Noob Make-Over 2 - Inventory's Mesh Avatar Delilah

So I thought of doing another newbie avatar make-over or rather tweak-over, but using only items from the default inventory - library, as I've already did once, which you can read here. Since we now have starter avatars in mesh, I thought of using one this time. I chose the one called "Delilah",coz I find the face the most decent out of the other female avies to choose from. Above you can see the default avatar, which has totally a strange looking body shape and humongous hands.

This is the Delilah Avatar's original appearance.

In the next shot, you can see the same avatar stripped naked (doesn't have wee bits and so on). 

I made a different body shape to start off, as you can see in the next shot.

Here is the direct comparison, side by side. The mesh body is rigged but kinda distorts weirdly somehow. Good thing is, that you can change some parts of the body, but unfortunately, it is not possible with the face.

Another example for comparison - here you can see the WowMeh mesh body with Slink hands and feet. 

 

Here is again the Delilah mesh avatar with the default body shape.

Here is the Delilah mesh avatar with my body shape.

Here's the direct comparison, side by side.

A close-up of the original shape.

My make-over shape. Notice that the mesh avatar is very blocky due to lesser polygons. I especially did not do any image post processing, so you can see the real deal.

This is wearing the WowMeh Mesh Body as an example, notice that it over all rounder and smoother.

 

Here is the final result of the tweak-over.

Second Life Mesh Avatars For Newbies!

Second Life has just released mesh starter avatars for new residents. I tried them and here's what they look like:

Alejandro

Alicia

Alison

Angus

Archer

Barry

Brandon

Delilah

Fabian

 Hugo

Johnny

Julian

Lucy

Mariah

Marissa

Sara

Tristan

Curtis

Vanessa

Zoe

Vampire Beast

Werewolf Beast

 

Zombie Ian

 

Sadie

I must say that the humanoid avatars look really weird and totally unproportional. Just look at the huge hands on the female avatars e.g.

This again proves, that Linden Lab does not have an eye for any aesthetic or beauty or let me just say, no taste at all. I can understand that not everybody has an eye for "nice" things, but don't they have anyone responsible for art or a creative department or some sort?

Cuz if they hired a professional artist to create those mesh avatars, that professional should have great knowledge about body proportions right?

Anyway, on the other hand, this avoids LL competing with SL creators, which is a good thing. Obviously, newbies will sooner or later purchase better looking avatars, if they want individuality.

So all in all, the mesh avatars aren't that bad for starters. The only thing that I find really poor, is that all starter avatars set the standard of really tall female avatars, like all of them are more than 2 meters tall.

This is why a lot of giant female avatars walk the grid. I also realized how tall I was, perhaps a almost a year after I first joined SL.

I didn't know I was that tall, cuz I based my shape from the default library shape. I only felt gigantic, when I met oldie avatars back in the day. I wondered why most of them were so short. So I tweaked my height after having troubles of being always taller than male avatars, cuz it's height plus high heels, equals to super tall.

By SL setting this standard, we will always have gigantic avatars and huge furniture. Another problem will be, when newbies will have problems trying to figure out, which alpha they are suppose to use, cuz in the avatar folder, there are more than two alpha layers as a choice.

New residents will have to be educated about the differences between, system layers, prim, sculpts and mesh, and how to use and combine them.

I like the none-human avatars and mesh is definitely the future so...  cheers!

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

New Newbie Avatars!

We now have some additional avatars and accessories available in our inventory library, that came with the new SL 2.0 viewer! I really have to say, that they look quite better than the previous ones, though they still got that "noobish" touch.

So I thought of trying them out and tweaking them up, to make them look more decent. It was a real challenge to make the avie look better, by creating a different shape. The good thing is, we finally have some high quality hair (by Truth) and some sculpted accessories. Check them out if you get the chance. They are to be found in the "Clothing --> Initial Outfits" folder.

In the meantime, let me start out with the comparisons. Oh I have to say that, I didn't do any fancy editing on the shots, cuz I was too lazy lol! All I did was crop them and put borders. Let's take a closer look at some of the female avies, shall we? So here we go (please click on images to enlarge):

This first avatar is called "Female City". The one on the left side is the original and on the right side is my tweaked version. All items worn are from the library. I found this neat Second Life T-Shirt, some capri jeans and a pair of cool sneakers. I got the sneakers from one of the new male avie folders. I just had to shrink them a bit, since they were too huge. The hair is called "Asymmetric Bob" by Truth.

This next avie is called "Female Designer" and I really have no clue why. It seems like it's suppose to be more teen or kid looking, since the skin got that "innocent" look, including freckles and no makeup, so I created a teenager shape for it, to emphasize. I noticed that most default face shapes got the "quasimodo" touch, don't you think so?

It also reminds me of the Sims2 default avies. You can see the default on the left and my tweak on the right side. The default is also wearing some underwear, which is already painted on the skin (see 2nd picture), so there's no danger in showing any vajay jay or nipples. The hair I'm wearing on this one is called "Tapered Bob" also by Truth.

The next one is called "Female Goth" which, imho, looks kinda cartoonish, which isn't bad. Reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.


This last avie is called "Female Student" which is the best one in my opinion. But I also made a tweaked version.

Another newness is also that, all new avies are now wearing ugly underwear by default, which is painted on the skin, so no naughty bits, might accidentally show up. I didn't try out the male avies, since I didn't really feel like. There are still additional female avies called "Female Party" and "Female Rocker". I'm just wondering why they never added a "Female Slut" avie in the library, since it's the most popular and desired look in SL.

I guess the purpose is, so that new residents will be tempted to purchase "real" skins with all that naughty jazz, and lots of slut wear, which is of course a great concept. I'm thinking of giving away my tweaked shapes as a freebie for new residents. Well I might. I just hate boxing up items *sigh*. So don't forget to visit my shop in world to get them in the future.