lotd290415 - GTA Special!

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto V for the last few days, as is the craze on Plurk. I played it on PS3 when it first came out, although it's more accurate to say that I assisted my husband. I'm good at the tedious bits. Not so much at the shooty bits. So I'm progressing rather slowly in the story mode, and in Online mode....let's just say I got distracted by the tedious bits. Right now, I've been concentrating on leveling my character's stamina. By cycling around the map a bunch of times on a really expensive yellow bicycle. I know, I'm lame. 

For my look today, I have attempted to recreate to look of my character in the game, and I think I did an okay job. Second Life Nivaya is rather more polished than GTA Nivaya, she also is, um, rather less mannish, shall we say. Because my goodness do female player models in GTA have the broadest shoulders.

The easiest part of my outfit was the glasses, I knew I had some fantastic decorated vintage cateye glasses by Yummy from a few rounds back of Colabor88. Next, the red skinny jeans. I was sure I had something in my inventory, but nothing was quite the right shade. My GTA character's pants are very very red, I've spent enough time looking at them while she's cycling to know how red they are. The ones I eventually bought were from Sakide, whose skinny jeans I'm a big fan of and I know she doesn't wimp out on the bright colours. 

Surprisingly much harder to track down was a black and white striped tank. I would have thought it was a fairly basic item, but I tried all my old standbys for basics and all of them turned up nothing. On my search I found a lovely yellow bike to pose with! Eventually Tee*fy came close enough to what I was looking for, it wasn't full-length or racerback, but I filled the gaps in with an applier tank. Also surprisingly tough to find were just the right kind of skate shoes.

I didn't expect to find exactly the right hair, and I wasn't disappointed. My GTA character's hair is a frizzy disaster, but this hair by Ploom paired with the awesome group gift hairband from Magika I think I've featured here before. It's incredibly versatile, colour-change AND tintable.

The hardest part was the pizza tattoo my GTA character has. Such a thing does not exist in SL as far as I could find. I asked if anyone could quickly make me a custom one with a Slink Physique applier, but nobody was free to do that and then someone reminded me about the Slink Personal HUD, which allows you to make your own tattoos and the like for personal use. After a Google image search and an unspecified amount of time in Photoshop, I dropped my texture into the HUD, and here I am with a completely appropriate pizza tattoo, yay! 

After that, all that was left to do was the makeup, a simple enough task with an inventory like mine (I speculated her polish would be chipped), and a gun, which I know nothing about and the Marketplace furnished me with something that looked more or less correct. And there I was. More or less the same person! Hooray!

Credits:

Hair: Ploom - Samantha

Top: Tee*fy - Basic Tucked Tank - Striped

Undershirt: Arise - Solid Tank - Grey (Slink Physique applier)

Pants: Sakide - Slim Jeans - Red

Shoes: Baiastice - London Sneakers - Canvas Black (gacha)

Glasses: Yummy - Ellery Glasses - Black 

Hairband: Magika - Headband

Gun: Arsenal Inc - 9mm Pistol

Bike: Toro - Racer Bicycle - Mustard (gacha)

Makeup:

Eyes: Wicked Peach - Winter Harvest 6

Lips: Nar Mattaru - Ember Lipstick - Classic Red

Nails: Action - Reckless

Tattoo: self-made for personal use (Slink Physique Applier)

Poses: 

Image 1: Everglow - Afternoon 07

Image 2: Repose - F BLADE 1

The Basics:

Skin: Pink Fuel - Doll v2 - Vamp

Eyes: Buzzeri - Lillian Eyes - Jade

Mesh Body: Slink - Physique 2.3

Ears: Ears: Mandala - Steking Ears - Season 5

Hands: Slink Avatar Enhancement Hands - Flat (R) and Casual (L)

Feet: Slink Avatar Enhancement Feet - Med

Hairbase: LeLutka Hairbase - Jessica

Freckles: Pekka - Dark Freckles + Star Upper Cheek

Lashes: Alaskametro - PrimLashes - Classic

lotd200115

I've been running around as a kid the last few days. I tweaked my face around quite a lot and am so pleased with the end result, I've been running round buying kids clothes like crazy.

So my jeans, my TD has been wearing for months, since I last brought her out to play, and they're applier-based and so I needed to search for what they were. Turns out they're by S.O Cute, a store which lives up to its name admirably, and these excellent applier-based jeans are a steal at only 15L$. 

My cozy (and honestly, after all the tacky Christmas sweaters this winter, rather tasteful) sweater is by Just Kidding and my boots are a Rare from Ugly Duckling's gacha at this round of Woodland Treasures gacha event. They've got a little bow on the back, so adorable!

The scarf is actually part of an adults outfit I've blogged part of before - Sakide's Thermal outfit, but shrunk down. I like how nicely it coordinates with the boots. 

My lamb friend is by the always precious silentsparrow, at this round of Kawaii Project. The lambs themselves come in various colours and the bows change via a hud too and there's a yellow bow because hya loves me. Also it's all knitty and woolly, and see the little key on its back? When you click that, it plays (slightly creepy) original music box style music.

Credits:

Hair: Magika - Meadow - HUD 2

Sweater: Just Kidding - Cosby Sweater - Navy

Jeans: S.O Cute - Basic Jeans

Scarf: Sakide - Thermal

Boots: Ugly Duckling -  Warm Boots RARE (gacha @ Woodland Treasures)

Sheepy friend: silentsparrow - Lamby Pie - Oreo (@ Kawaii Project)

Makeup:

Cheeks: Pink Fuel - Cute Blush

Nails: Bad Seed Boutique - Glitter Stripes

Poses:

Image 1: Label Motion - Gayle Pose 1

Image 2: Label Motion - Bunny Pose 5

The Basics:

Skin: Pink Fuel - Doll v2 - Crystal

Eyes: Buzzeri - Bewitched Eyes - Jade

Mesh Body: Cute Bytes - Toddleedoo - Kid

Ears: Ears: Mandala - Steking Ears - Season 5

Hairbase: LeLutka Hairbase - Jessica

Freckles: Pekka - Dark Freckles + Star Upper Cheek

Lashes: Action - Mesh Natural Lashes - Burgundy

#SLBareFaceChallenge

Genkai Tesla's SL Bareface meme thingy. No makeup, no lashes - in my case, not even my freckles, no Photoshop (I assume cropping is allowed!). Just natural, pretty faces.

The picture below was taken with the awesome Black Dragon viewer, using only effects and such built into that viewer.

If you're one of the approximately 7 people left in SL who have not yet taken the SL Bare Face Challenge, I challenge you. Hooray! 

Credits: 

Skin: Pink Fuel - Doll V2 - Crystal

Hair: Olive - The Alice 

Eyes: Buzzeri - Bewitched Eyes - Jade

Ears: Schadenfreude - Fey Ears - Solid Acrylic Plugs w/Rings

Tank: Kaliko Timeless - Jacy Outfit (Slink Physique Applier)

Panties: Bubble - Bat Panties (Slink Physique Applier)

Bare nails: Action - Urban

Poses: 

Image 1: Izumiya - Pose 022

Image 2: (with bed)

lotd280714 - In Which Niv is Small

For reasons literally unknown besides a certain degree of boredom, last night I bought myself a Todleedoo mesh body, and tweaked a version of my shape to childishness. It was a fun evening I spent in which I also braved the last few hours of Hair Fair to grab this special Todleedoos-only hair, did a hunt  and checked out the events I found on Seraphim Kids and quickly got myself looking somewhat presentable and cute.

I don't suppose it's something I'll really pursue, not least because I don't see my BFF Persephone Paine going for it and I don't know anyone else to hang out and play with and it's no fun being an adorable lonely child.

But I am unquestionably completely adorable.

Credits:

Mesh body: Cute Bytes - TodleeDoo - KidGirl

Hair: Olive - The Darla - HUD2

Top: Turnips - Stud - Polka Tank

Skirt: Soken Kids TD - Summer Layered Mini Skirt (Summer Dreaming Hunt)

Shoes: Bijoux - Stache Sneakers

Ears: Schadenfreude - Changeling Ears

Lashes: Action - Natural Lashes - Burgundy

lotd060714

Credits:

Hair: Wasabi Pills - Annette - Rouge

Dress: Coquet - County Rd 22 - Blue

Chewing straw: Footpaw Industries - Straw Nom

Chicken Friend: silentsparrow - Little Brown Hen 

Makeup:

Dirt tattoo: Two Cats - Dirt Overlays

Foot dirts: 7 Mad Ravens - Dirty Feet Slink Appliers

Nails: Action - Urban

A long response about hips

This post started out as a reply to a comment made on Google+ about this post, essentially wondering "What's the deal with the shattered pelvis look in Second Life?".

That response ran SUPERLONG, as evidenced below, and so I decided to make it into a blog post. You're all so welcome.

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Well, while I can't speak for the more extreme and deliberate examples, I can theorize that there's a number of reasons why it's showing up more lately.

Firstly, real-life trends. The mainstream fashion of the last few years has tended to accentuate not just the hips, but the entire upper-abdomen, with high waistlines and fitted styles around the hips, with a lesser emphasis on the chest (these trends are echoing the late 80s/early 90s, which in turn were inspired by the late 40s-mid50s, because fashion will cycle like that, usually as an adaptation of the current young generation's parents' young fashion).
Secondly, there lately is a greater degree of body acceptance in women, and a rise of curvier women in the media. Kim Kardashian's popularity is an obvious example of this, but likewise the rise in prominence of South American aesthetics has risen through latin women, and the natural body shapes of many black women coupled with this are all contributing factors to the fact that currently, womanly curves are in, even for us pale girls.

Now, Second Life mirrors and expands on real world trends in many ways, but it also has the ability to exaggerate those trends, which is a partial explanation for what you might see in the fashion postings lately, but it's not the full story.
The other part of it is the limitations of the Second Life avatar mesh itself, which is highly outdated, having been in use since Second Life's first days, 11 years ago. The designers of that mesh could not have hoped to foresee the visual advances content creators have made in that time.
The limitations in shapemaking with regard to the current trends are as follows: Simply adding weight ("Fat") to the avatar leads to highly undesirable results, dramatically altering the look of the face, and bypassing the concept of curves, and running straight to what I would describe as stoutness. So to achieve the "curvy" effect, we need to use some of the other sliders at our disposal.
The "Saddlebags" slider is useful but unglamourously named and comes with its own limitations, which I will come to later. Which leaves us with the "Hip Width" slider. The Hip Width slider works by setting the legs further apart on the avatar skeleton, rather than adding extra flesh. On a normal human woman, this would be balanced by bigger thighs, but of course each body part is treated more or less separately, so changing the hips has no effect on the legs. Sadly, there's no leg fat slider, only "Leg Muscle", which has a very small range of usablilty, between famine-victim thin with knobbly knees, and weird square balloons. So most women have little choice but to keep their legs between around 30 and 60 points, which does not fit nicely on the broad hips required for the desired silhouette.

In traditional proportion, a woman's pelvis is supposed to correspond roughly to the width of her shoulders, approximately the same or wider. For an hourglass shape then, with the top half of the figure being about the same as the bottom, with a slim waist, to have the avatar's thigh's touching as with a human woman, the absolute smallest the Hip Width can be is around 30 points. That's with the shoulders at 0, and the legs at the thinnest they can be before they deform. And it looks bad. So the broader the shoulders, the broader the hips need to be, and the broader the hips are, the bigger the gap, and not everyone wants to be a twig. This issue is exacerbated even further when you try for the currently-fashionable Pear Shape, which I personally tend towards.

So initially these were just the constraints we needed to work within to achieve a curvy figure, but as with many things, it became adopted and embraced as a stylized preference in Second Life, just like the ultra-frowny mouth, and tiny-tiny hands. To whit, designers of mesh clothing will often essentially build this trait in to their clothing, so that even those with an "ideal" shape end up with thinner, further-apart legs than their avatar's true shape. Previously I mentioned the Saddlebags slider. Previously this was the best way to add extra size to hips, however, with standard rigged-mesh clothing, this slider was not taken into account, and so Saddlebags needed to be taken down to accommodate many clothings waistlines. Now Fitted Mesh is on the scene, things are not much improved, since from what I can tell as a non-creator, the Saddlebag area is considered as much a "bone" as anything else, and becomes incredibly exaggerated accordingly (as was the case in my original post's photo, plus the "built-in gap" the pants already had).

Though there are numerous other factors I could touch on, including the influences of certain styles of comic-book and anime artwork, and male expectations of the female shape (for instance, the importance of the "box gap"), these are the main technical/societal factors in the matter as I, a non-expert, see them.

Apologies for the long and rambling nature of this post, I am not an essayist by nature, but since it was asked, I figured I would give it my best shot as a proper answer.

Credits: 

Hair: Saltgrass - Lancy - Reds

Top: Schadenfreude - Skelebeater - White Noir

Knickers: Sakide - Slide Panties - Dino

Shoes type wotsits: Noodles - Harmony Peace Foot Rope - Gold

Makeup:

Nails: Action - Nouveau

lotd300614

Credits:

Hair (and hat): Spellbound - Hecate - Natural Selection
Top: Sn@tch - Althea Crop Top - Purple
Pants: Alyce - Skinny Pants
Shoes: Pixicat - GeishaShoes High - White
Bracelet: Junbug - Filigree Bracelet
Makeup:
Eyes: Kooqla - Z-Eyeliner - Black 2
Lips: Nomine - Lip Tint - Peach
Nails: Action - Brighton

LotD200614

Credits: 

Hair: Ploom  - Raichu

Top: Baiastice - Marina Shirt - Sicily

Skirt: The Sea Hole - Painted Desert Mini - Desert Sky

Shoes: Emporium - Straps Shoes

Belly ring: Sn@tch - Jewel Belly Rings - Diamond Bow

Makeup:

Lips: Random Matter - Glossy Chapstick - Mercury

Bindi: Nylon Outfitters - Bindi - Blue

Nails: Action - Brighton

What's your Digits? 2014

I missed the last two What's Your Digits-ing, due to general idleness. I enjoyed the original one though, making many tweaks to my own shape taking inspiration from others' digits, and generally growing as a person. It was neat, and I look some different to how I was back then. The biggest changes I've made between then and now fall into two categories: Proportion, and Concessions for mesh clothing. With fitted mesh becoming more widespread, I hope soon to revert to the latter category some. Shrinking my boobs down some, and putting more meat on my bones. I miss my belly.

Onto Strawberry Singh's questions about fitted mesh, to go with this meme:

What are your thoughts about Fitted mesh?:
I'm quite excited. It allows me just that little bit more flexibility in how I can have my shape. Right now I still wear my shape for normal mesh mainly, but I have one on standby with some of my older shape traits that I needed to give up, which makes me happy with fitted mesh.

Have you tried any of the new fitted mesh avatars released by Linden Lab? What do you think of them?
They're horrible. I'm very very very anti. I think they're a massive step backwards for new players, and will make Second Life more difficult to adapt to. They're lacking in any kind of customization options, it's like LL have said "This is your avatar" rather than letting the user define who they want to be. And they um...don't really look that good at all. They don't look like us, they look like something ported in from another game. I absolutely hate them and think they were a terrible mistake.


Have you tried any fitted mesh avatars/bodies created by residents?
I've tried WowMeh, I really really like it, in theory. I love the smoothness of it, and how turning up the various sliders increases curve, rather than just adding lumpy muscle bulk. In practice, though, there's just not enough out there for it. I'm attached to still being able to use some of my system clothes, and the system that hides parts of the body for wearing mesh clothing still needs a lot of refining. I'm looking forward deeply to the upcoming Slink Physique, which will hopefully be as widely supported by creators as the hands and feet I love so much.


Have you tried a mesh head? What are your thoughts about mesh heads?
They're not for me. I've demo'd, and just, no, they're not me. They look very pretty mostly and I welcome to wide range of fun expressions a lot of them have, like Slink Visage, but I don't want to look just like everyone else. I don't want to look just exactly like everyone else, even if everyone else is really really pretty, and I don't want to look like someone else's vision of what really really pretty is. I've been working on my shape continually for 7 years now. It's me.


Do you foresee a lot of changes to our current Second Life avatars because of fitted mesh?
I think most of the changes in this area will be due to mesh bodies becoming available, rather than the fitted mesh clothing. It's going to give us all a lot more flexibility to have some variety, I hope, and if nothing else, the fitted mesh bodies are prettier than the default.



Credits:
Hair: Pr!tty - Jolie - Reds
Pasties: silentsparrow - Sugar Pop Pasties - Licorice
Panties: Schadenfreude - Black and White Frilly Panties
Makeup:
Nails: Action - Nouveau
Lashes: Mon Cheri - Falsies

LotD030614

Credits:

Hair: Elikatira - Pretend - Red 8
Top: Mutresse - Rali Shirt (from June FaMESHed)
Pants: Casa del Shai - Polkadot Jeans - Champagne
Cape: Peqe - Cape - Green (from Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Sandals: Pure Poison - Roman Striped Sandals
Armband: Idril's - Herbalist Armband
Bracers: On a Lark - Butterfly Bracers - Ultrarare Fatpack (from Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Dagger: Thigh Dagger Upper Left Thigh (resized) by Catboy Qunhua
Eyepatch: La Petite Morte - Eye patch - Yellow Roses
Dragony Friend: silentsparrow - Dragon Plush - Toothish (RARE) (from June Aracde Gacha Festival)
Makeup:
Eyes: Mons - Eyeshadow Dramatic Smokey - Pop
Lips: Pink Fuel - Harley Sheer Gloss - Dolly Orange
Nails: Action - Reckless
Tattoos: silentsparrow - tenebrae tendrils - Black ink - light

LotD081113

Credits:

Skin: Birdy - Rose - Porcelaine
Hair: Due - Olivia - Red 2
Hoodie: MV - Ash Sugarskull Hoodie - Noir
Tights: Cannibelle - Royalty Tights - Red
Shoes: Fri.day - Lovegood heels - Chocolate
Makeup:
Loud Mouth Lips Appliers: Birdy - Rose Lips - Balm 3
Eyes: Mons - Ombre Liner - Black
Nails Appliers: Action - Pre-Fall 2013

Lotd231013 (ohboy, my 50th post!)

Credits:

Hair: Taketomi - Yume - Red 2
Dress: The Little Bat - Creepy Cocktail Dress - Monsters
Legwarmers: Sn@tch - Rocktober legwarmers - Lime
Shoes: The Plastik - Dusk Pumps Halloween 2012 - Joker Desat
Ring: The Little Bat - Creepy Cabochon Ring - Monster
Makeup:
Lips: Mock - Clear Lipgloss
Eyes: Mock - Miss Vanity Eyeshadow with Lashes - Original Purple
Nails Appliers: Action - Prefall 2013

LotD161013

Credits:

Skin: Essences - Song - Light Rose - Untouched - Ginger
Hair: Wasabi Pills - Jade - Rouge
Jacket: la petite morte - Steampunk Jacket - Black Pinstripe
Pants: la petite morte - Steampunk Capris - Black Pinstripe
Shirt: silentsparrow - Chapiteau Henley - Cream
Corset: la petite morte - Underbreast Corset - Brown Damask
Boots: Gos - Triumph Boots - Brown
Ring: Paper Moon - Electric Liberty Ring - Tungsten/Brass
Goggles: silentsparrow - Lysander Goggles - Brass
Makeup:
Nails Appliers: Action - Urban Nails