Recently in Skin-deep Category

I heard Exodi is having a 50% sale, so I went over to grab some skin demos. Like I said in my previous post, I rarely ever buy skins, clothing or hair at full price; more so skins than anything else, though, since skins are so expensive.
 
It amazed me that although all three skins are made by the same creator, they could have such varying effects on the way I look.
 
 

Click image for larger picture
 
 
For this comparison, I tried to choose skins that had the same, or as similar as possible lip shade. I'm still looking for a skin with nice maroon lips, so I err sort of pounced on that.
 
 

 
 
This is Exodi Shiloh, in the honey tone with the makeup called "Nosferatu". Scary thick hairy brows, small mouth with big pouty lips, big eyes with eyeliner and slight eyeshadow. The glowing cheeks and pouty mouth provide a sweet kind of doll-face look.
 
 

 
 
Now we have Exodi Lily, in the dove tone with the makeup called "Chocolate Orange". Brows a lot less scary, lips are wider and glossy, less shading at the nostrils, less eyeliner and almost no eyeshadow, she somehow looks kind of questioning, maybe a bit naive and intellectual.
 
 

 
 
Finally, Exodi Sienna, in the vivante tone with the makeup called "Poker Face". Neat brows, lots of eyeliner and eyeshadow, mouth slightly wider and less pouty... she looks the most like "me". I tend to wear skins with heavy eyeliner and eyeshadow because I don't wear lashes. Without the eyeliner and eyeshadow, my eyes end up looking very stark, as you can see in the earlier two pictures.
 
But Sienna also makes me look a little "mature". So, I was thinking, if I could combine all its facial features with the Shiloh honey skin tone and blushing cheeks, that might be just perfect :p

You know, I did not really believe that a skin could affect my appearance very much. After all, it's the shape that determines bone structure, right? It's the shape that decides how high my cheekbones are, how big my eyes are, how far apart my nostrils are. What could a skin do to me?
 
All that is in the past now. Behold the horror!
 
 

 
 
On the left: My current fave skin, Rockberry Eva in D (Natural). On the right: LF Chai Double-Shot Brisk-04 (from the Chai hunt). I took one look at myself in that Chai skin and nearly died! Clearly, the skin shading makes all the difference. How, I don't know, but it does! -_-"
 
This started me on a tour down memory lane, and I began comparing all my previous skins to my Rockberry. I don't have that many previous skins anyway -- I'm pretty lazy when it comes to changing my skin. Plus, I like looking the same every day; when I log in and see my avatar it feels as if I know her, y'know? If she changed all the time, I wouldn't have that sense of recognition. Am I making any sense? No? Darn, I knew it!
 
[in all succeeding pictures, the skin on the left is the Rockberry Eva Natural in D]
 
 

 
 
For a long time, I wore Folly's Another Shop Mod - Pink. It was my fave at the time when the first Quaintly's account got borked, so when I created this new account it was one of the things I made sure to get. It was $1L. I was still a cheapskate noob then :P
 
 

 
 
Then one day I tried on a Tuli group gift, the S5 Natural 1 (medium), and fell in love with it. I began wearing that exclusively.
 
But I wanted a more dramatic lip colour. I was looking for a maroon lip or deep red colour, and when I heard that Lunacy was having a sale, I hopped over to have a look. On August 10, I bought the first-ever skin that cost more than $1L: Lunacy's Aura 4. I think the skin was L$250, if I remember correctly.
 
 

 
 
Back then I couldn't run Windlight on my computer, but even without Windlight I started to think that the shading and contrasts on that skin were a little too harsh, and the lip colour too brash for me. I went back to wearing the Tuli, until Peter suggested that I start looking for a new skin. I wasn't really keen, because I loved the Tuli, but then one day someone TP'd me in to Rockberry to get a skin on the lucky chair, and omigosh the skin was lovely! And there was a sale! (Do you see a trend here? lol) I ended up getting the Rockberry Eva Natural, and have been wearing it ever since (D makeup). The whole Natural set cost L$400; I thought it was a steal compared to some of the L$1,500 ones out there.
 
Recently though, I discovered Belleza during the Peace on Earth globe hunt, and joined their group to get the group gift too. To my surprise, they announced that as a New Year's gift, group members could choose any one skin and they would deliver the skin to us, free of charge. That got me trying on demos like crazy. In the end, with the help of my Plurk friends, I chose the Brooke medium 15.
 
 

 
 
I somehow find that it makes me look older and more mature, though. The effect of the shading and make-up, I think. It's so subtle but I look at my avatar and think, "That's not her!" o.O
 
 

 
 
I also ended up buying the Brooke medium 17 because hello, maroon lips :P  At L$900, it's the most expensive skin I've ever bought, but the 'mature' effect has caused me to revert to the Rockberry. I know that, as a skin, the Belleza one is superior; you can see the difference in the picture. But I just love the Rockberry so much!!!

I bought new skins today and proceeded to take more than 200 pictures of myself o.O
 
In fact, I took so many pictures that I started wondering if maybe I'm just a little too vain about my avatar -_-"
 
 

Rockberry Sasha D Natural
 
 
It's natural, I suppose, to like to look at pretty things, and of course I think my avatar is pretty. The thing is, I spend so much RL money making her look pretty all the time, what's up with that? It's not like she needed new skins, just like she doesn't really need new clothes. Heck, she probably could wear a different outfit every day for a year, if I could just find all of them in her mess of an inventory >.<
 
 

Rockberry Sasha C Natural
 
 
I wonder if there's a subtle pressure to keep up appearances in SL, just like in RL, except it seems to be stronger and a lot more effective in SL. I know very few people who don't bother with their avatar's appearance; one of them was my former landlord, who -- gasp -- went around with system hair!!! No prim hair for him, no sirree. And he dressed like a newbie with the boy next door T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops.
 
We know that we shouldn't judge people by how they look, but I admit that I wasn't sure in the beginning whether I should take him seriously. Looks like a newbie, maybe he really is a newbie... maybe he doesn't know what he's doing, maybe his business will go belly-up within months and I'll have to find a new home! -- All these thoughts flew through my mind.
 
So okay, if you own a business in SL maybe you can justify wanting to keep up appearances. But I don't have a business o.O
 
 

My favourite, Rockberry Eva D Natural
 
 
I can't decide if I want my avatar to be pretty for me, or for others. In RL I admit that if I dress up, I'm doing it for others. I'm actually quite content to go about in shorts and a huge comfy T-shirt, but there's this thing called "dress code" and being "appropriately dressed" and "according respect to others" by selecting the correct type of clothing. In SL, where I don't really need to worry about what I'm wearing unless I'm at a place with a specific dress code, like Gor or Avilion, why do I still feel the need to dress up? Heck, in a place where clothes don't get stinky, why do I feel the need to apologise if I end up wearing the same dress two days in a row?

I need help.

All this while I've resisted buying a high-end skin, most of my skins are 1L or group gifts. But... I've fallen in love with the Tuli S5 skins. First I got the group gift of the S5 skins in "Natural 1" makeup, and later, during the Skin Fair, Tuli gave out the S5 medium tone in "Classic 1" makeup, and I've fallen in love with 'em.

So I grabbed a bunch of demos while I was at the Picking Daisies hunt at House of Heart (where Tuli has a store).

Now I can't decide which skin tone to buy :\  HALP!

Asian

 
 
Light

 
 
Medium

 
 
They all look kinda the same to me >.<  Halp!!
 
 
 
PS. I'm only asking about the skin tone... the make-up is not an issue, don't look at the make-up! lol

Last night, I got a message that LUNACY had random items marked down by 50% for 24 hours or so. I'd been trying on stuff in an attempt to trim inventory, and had just tried on a Lunacy group gift skin called Phoenix. It looked great on me, so I decided to hop on over to the store and see what was on offer.

Got me a bunch of skin demos and started agonizing over which one to buy. lol

Finally I narrowed it down to 3 choices (I've logged out, and can't remember their names, sorry! But they're all Phoenix skins):

I ended up buying the first one. I think. I'm a bit fuzzy now coz it's 2:30am, and like I said I'm logged out, so I can't check. lol

The hair in the pic is free from Bijou. Sylvia, I think it's called ^^

With all the excitement about the Skin Fair, I knew I had to take a look. I kept telling myself, "Quaintly, there's no hurry. It ends on April 5, for crying out loud. Everybody and their mother is going to be there now that it's just opened. And you hate lag."

But I went anyway. -_-

That irritating voice in my head went, "Quaintly, why do you do this to yourself?"

I told it to shut up. :P

After nabbing the freebies, I walked around a bit to see if I could find any affordable skins. I still get a heart attack at the thought of paying 1k for a skin... but Wax Poetic's 250L skins seemed affordable, so I bought the pack of demos to try.

Oh. My. God.

Gogolita posted the UP skin demo and said there were too many demo labels on the skin, which was a distraction from the skin itself. Oh yes. Distraction, let me show you DISTRACTION:

Yep. I SO ain't kidding.

The first time I tried on one of the demos, I was like, "OMG don't tell me this skin actually has a moustache!" I actually had to TP back to the skin fair to look at the ad display and make sure that the real skins were minus facial hair -_-"

I can tell that the designers have a quirky sense of humour, but how on earth do you expect me to buy any of the skins after seeing this??? I'm having such a lot of trouble imagining it without the moustache, even if I do buy it, my memory of that skin will be tainted for life!!!

***
(L-R from the top: Cupid, Diva, Ferosh, Firestarter, Java Joe, Mermaid, Oceanic, Pinup, Rainbeam and Rio)

For an overview of the skin fair, go here.

A lot of SL bloggers have been talking about the theft of skins from Minnu and other big designers. It's a funny thing... I find that some people seem to believe that stuff on the Internet is not real and that they can behave however they want, without consequences. I've seen people being nasty and rude to others, and when confronted, they say it doesn't matter because it's online. I think they're cowards, and only dare to bully others when their faces can't be seen.

As a blogger, I don't even want my writing to be stolen and put on somebody else's blog, so how much more when these designers have spent hours on their skins and are depending on those skins as a source of income. If I were in their place I'd be very upset too.

The ironic thing is that we were asked not to buy from the thief, and I was thinking there's no chance of me buying from anyone -- the thief or the original designers -- because I never buy skins. I collect them if they're free or 1L... but I don't experiment much with them. After passing the noob phase (which is when the picture at the side was taken... one or two days after my rezday) I found a skin I liked and have used it ever since. I only changed last week because I was trying to purge my inventory and needed to know whether the skins I had were worth keeping!

BEFORE:

(Sin Skins new resident pack - for avs 30 days & under - 'Fresh Nimbus')

AFTER:

(Folly - Another Shop mod - 'Pink')

Amazing what a difference a little make-up makes, doesn't it?

The first skin was free, the second cost 1L... I'm not the type who would pay thousands of Linden for a skin, especially when you can get great ones for free already. Maybe I'm just not particular in that respect -- I do spend a lot on clothes and hair though! lol

But plenty of people do buy skins, and stealing is stealing. I am very sorry that the skin designers' businesses have been threatened and hurt this way :(

Links:

Sin Skins
Folly (the LM may not be 100% accurate but the store is very near by... store owner Tag Mulligan told me that they have been remodeling the store and are planning to reopen tomorrow, but I won't be online to get the correct SURL. I'm going out of town in RL and will probably be away for almost a week. Oh noes! No SL! How will I survive???!?)