumped from 47,60 USD to 89,25 USD (incl. eurovat), that's just fucking stupid!

You see, most of my old neighbors always maintained an aesthetic water view, and many built their homes up in the sky (well aside from that weird fugly tower beside me, which I derendered forever anyway). And it's been like that since 6 years.

Why some people don't have a sense for great looking stuff or what is pleasing to the eye, I will never understand. Maybe their computers, can't render higher graphic settings. Well if that's the case, then the server side baking feature hopefully eliminates those.

We need to move on and progress yo! So update your computers and enjoy better graphics. C'mon now, you can get a great gaming rig for a thousand bucks! Save a few months if you can't get it at once, then get one. Believe me, you will enjoy SL better! Or switch to Yahoo messenger chat, if graphic isn't important to you! You don't need SL if you just want to chat! So stop the BS!!

So when SSB goes live (dunno if it's live already), will people with old pc's and crappy graphic cards still be able to see anything in SL? Let's hope SSB eliminates those crappy builds in SL.


The above shots are unaltered and were taken using the windlight settings:
Sky ---> FS Original
Water---> Glassy

Let's Talk Numbers!

After owning 9216m2 of mainland parcel for 6 years, I finally decided to sell the half of it, to tier down. First reason is because I'm rarely inworld anyway and not performing live anymore, nor having parties/events like I used to.

So I closed down C-Music Lounge and my private residence. I believe more than six years were enough to provide other residents free entertainment and a cool and quiet hangout.

Don't get me wrong, I never expected donations to cover a part of my tier costs to begin with, cuz one can never rely on that, especially when a lot of residents can't relate to it, like if they don't own land or a venue.

Some think a donation of 20L$ is enough, which is kinda cute in a way, especially if those residents really don't have much lindens to spare. I therefore just kinda provided the place so people can hang-out and have a good time (mostly when I'm sleeping due to timezone).

Ever since LL provided a premium sandbox and the SL Marketplace became "box free", it became the deciding point for me to finally tier down. Lesser tier, more profit right?

I'm one of the lucky ones, who didn't need to pay from my own pocket anymore, a year after I started my business. I even had the chance to treat myself to some RL delights, out of my SL business profit.

I'm sure others make a lot more profit than me, which allows them to afford one or more islands. Still I'm just glad I never needed to buy Linden Dollars anymore, thus an entertainment form, that does not cost me a single cent. Oh but it does cost me something... time! One certainly needs a lot of time to be in SL.


So let's do the math:

• 47,60 USD monthly tier (incl. European VAT) x 12 months = 571,20 USD
• 571,20 USD x 6 years = 3427,20 USD
• 85,68 USD annual premium membership (incl. European VAT) x 2 (for 2 premium avatars) = 171,36 USD a year
• 171,36 USD x 6 years = 1028,16 USD
• 1028,16 USD + 3427,20 USD =  4455,36 USD

4455,36 USD (tier and premium membership only) spent within 6 years on Second Life! Now that's an expensive game/hobby/outlet/entertainment -- call it whatever you want! That's approximately 3400,- EUR, which isn't peanuts either!

I can't remember, nor find my land purchase transactions anymore, but I vaguely remember paying around 1500,- USD, cuz land, especially protected ocean parcels, were very expensive in 2007.

I won't be adding the land purchase cost to the above calculation, since I already got that investment back. I won't also add the L$ I spend every month, shopping for myself and many alts, also the cash I re-invest into my business monthly.

A few alts also love to play a bingo type of game, so that's another way to throw money away. Well one wouldn't seriously believe winning a game scripted by an SL resident, when money is involved right? The bank always wins, so just play to have fun.

I'm not quite sure, but I'm not very motivated anymore in creating stuff. I still need to update a lot of products and I still have a lot in the pipeline, which I'm too lazy to release.

Anyway, let's just wait and see. Keep posted and don't forget to subscribe to my blog!


What I'm wearing:

Dress: Tuty's - Qipao Mesh Dress
Shoes: Redgrave - Helena

African Beauty

Here's another sneak peek of another new body shape that I will be releasing soon. So please stay tuned or subscribe to my blog! You can also join my group C-Stylez by CanTell Mizser.

Dress: Maitreya - Mignon Evening Cerulean
Jewelry: League - Wanderer
Shoes: Redgrave - Helena
Headwrap: L&H

I'm a Barbie Doll in a Barbie World!

I suppose every regular girl played with her Barbie Doll as a kid. Since I've been seeing a lot of Barbie aka Bimbo type of avies roaming the grid (very popular I guess), I thought why not create an artificial like body shape? So here is a sneak peek of the shape I've been testing out for quite a while now, which will be coming soon together with new body shapes.

It's kinda fun to create a doll-like avatar including Lola's mega bazongas. So stay tuned for my new body shape release, including a notecard for the skin, hair, eyes etc.

Complete Avatar - Poison Ivy at C-Stylez!

So I finally finished the completely revised version of my Ivy Avatar. I've been wanting to do this since forever and I started working on it many months ago. This version is now with partly mesh items and it's completely different from the first Ivy Avatar.

I have also lately created Machinimas to demonstrate the avatar, since I don't provide demos, just like the one for the Material Girl (Madonna) Avatar, which you can also watch on my Youtube Channel C-Stylez by CanTell Mizser on Youtube. 

It takes awhile before I upload new items, especially Complete Avatars, because I need to be perfectly satisfied with the outcome, before I release the item. 

I also create the machinima first, and then I create the music for it, so it all takes time.

 

This is a complete pack for starters, collectors, role players, divas, superstars, unique people or people who simply want to shine! Purchase this complete avatar and you're ready to go! What you see is what you get! This means all illustrated items in the pictures are included in the set! Some items such as prim attachments and 1 body shape are copy/mod/no transfer. Please make sure to make a copy first before you start editing your items.  


Body Parts

• Skin (C/NM/NT) 
• Body Shape (C/M/NT) 
• Eyebrows (C/NM/NT)
• Eyes (C/NM/NT)
• Mesh Hair (C/NM/NT) 
• Add-On Buns (non mesh) (C/NM/NT) 

Clothing           

• All wearable clothing, tattoos and alpha layers are C/NM/NT  
• Mesh Bikini - non rigged (C/M/NT)
• Sculpted Leaves Outfit (C/M/NT)
• Vine Body Deco (C/M/NT)
• Mesh Boots - rigged (C/NM/NT)
• All attachable prim parts aside from mesh items are C/M/NT

There are no resizer scripts, tinter or any scripts installed in the prim parts. This is to avoid lag and to provide a better browsing atmosphere.  

*Please take note: Always use the option "add" when wearing mesh, alpha layers and tattoo layers. This is to ensure, that you can wear more that one at a time. Otherwise, they will be replaced if you use the option "wear". 


Important  

Since invisiprims are already obsolete and doesn't work anymore with mesh viewers, I do not include them anymore. This avatar is therefore only for mesh enabled viewers. If you are still using older viewers, which are not capable of showing the new alpha layers and mesh objects, it is not advisable for you to purchase this avatar. 

I highly recommend you to download and use one of the latest mesh enabled viewers. 


**All items have been especially created and fitted for this avatar only! They are therefore not available as single items! This gives you more exclusivity, since it's more likely uncommon to see someone else wearing the same stuff.**

So I've Been Copybotted!!

After selling stuff peacefully in world and online to a niche market for 6 years, I just discovered today that two of my products have been stolen via copybotting. The avatar named "Rchel Cadell", probably a disposable account, is selling copybotted items from different creators, including the two beds I'm selling (see my product ads).

Now I probably would never understand, how someone can steal an object and sell it for 20L full perm. I mean c'mon! Money is definitely not the motivation here, since how many do you need to sell to make it profitable? Just calculate and it's a joke. I have a feeling that this is a "hate" motivated action.

Could it be an alt of a competitor?

I bought both beds but only received the "Glam Punk" item. I checked it and the scripts for the animation, and the bedsheet, also the animations aren't included. So it's basically a textureless copy.

It kinda makes me sad that these copybotters just don't respect the hard work we put in our creations. If I think of how many weeks I spent creating the bed, especially the textures; installing the scripts and animation and the testing over and over again, until I was fully satisfied. Would any sane person really think an item like that would be for sale for 20Linden Dollars --> Full Perm?!

The more upsetting part here is also how Linden Lab deals with these cases. No person with little SL time and busy RL would take the effort of going through the DMCA process or to court for an item worth 3 USD. But anyone could easily recognize which is the copybotted or original item. Anyone really.

If you regularly monitor the new products section at SL Marketplace and set the filter to full perm, you will see that the marketplace is flooded everyday with copybotted items. I guess the creators just got tired of reporting the items, since they show up all over again.

Why can't Linden Lab set-up certain restrictions for merchants, like Payment Info on File or a certain identification. I mean people who take their business seriously and plan to cash out someday, already have legit accounts registered; otherwise it won't be possible to cash out right?!

I know it's meant to be that, everyone should have a fair chance to sell their creations inworld and online. But requiring identification or certain skills imho, would definitely clean up the marketplace a lot.

So buyer beware! Remember: If it sounds or looks too good to be true, then it is. NO ONE in their right mind would sell a very well crafted item for a very cheap price and full perm. Try it and find out.

Just try to do the following: Learn the tools; learn how to build things; work on your items for weeks or months; do the photo shoots and create the ads; set the permissions and check them over and over again; box up the items; upload them to SLM, then sell them for 20L full perm. Do you get it now? NO ONE in their right mind would do this. Not even a totally lonely, desperate, suicidal or unemployed person with a lot of time in their hands.

Also don't forget, that once you purchase stolen items, you are supporting this copybot behavior. One day those items will disappear from your inventory, once Linden Lab finally deletes them.

Let's just hope that those copybotters, who are obviously using copybot viewers, get their malware and viruses from those forbidden viewers. Karma can be a bitch I tell you.

Here are some hints for you on how to recognize copybotted items:

• They are mostly sold for a very cheap price, if you consider how complex and well crafted the item is.
• They are mostly sold with full permissions or sometimes copy/transfer/no mod.
• The avatar is mostly a new account with a random not-to-be-taken-seriously name.
• If the avatar is a bit older (either stolen or bought account), the profile is mostly blank or have only very little information, which says it's not an active avatar. Be prepared for lack of support in case any issues come up.
• The Marketplace store is not well taken care of (see logos, description etc.)
• The item images are just quick snapshots inworld with no care. Sometimes they even steal the original ad pictures and use them. If the ad is self made, it's mostly of poor quality or it just plain sucks. Now if anyone is so creative to build a very high quality item, that person mostly also knows how to work Gimp or Photoshop.
• There is almost no item description on the product page.
• If you check the other items in the person's listing, you will recognize at least one familiar item. Now if you find one copybotted item from the listing, expect all other items to be also copybotted versions.
• Most items sold do not have textures. Sometimes only textured with plywood.

There are of course criminals who steal and build up their business in a very well planned and well thought manner. Those cases mostly end up in court. Just google examples of many skin creator dramas and battles. Now those people who plan well and put a lot of effort in altering the stuff they steal, are the very dangerous ones. Because one day, they are all of a sudden recognized and accepted  as a legit "designer" in the SL community, until someone starts to sue them.

Just hope that it never happens to you. Don't be fooled and do your research or one day, all our favorite designers will just disappear from SL and all what's left will be ugly stuff and copies and knock-offs.

Oh My Newbie Days...

Every New Year's Eve, I can't help but reminisce the good ol' wild west days in Second Life, because New Year's Eve is my Rezzday and I'm now 6 years in SL!

It was so exciting and totally new to me, cuz I never tried any MMORPG type of game before, so I was a complete idiot with everything, especially with the confusing User Interface and navigation. My PC back then also used to crash every 10 min. so after a few hours, I didn't want to proceed with SL anymore. I already blogged about my first days in SL when I started, which you can read here.

But since pixel bumping and money making were the most popular things during that time (which I found interesting), I went back to SL after a few days, when my PC performance improved after I upgraded my crappy video card's driver. After that, I totally got hooked and was quite addicted for the next months.

Second Life used to be really like the wild wild west, like anything goes. Everywhere you go, there were always avatars hanging around. I couldn't even change clothes without griefers disturbing me. I used to either go under water or fly up in the sky to change clothes, cuz I didn't have a home yet, during the first weeks of my SL life. I also used to camp for some Linden Dollars, so I could buy better hair.

I didn't want to buy or rent land at first, cuz I wanted to test SL first for a few weeks. I also didn't want to spend my own real money first, that's why I went camping.

During those days, there weren't very much good skins or clothing for free and there were also only few popular skin makers those days. 2006 and early 2007 was before windlight, voice, sculpties, alpha layers, tattoo layers, glow and everybody used to wear lots of bling, that my PC couldn't handle and would crash every half an hour or so.

Well we've come a long way. But I still miss those days and the excitement, feeling like a kid in a toy store. Pure freedom.. everything is possible! A great place for creative minds! Of course there were lots of scams, griefers and issues during those days. Lots of copyright violations and even pedos used to roam the grid. But that was probably the price of freedom.

I luckily still kept my very first avatar when I rezzed inworld which looked like this:

After hunting for freebies this is then what I looked like (I created the dress from the default clothing layer):

I love shopping so much in SL, especially skins. As usual, it's a hit or miss. Here are some of my main avatar's oldie skins that I re-discovered (all before windlight was introduced), a few are horrible, which I realized too late and I don't know what got into me, to even purchase them, in spite of trying out demos:

Although this skin is also already quite dated, it's still the one I'm wearing, since I very rarely log-on with my main avatar. So this is what I look like until this day. This skin is after windlight was introduced.

Approximately a month later, I created my first alt avatar which is now what I mainly use. It is also my avatar for live performances and for business. 

This is me right now, still wearing an old but high quality skin. I just couldn't find a better and newer skin that I like, with great skin detail and shading (especially the butt) and one that doesn't look like a teen:

During the first weeks, I rented an apartment at a skyline building, which was ridiculous cuz you can't set anything like media or music and you were forced to communicate only via IM because everyone can listen to open chat. 

Because I forgot to landmark the place, I had to search for my rented space, cuz I somehow couldn't set it as my home. After attempting to pay the rental box for another week and the box malfunctioning, I finally decided to buy my own land, having live performances in mind. And that's when I created C-Music Lounge. After a week or so, I opened up my store inworld and uploaded my very first product on the X-Street Market, which was a low prim microphone with stand.

My first products inworld were body shapes and t-shirts. I started doing live performances regularly for 2 years and stopped after I got tired of the lag and also because I didn't have much time anymore.

Since I opened up my business 6 years ago, all I do is just work and have basically no more play at all. Throughout this, I still very much enjoy creating stuff, when something inspires me. I create for the love of creating and not what people want. I created the microphone with stand, cuz I couldn't find decent ones to use for my live performances back then. I created my famous vanity sets, cuz I couldn't find anything like them, when I wanted one. I created body shapes, cuz I saw a lot of avatars with malformed shapes. 

I've been improving my products ever since and right now, I'm in the process of updating several Complete Avatars. A lot of people have been asking and requesting to buy some parts of some of my Complete Avatars, like hair or outfit etc. But selling the items individually will destroy the concept of exclusivity, cuz I created the items especially for the particular avatar.

I am also quite lazy to cater to a broader audience, like for e.g. if I sell hair or skins or clothes, it would just be too much more work, which will require time, which I don't have much. Right now, I basically log-on very rarely and if, then only on weekends or if there is urgent customer service required. 

The web-based SL Profile is really quite helpful for communication outside the grid, so I wouldn't need to log-on every time, just to answer a few questions quickly. Unfortunately not everyone set their communication to web-based, which is non-sense IMHO.

Anyways, I would again like to thank all my customers and I wish you all a wonderful and successful New Year! Keep posted for upcoming product updates!