this is a post about the inside football of secondlife avatar mechanics. if you are not invested in secondlife as a game, this will be a load of interfacing gobbledigook. if that is the case, sian advises you skip to the pretty pictures.
when sian took part in curating the futurewave event in 2014, she noticed a lovely skin made for that event by mochi milena of pink fuel, a seller who sadly seems to have not made a new thing in some years. although sian at that time was rocking something by pxl, she got a set sent to her alt and that became that alt’s forever skin.
well, the alt became the main, as you know, but the skin, which was called sora in a shade called alabaster – never, ever changed. it survived the TMP body and head she had, and then when she moved to a lelutka head and a maitreya body, the skin stayed because mochi kept updating it. eventually, sian bought a catwa head – strawberry – but the skin stayed.
very occasionally sian would idly try out another skin. but nothing was as good as that one pink fuel skin. sian has not replaced it for just over a decade. it is, and will always be sian’s favourite skin.
sian has not changed head or body for five years either, actually, barring the occasional auto-update, and, well, at some point sian stopped paying attention to the standards. and the standards changed. coming back after a year-long hiatus this march, sian found that everything had shifted.
five years is a long time to be static in secondlife. bake-on-mesh is four years old now, and sian somehow completely missed it. but at some point in the last 18 months, while sian was gone, it became the only show in town.
it became impossible to find new makeup for the catwa head – sian’s favourite makeup shop by miles, shiny stuffs, stopped doing makeup for catwa heads a while ago, for example. the maitreya lara body had updated to the lara x, which uses a slightly different shape. while the catwa head and the maitreya body could use the old layer skin as a bake-on, it didn’t look good. especially sad–making were the fingers, which looked really messed up, because the skin was made for the awful basic avatar hands. added to that was the process of finding realistic human genitalia and realising that you needed bake-on-mesh for that to work too. catwa seems to still be out there, but at some point lelutka caught up with them and overtook them.
there is nothing wrong with the old skin and head. it still looks beautiful. but sian had to admit that it was time to upgrade.
this was the lelutka evox head – they are all 25% off for the month, so sian thought, interface it, it’s time – after hours going through all the demos, sian, seeking something both angular and severe with a softness around the mouth, eventually settled on the raven head. it is going to take some getting used to, but sian remembers how weird the catwa head looked to her first time around.
but this time, sian can’t use her forever skin anymore. among the innovations the lelutka head brings is the genius realisation that just because you’re baking from the basic avatar mesh, it does not mean you have to have the same uv layout. as clever as this is, it means that the last possible use of sian’s beautiful, futuristic sora skin is gone (that also means that the hairbase layer is very, very different and not admitting straight lines. and so the head tattoo that sian first applied to the head of her original main has suddenly become impractical, at least until sian can work out how to redo it).
initially finding a new skin was daunting, but sian contacted her friend, secondlife’s most underrated fashion blogger since forever, portia capelo. portia advised sian not to panic, because there is now a standard set of skin tones courtesy of velour, and that at some point in the five years since sian stopped paying attention to the sl fashion scene, there is now a whole culture of weekend sales.
all you have to do is get a velour body skin, portia said, and check out what’s in the sales. so sian did some shopping and found a skin that will serve – for now – from wow skins in this last weekend’s slept on sales event.
the weird thing about the new bake-on-mesh culture is that it is sort of a return to using layers like those old days before mesh was a thing, and it is actually simpler than the juggling of a gajillion appliers that sian has been doing for a decade now. there was a weird shift in sian’s brain, like an audible plink, when she realised that actually no, there did not need to be another stage of complexity. there wasn’t something else. this was all that needed to be done. and everything is sharper and cleaner.
it’s just – sian has a different skin for the first time in literally a decade, and that is going to really take some getting used to. there will definitely be more shape adjustment.
(oh, remember digits? it’s been years since sian did that. she thought it might be fun. enjoy, imaginary reader.)
body (both):
maitreya larax body
sian’s own custom tattoos and implants
eclectic randomness icontalk
makeup and body (old):
catwa strawberry head; hd lipstick layer
pink fuel sora alabaster skin
shiny stuffs black & white (tinted) eyeliner; hella good lashes
makeup and body (new):
justmagnetized the countess eyeliner
shiny stuffs evoX graphix shadows; april showers lipstick; lashings lash applier
velour picasso babe skin for lara x (modelesque/icy)
wow skins lilly skin – velour tone icy
clover megalashes
session the v
featured clothing:
crybunbun after dark – green (customised)
lapointe and bastchild swear dita rebel candy booties – latex noir
maxigossamer vallari hoops earrings (they’re really old)
