More Girly-Boy Experiments

I think I've decided to abandon Kelly Eden as a "freebies" experiment and concentrate instead on him as a "girly boy" experiment.  This means focusing more on a look that is feminine but flat-chested and with relatively narrow hips and a smaller butt.

The problem I've found is that mesh clothing, which I thought would be perfect for hiding one's true figure, kind of does the opposite, and I knew this if I had paused to consider.  The big problem with mesh clothing is that it forces you into a fairly narrow range of body options.  For example, most women's mesh clothing assumes you have breasts -- "SL normal" breasts even, which seem fairly large.  But of course, some people have much larger breasts and mesh clothing offers the same problems there.  Mesh clothing also assumes you have a relatively narrow waist and ample booty, neither of which is strictly true for my character.

I could, of course, just buy all my clothing from Bare Rose -- they have a large line of "flat-chested" mesh clothes.  But the problem with that is that Bare Rose really doesn't cater to "normal" clothing -- they're all about fantasy, science fiction, fetish clothing.  (The fact that they cater to fetish clothing is almost certainly why they have a line of "flat-chested" mesh clothing options in the first place.)  Generally I like that, and the great thing about Bare Rose is that you get full outfits for cheap (150.00 Linden typically).  But if I just want a normal sweater and skirt I'm not likely to find it at Bare Rose.

A second problem is that a lot of SL clothing exposes the chest (why dress your perfect-body, perfect-complexion virtual self if you can't expose as much skin as possible?) and, for the most part, my girly boy has clear breasts even when I've flattened the chest.  Female skin is designed that way, and I've been working mostly with freebie skins -- some really nice ones, granted, but only Mother Goose offers appliers that remove the breasts (for female child avatars -- not really intended for a boy avatar though it works), and Mother Goose is very scattershot about skin tones, and only offer the appliers in three skin tones which match maybe half of their skins.  The really nice thing about Mother Goose is that they have so many freebies and dollarbies and the appliers are free also, so I was able to come up with a handful of girlish boy looks without breasts, but not for the skins that I really liked the best.

This leads me to Pink Fuel.  There are probably other skin designers that cater to the kind of  thing I'm looking for -- I know of one that specifically designs hermaphrodite skins -- but Pink Fuel does it really well and I like their skins.  They offer a full range of appliers for all of their skin tones -- not just "boy-chest" appliers, but "small-breast" options, "girl-chest" options (for a female chest with no real breasts) and "muscular" options (for female body builders), along with the very standard "enhanced breast" options.

This will mean more of a money investment -- good skins are typically in the 1,000 linden range -- but the results will be worth it I think.  But basically, going outside the standard body  types in SL is a pain.  It's a good experiment for me, to see what's possible, but it takes a lot of work to get the effect you want, especially if you're like me and want high-quality modern (which usually means mesh) clothing.

I need to do a more thorough post on this but for now here's some links:

http://femboyhuntsl.blogspot.com/
http://pinkfuel.tumblr.com/
http://barerose.xeraweb.com/index2.php

Kelly Eden -- New Avatar

So I wasted the entire weekend goofing off in SL, which is the first time in a long time I've done that.

I was kind of in the mood to do a makeover of a character other than my main character Mint.  I have a lot of alts, actually, and I don't do much with them, but several of them are "locked in" to certain roles in my head.  So for example there's last years new character project, ShinobuEden:

She is now a full-time Utilizer Anime girl.  Because I bought this avatar for her, I feel like I need to use it, so she doesn't change out of it.  Likewise, Rei Sin:

Is a full-time Anime girl -- this Utilizer robot girl avatar.  But what I did for both of them this weekend is get AOs.  Abranimations has several of their old AOs available for free, and I find that an AO really brings a character to life, and most free AOs are not nearly as good as what Abranimations is offering.  So the above pictures include poses from one of those new AOs.

I've been really in love with this Bare Rose "Flat Black Lady" schoolgirl outfit, and I decided to update Miko Minogue's look with that.  Miko is my 2nd ever SL character, whom I've never done a lot with.  New AO for her too.

I spent a great deal more time and money updating Miss Snookums, another of my alts that I've rarely ever done much with (she had mostly free and newbie clothing).  For her, I started with a new furry avatar (the Curious Chinchilla mod kit was free) and then added Truth hair and another schoolgirl outfit froom Bare Rose, along with the Edelweiss loose socks (I added these to Miko's outfit too -- looks so much better than what comes with the outfit).  Then I spent a great deal of money on a full set of new animations -- no cheap freebies here!  I like the results.  In my mind Miss Snookums is also "locked in" as a furry character, probably because of the name, but she's always been a furry.

I didn't do anything with Apricot Sugarplum, but she is also "locked in" as a fairy in my mind, I don't want to change her at all.  The name and the form go together.  But I was still in the mood to try a new project.  When I created Mint all those years ago, I spent some time trying to make a default male body as feminine as possible.  It was mostly a failure -- the SL male body can not be made very feminine without distorting it in odd and strange ways.  The best way to make a "girly boy" is to start with a default female body and make it more boyish or masculine.

But I thought with mesh clothing and a good AO I might be able to succeed these days.  I have another "Resident" alt that I can not remember the name of -- I spent some time going through old Livejournal posts on the odd chance that I might have mentioned the character at some point -- but I gave up and decided to create a new alt for my experiment.

This is Kelly Eden in his default male party body.

This is Kelly Eden with an Abranimations female AO and a feminized male body.  It works fairy well, unless you pay attention to how messed up the back is and how weird the joints are.

And this is Kelly with a masculinized female body.  It actually looks similar to the above feminized male body, but without the weird joints and messed up back.

This was my best shot at a feminine male Kelly.  Truth hair, same Bare Rose Flat Lady Black outfit.  This is a male body, and you can see that despite everything I can't solve the problem that part of the neck sticks through the mesh outfit, because it wasn't designed for a male body and the male and female bodies are different enough that there's no way I can push this part of the neck down.  But I really didn't give up on the male body until my next freebie outfit, which exposed the messed up back:

This was a $10.00 tube top and a $10.00 jeans short from Tokyo Girl, and it looked horrible without switching to a female body.  I finally gave up on my experiment and went for a more masculine female body -- that's really the only way to do a girlish by in SL, I finally decided.

Some more looks for Kelly.  I'm still working on these -- I need a good tee shirt to go under the leather jacket.  I paid good money for the jacket and leather skirt, and the second leather skirt at the bottom.  It's hard to find good freebie clothing, though the bots in all of these pictures are freebies and the jeans and black top were free.

That was my weekend -- experiment still in progress I guess!

Been A While...

I don't keep up with posts to this blog very often, it seems.  I had no idea it had been since October since I posted anything.

I'm not in SL very often, but I've done several new looks and outfits since October and even posted them to SLUniverse threads, but forgot to post anything here.  (Not that anyone really follows this blog per se -- but if I'm going to maintain the blog at all, even for my own amusement, then I need to post occasionally.)

So here are some fairly recent SL pictures:

A couple of outfits using some boots I like from Mutresse (Sneja Boots) and dip-dyed mesh shorts from erratic, with differing tops.  This is my "kawaii idol girl look" that I came up with last year, probably my favorite human avatar.

And here we have some winter looks using a color-changing sweater dress mini in the style of Lana from Archer.  I like this outfit a lot.  ^_^  (Ducknipple Peggy Sweater Dress).

I also got a new furry avatar just after Christmas.  I was doing some of the furry-related hunts and got inspired to pick up a Curious Chinchilla avatar and a purple kitty mod kit.  I like it quite a bit!  Here pictured with a Bare Rose oversized sweater/skirt outfit (Kuwael), a Bare Rose schoolgirl outfit (Flat Slim Black Lady) and a Bare Rose cyber outfit (Cyber Limbs Lady).  And the Mutresse bots again!