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!

Ballerina

My other recent SL project from this weekend was to pick up a ballerina AO and then assemble a couple of ballerina outfits for it.  I was kind of thinking of my old City of Heroes character Nina Ballerina, but ultimately none of this looks much like her.  But anyway, this kept me entertained for an afternoon.

Kinderwhore

Kinderwhore:  an image used by a handful of mostly female punk rock bands in the US during the early to mid 1990s.  (Per the Wikipedia article).

This look is most frequently associated with Courtney Love of Hole, who is recognized as the one who brought it to the mainstream and is sometimes credited with creating the look:

But it is also associated with Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland, who claimed that Courtney stole it from her (they were once in a band together):

But it seems clear to me that the first person to sport this look was Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls (Courtney cites her as an influence):

The Divinyls were an Australian rock group, and Chrissy reportedly got the idea to dress like a schoolgirl from seeing Angus Young of AC/DC in concert:

So yeah.  Schoolboy look, schoolgirl look.  I should probably mention the Catholic Girls, who sported a schoolgirl look back in the early 80's as well (and like to claim to be innovators of that look as it pertains to rock music):

But anyway... kinderwhore... a look sported by others also, including Kim Shatuck of the Muffs,  Jane Garside from Daisy Chainsaw, Jennifer Finch from L7, the members of Lunachicks, Jessicka from JackOff Jill, members of Switchblade Symphony, Fluffy, and even Twiggy Ramirez of Marilyn Manson).

Last week I sought help from the SLUniverse forums to come up with outfits that would work for this look, and I found several.  Here's some screen pics:

This dress is from the Secret Store & Nyu, their "Fall Babydoll Dress".  Paired with ripped tights from *Sheer* and worn black army boots from Hoorenbeek.

This is the "Vivian" dress in black from G. Field.

This is the Montgomery dress in ebony from ColdLogic.

This is the ShirtDress in black from COCO, paired with ripped tights from COCO (free VIP gift) and LaceUP WorkBoots from COCO (loose version -- they were only 100 Linden).

Last but not least is this Marnie dress in black from Has Been (a free VIP gift, it cost 50 Linden to join the group though).

I think the Has Been Marnie dress and the Secret & Nyu Fall Babydoll come closest to the Chrissy Amphlett look shown above, and to the Courtney Love look in the first photo.  But the others work to and are nice looking dresses.

A Witch in New Oonduroo

Exploring a little Medieval RP sim dressed as a witch.  Very pretty place!

I've been doing other things that I need to upload at a later point... working on costumes, taking pictures.

September Update

Although I knew I hadn't been in SL much the last couple of months, I'm amazed that the last update I did for this blog was in May.  I kind of know why -- from Late May through July I played Everquest, pretty much on a regular basis, and even leaving the game running with my character in trader mode when I wasn't actually playing.  That made logging into anything else extremely difficult.

But I stopped playing EQ at the beginning of August -- I was pretty much bored with it.  I did what I wanted to do, I didn't really make any new friends, I wasn't really prepared for the slow slog all the way to level 100.  I might go back, eventually.  We'll see.

In August I spent nearly every day writing.  I know I logged into SL once or twice, but it wasn't until a week or so ago that I really logged in for any significant amount of time.  Rainfurrest is coming up, and I'm planning to meet one or two online friends there, so I had to log back in if only to connect with them and let them know I was still going to be there.

I spent nearly a full day sorting through my inventory.  For a year or two (or three) I've been leaving new clothing folders on my main inventory page, or dumping them into my clothing folder without sorting them further.  I've also avoided doing what I typically do so that I can easily remember what a given outfit or item looks like -- take a picture, upload it, and place it in the folder with the clothing.  So I had a large number of outfits and clothing items that I couldn't remember much about, and I spent a full day trying things on, taking pictures, and sorting them into the proper folders.  I stared a brand new set of clothing folders because one of the other reasons I had avoided filing things away was a fear of losing track of my recently-purchased items.  My older folders have a lot of very old clothing that I don't actually want or use.  I did a little culling, but that's a whole other project that I don't have the time for right now.

Anyway, I rediscovered some things that I liked and saved them as outfits I could change to easily, and then I went out and took some pictures.  Two of my newest outfits included a "Victorian Jailbait" dress that I'd bought at the World Goth Fair, and some shorts and a top I'd bought at a more recent clothing exhibit.  I took photos of both outfits, along with a "sweetheart" sweater outfit that I bought some time ago that I liked.

Over the next couple of days I went on a few clothing quests.  First, I was looking for items to round out the above costumes -- the Victorian dress in particular -- and while doing so I came across a chainmail armor outfit that I liked.  I'd been in the mood months back to come up with a Medieval armor costume of some sort, for which I'd settled on something from BareRose, but I liked this outfit -- it covered more than a chainmail bikini but was essentially your typical Red Sonja/Boris Vallejo impractical armor outfit.  For this, I went on another quest for a good sword and some poses designed for a sword, and then I took a few pictures with it.

While on my quest for a sword I found a neat pair of moccasin boots and bought them.  A few days later I went on another clothing quest to assemble an outfit to match these boots.  I was thinking something Native American or a kind of Post Apocalypse outfit with Native American touches.  My search led me to three different outfits, all of which had their good points.  I decided to try out all three and mix and match.  The most authentically Native American outfit came with a feathered hair ornament that I used in all three outfits.  The other two outfits included fanciful loincloths that could be worn over jeans, which made them perfect for a more Post Apocalypse look.  One outfit allowed for Lola Tango breasts, so that was a bonus in it's favor.  I still think I need to tweak each outfit and mix and match more, but I like all three, and took pictures of all of them.

Above is my mix & match outfit:

Top: from Indian Kokopelli outfit, from While Dreams Shop
Jeans: Boneflower Low-Rise Jeans Flirty Fairie Native (old)
Belt: croc leather belt BLACK silver buckle, nova @ Delirium's Ether (old)
Boots: The Native One Moccasins Black Female, from Soul Distraction
Gloves: from *Songfeather* AzzA outfit
Choker: Bone Black & Red choker with silver Thunderbird, Butterfly Creations
Belly Chain: Dream Catcher Belly Chain, Cherokee Sensations
Hair Ornament: Five Eagle Feather Headdress from Buckskin Women's Red Outfit, Timber Creek Outfitters
Left arm: rusty upper arm belt FEM CJ Feather AMAZON, Primtronics
Right arm, wrists, skirt thigh: Sakari Oufit Bracers, Armband, Skirt, thighband, Tamiron Forge
Earrings, belly ring, necklace: Spirit Bound Dreamcatcher set, Cherokee Sensations

Shape: Colette's Centerfold, modified
Skin: Pink Fuel Kumi <Peach> - Smokey Meow
PMD - Faded Warpaint 2
Hair: DrLife Natural Hair Leila Beauty Red
Eyes: IKON Lucid Eyes - Optimism (ML)