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.

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

A New Year - A New Noobie On A Budget!

First of all I want to wish you a happy and exciting new year! This year will be the year of the Dragon, which is a good sign, cuz I'm compatible with dragons. Hopefully this year will be good to me.

My first post for this year is another entry to the newbie challenge which actually already ended on December 31st, 2011. Anyways, since there were lots of free goodies during the holiday season, I took advantage of it and went shopping with my second noob. Here are two looks, the later with two hairstyles. I'm including the links to the stores this time.

Hair: Lelutka (free subscriber gift for Xmas, hurry up!) = 0L$
Skin: YS&YS (free group gift) = 0L$
Body Shape: My own (not for sale) = 0L$
Eyes: [Roly-Poly] (free on SLM) = 0L$
Dress: R.icielli (sale) = 30L$
Boots (Viewer 2 compatible): Vida (via SLM) = 29 L$
Lipstick: R.icielli (Promo via SLM) = 50L$
Eyeshadow: Mons (via The Dressing Room Blue) = 50L$
No Alpha Eyelashes: Skintimate (via SLM) = 10L$
Sunglasses (scripted): Koguma Kumaki (via SLM) = 0L$
Pearl Necklace (modified): Jetcity (via SLM) = 0L$
Earrings: Sn@tch (free gift) = 0L$
Animation Overrider: Tuty's (via SLM) = 0L$
Poses: Masoom (via Fabfree Headquarters @ The Wash) = 0L$
Location: Downtown District 8

Total amount spent: 169L$

Hair: Analog Dog (3 Hairstyles Xmas Gift) = 0L$
Skin (incl. tattoo lashes): YS&YS (via The Dressing Room) = 70L$
Body Shape: My own (not for sale) = 0L$
Eyeshadow: Mons (via The Dressing Room Blue) = 50L$
Eyes: Insufferable Dastard (Xmas gift via SLM) = 0L$
Top: fri.day = 45L$
Scarf: Mr. Poet = 0L$
Jeans: Nardcotix = 37L$
Boots: COCO Designs (group gift) = 0L$
Belt: COCO Designs = 50L$
Animation Overrider: Vista Animations (via SLM) = 1L$
Location: C-Music Lounge

Total amount spent: 253L$


I'm busy working on new releases for my store at the moment, and I've been working on three Complete Avatars at the same time. But I still can't finish them, cuz creating hair is such a pain in the ass and I haven't got much time.


Hopefully I can finish and release one new product this month, so stay tuned by subscribing to my blog.

CanTell's Version - Newbie Style Challenge II

When I read Juicy Bomb's Newbie challenge, I thought that this time, I'll join, cuz I missed the one last time. I already posted a few make-overs and noob stuff in the past, which you can read here and here and some other posts, but my budget was more.

So here's my newbie version. I might do some more versions later on. It's just too time consuming, if you're on a tight budget and I'm talkin' bout really tight, cuz it ain't suppose to go over 550 L$. I created a new avatar for this challenge on 11.11.11 and gave her an allowance of 550 L$. I also was able to get a last name yay! I found one site, where it's still possible. If you wanna know, just send me a message, cuz I know LL takes them down, if the link is posted.

I felt sad sometimes, when I even have to decide which lingerie worth only 10 L$ each, should I get, cuz I could only afford one. Same with other stuff.

An avatar make-over for 550,- L$ was very time consuming. I even spent some time at some lucky chairs to get the prizes, which I decided not to use in the end.

 

This is suppose to be an avatar make-over, as if you are really new and don't have a single thing, not even poses (you out there heard me?). I also purchased all poses I used for the shots, in which one set I paid a decent amount of L$ in relation to the allowance and regretted it, cuz I didn't try them out first before purchasing. Well what the hell.

The biggest challenge for me were hair and shoes. I purposely avoided The Dressing Room, cuz I know a lot of the participants will get their stuff there and it's just not fun to see the same stuff over and over again. As if we were clones. If I see some items being blogged to often, I won't purchase it anymore, no matter how awesome it is.

So I joined lots of groups and went to lucky chairs. Though the hair I got were cool, they just didn't fit my concept, so I had to purchase hair, that I really like. It's also where most of my budget went. It was a hard decision to spend 275 L$ for hair, but I had to do it. After that, I had to watch out, that the remaining items are free.

So spending that much for hair, I couldn't get me some decent pumps anymore. I didn't want to get shoes with prim feet, cuz tinting the skin to match, gives me the urge of killing cute little bunnies sometimes and they are kinda getting out of fashion now. Didn't you notice it? It's like back to the roots with pumps. For example, I so love my N-Core Coquette Fat Pack. I probably got around 20 or more pair of plain pumps from different designers, but the N-Core ones are my favorite.

My plan was to get the HOC All Colors Pumps, but I couldn't afford to spend 175 L$ anymore. So I first got the group gift from COCO Designs, which is cool too, but flat. I need heels. I discovered the ankle boots at the discount department, removed parts of it, like the belt, buckle and invisi prims, and got some free alpha layers from SLM. I also changed the attachment point to lower leg instead of foot, cuz the boots are fucked up, depending on the AO anims.

Sames goes with the no alpha lashes. I deleted the lower lashes completely, cuz it was difficult to fit them. I prefer no alpha lashes, especially when the hair has lots of alpha, like the one I'm wearing. Or else, you'll see the lashes floating on top of the hair, which would be very creepy.


Ok here's my list (sorry couldn't get the digits straight, don't know how):

• Skin - YS&YS group gift = 0
• Body Shape - self-made (not for sale) = 0
• Hair - Analog Dog = 275
• Eyes - ~*By Snow*~ via SLM = 15
• Eyelashes - Skintimate no alpha lashes via SLM = 10
• AO - Vista Animations via SLM = 1
• AO - Tutys = 0
• AO - Sylva Petrov = 0
• Necklace - Gabriel group gift = 0
• Lingerie - Etiquette Lingerie via SLM = 10
• Pants - COCO Designs = 50
• Belt - Gabriel group gift = 0
• Fur Bolero - COCO Designs discount shop = 50
• Bracelet - edge grafica via SLM = 0
• Boots - COCO Designs discount shop = 50
• Avatar Alpha Overlays - Imnotgoing Sideways via SLM = 0
• Nailpolish - J's = 0
• Poses - E.inK 18 Poses via SLM = 0
• Poses - ++Desire++ 5 Model Poses via SLM = 0
• Poses - (pda) 8 Poses via Collabor88 = 88

Total: 549

This means I still got 1 L$ left yay!

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.