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!