How to - build a photo studio

Sowwy for neglecting you for such an awfully long time:( Anyway, last night I finally decided to redecorate a bit and my N30 studio took up too many prims so I built myself a studio and thought to share how it's done. Okay first, the basics of studios overall. You can buy several different studios, the more known and best are N30 and Photosphere. Both of them are really nice and have their advantages and disadvantages. The third way to go is build a studio yourself. Now the choice between these options really comes down to what you need the studio for and how much prims and room in general you have. Anyway since my space is kind of limited, Photosphere was too big for the corner I use for studios, I opted for building it myself. I'll cover some general photography tips as well while we go along.

Okay, so let's start. First off you need a building space. Can do this at home, specially good if you want to size it exactly for the planned space. Let's start by rezzing a sphere (1). If you're unfamiliar with building, right-click on the ground and select create from pie menu, then select a sphere shape and click on the ground to create one. Now with our fresh out of the oven sphere, let's make it big. Hold down ctrl and shift and you should see colored boxes on the sides of the prim and whites in the corners. Grab a white one and drag it outwards until you have the desired bigness to the sphere (2). I made a small one so it would fit on the photos. Go bigger. Now we might want to make it hollow, so in the building menu change the hollow to 95, that's the max. Also, change the dimple to around 0.25. That might need adjusting depending on how big you made the sphere. Anyway I went with 0.35 and changed it to 0.25 cause it wasn't too good at 0.35. Now we have a hole facing down (3).

So let's turn the thing! Holding down ctrl you should see colored circles around the prim. Grab the one that is directed on the up-down line and drag it to place. You can get really good and basic angling when you move the mouse outwards while grabbing the line, you will see sort of like a ruler and you can place it facing exactly to you without odd angles. Now we have a wooden holey sphere! (4).

Okay so in this case, let's make a regular white sphere. For that, the easiest way to go is select the texture box and click on the button that says blank (upper left). So yay, a white sphere! Now let's make us something to stand on because trust me, it won't look all that good if you just stand inside the sphere. Bad for full body shots as well. So let's use the fresh building skills to now make a box. Again, right-click, pie menu->create and now choose the box shape and click on the ground (upper right). Now let's move it in the sphere and make a floor. To move it, grab the arrow that lies in the direction you want to go and just drag it. Place the box in the sphere and now again ctrl and shift but this time use the colored boxes to drag the needed sides bigger. Make it so it roughly covers the "floor" part (lower left).

Now let's make it invisible! Ah, do try to line up the floor part with the sphere so it wouldn't get too difficult to climb in if you need to move in there manually (more on that later). Aaanyway, again, click on the texture box and choose a full transparent texture. Now with this, you can either search freebie places for it (btw, I think Natalia Zelmanova might have a free one in her store, look her up and take her picks to her store - I'm sorry, I can't recall the name of the store at the moment), also you can make one yourself (if you know anything about PS and alpha, it's easy, but it's long to explain so if you don't, stick to other ways for now) or you can ask me for one. So okay, lets apply the full transparent texture and while we're at it, let's link it to the main sphere so it wouldn't get lost if we move the thing. While you have your floor selected, hold down shift and select the sphere as well. Now they're both yellow. Go to Tools menu and select Link. Now they're like one, move together and all that happy crap.

Basically our studio is done. However, we do want to add lighting to it because it's very dark. Now for a photography tip - do use face lights and under world menu, use the force sun to either sunrise or sunset, depending on which direction you are facing. But I'm also going to add a few local lights on the studio itself for even better lighting experience. So okay, let's create another sphere (1). Make it smaller by the same white box logic and from the features tab, click on light. Now change the settings so that the radius is decent. I used 3 but my sphere is small for it to fit on the photos I took. Anyway see, it shows the lighting area it will effect, try to get it about as I have. Play with intensity, around 0.8 or something like that will do. Sometimes even darker. It depends on your own lighting conditions. I have crappy ones on this platform for purpose. Anyway so we have a light (2).

Now the next step, we are going to make more! With still the same prim selected, we can go two ways. One way is that we hold down shift and drag it to the left, creating an identical copy of it and place it. Usually there should be two down and one up, specially if you have a facelight as well (please do). Now with all of them at place, select all three by the same shift and click way and texture them with full transparent, then without letting them go, select the sphere and link them to it. Other way is make the original one transparent and then drag it around and link later but if you're a beginner in building, go with the first version. Hooray, we have lighting (3)! Now we need some way to pose in this thing. The most painful way is to just hover yourself in there and start manually going through the poses in your inventory but trust me, we want better. For this tutorial sphere, I used the most regular posestand with scrolling option. You can drag your poses in its content tab and then you right-click it and select sit, pose or whatever text replaces the regular sit and voilá! We have a working brand new studio (4).

Now if you still manage to lose the invisible light prims, I'm not the surest here but I think it was View menu. So okay go there and there is highlight transparent. Now you see everything transparent in red. Cool mwahahah. Okay so this way you won't leave weird invisible objects lying around. Now this lower one is the one I built yesterday. Further tips are that you might want to tint the sphere with a bit gray or it might start to shine too brightly and be very distracting on pictures. Or you can use your own textures to make backgrounds. But okay let's talk about posestand options. So we looked at the regular one before which is okay if you don't need alot of poses and trickier things. Now this one on this picture is a godsend for people like me who constantly need to scroll through a hundred or more poses. This posestand has a HUD to scroll through poses, it can rotate, hide and best yet - you can sort your poses into sets. I'll add SLurls and stuff in the end.

Okay and there's also a third way to go, you can get a PhotoHud from Reel Movement that is really good if you're not really studio-based photographer, meaning you need to go out alot as well. That one uses poseballs instead of posestand. If you go to the store, it's just on the right and it also gives out a notecard, I suggest you read it to get more information on it. Anyway, with lighting, studio size and posestand, go with options that suit you best.

General tips on photography:

1. Lighting! Use the sunset or the sunrise, never noon. Noon will leave mesh shadows and that is just ugly. Also use a face light. You can get those from lots of places. I'm using Chai's lighting rig which I shamelessly got from her skin demo pack. Lots of stores have free ones, look around and ask around to get the one you like the best. Also, light your studio. However, do not overlight it. Too much light is also a bad thing, will leave screeching light and will just blind people.

2. Use your angles wisely. One of the basics of good photography is handling the camera movement. Pan around alot to practice! You can pan by holding down alt and grabbing the focus point with your mouse left button. Then hold it down and move. It's tricky at first but you get used to it quickly. Also, if you want to get really-really close to something tiny, use ctrl and 0 (numpad). Every time you click on the 0, the picture will zoom closer. This technique is great for very tiny snippets and also great for face closeups at times since it creates a bit of a different look for the picture then the regular camera mode. To exit this mode, press ctrl and 9. This is also very useful for working with tiny prims because with regular zoom, the picture will become shaky when you get very close, plus hard to control the movement.

3. Poses. Play around with them, use a posestand or a HUD or anything to make your life easier. The manual labor of going through single poses from your inventory isn't worth it. Make your life technically easier so you could focus on pictures instead of painful details.

4. Problems with rezzing. If you're Ruthed, go to your appearance mode. Exit. Do NOT save anything or you'll be Ruth forever. Or okay you'll just lose your shape. If something won't rez, rebake. Activate your client menu by pressing ctrl+alt+D or ctrl+alt+shift+D. On a Mac, option+shift+D. Under there go to the character and select rebake textures. That will force the textures to rebake so if you're stuck with half-loaded textures, they will reload and probably spiff up and get their act together. Also, if at any point you totally lose your camera in the bushes, press escape to return to your avatar view.

5. Be creative! Let your creative juices flow and feel free to experiment. Find cool spots to take photos and most of all, enjoy the process. If you hate it, don't do it:) If you want to go outside and have no idea where to take pictures, classic photography hotspots are Far Away and Straylight. And explore!

6. Omg, I'm seeing everything on the pictures! And more stuff like that. When you press the snapshot button, you will see a snapshot interface. Uncheck the "show interface" button to lose the menus from the picture. You can change all kinds of stuff there so explore.

That is the very basics of building a studio and tips in general. You will know by experiences what exactly you need and how to reach it, but for now, maybe it helped someone out a bit:) If you have any questions, feel free to IM me inworld and if I don't answer in 24h, try again, IMs get capped. Or leave a comment here with the question:) Have fun taking pictures!

SLurls:
The posestand used on pic 3 - AnaLu
Tillie's posestand (with HUD) - Tillie's Shop
PhotoHud - Reel Expression

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How to - ease the lag in crowded places

I'm sorry for skipping a week - my real life is as hectic as it gets and I barely get to stay on top of my other blog. Okay, anyway, this story was surprisingly requested by a few of my readers, also it was mentioned in comments for my first post. So yes. What to do when you know the place you're going to will have crowds? First, let's start with the concept because one of you showed me that we can not take for granted that people know about the connection of crowds, attachments and lag.

Let's say that you want to go to an opening of a huge store. Fine. Now if you've ever been to one of these huge events with loads of people (which I think you probably have), you know it's going to be laggy as hell. What can you do to make it easier? Dress accordingly. The thing is, though sims usually crash when they have around 70 people in them (it varies, depends on the sim), the lag you get before that you can actually make easier. Okay so yes, maybe you alone won't lag the whole thing, but it needs to be a common courtesy and common knowledge thing. So the basics is to not wear a lot of prims and certainly take off your HUDs, like AO and what's even worse - Mystitool. Seriously girls, that baby has to come off. I know you feel blind, deaf and dumb without it but you can do it!:P So let's see what I'm really talking about.

Okay, a snapshot of me on a regular day. This is not the worst case scenario primwise, because I'm not wearing jewelry (huuuge loads of prims there), and my shoes and hair are mostly sculpty, which take less prims to accomplish the wanted look. However, when we go in detail about this, calculating all the prims together, I got 107 prims (or something like that, I couldn't find my calculator widget for some odd reason). This is not the worst, but also not the best. Okay so how do I know this? Right click on a prim, select edit and under general you will see the prim count (shown on the next picture too). If you're counting all of your prims, don't forget that you have two shoes to count in, not only one and prim lashes count as prims as well. It is obvious that I need to dress down. Let's do it now.

So on the left you see the perfect event-girl:P In means that no prims attached. Also, no HUDs. Make sure of that, however many prims you decide to wear in the final result - I repeat: HUDs are a no-no. All kinds of scripted things make the lag omg how bad. Anyway, a lot of you don't want to hang around barefoot and bald. I don't mind - this actually is about how I look when there's serious lag involved. Anyway, let's see what you can do. Prims aren't entirely the work of the devil in lag. Just keep it as low as you possibly can. Take a guideline not to exceed over 50 prims or so. It really depends where you're going. So on the pictures on the right, I dug out my least prims involved objects that solve the barefeet and bald problem. So try your stuff on, right click and select edit and under general (as shown on the picture) see prim count. I know the picture is really small and hazy but try to navigate after where I drew a circle around.

So the shoes are sculpty. I'm not entirely sure if sculpties are better or worse in case of lag but I'll go with them being low prim. You might end up looking like a Michelin man due to the ball-effect because sculpts do this ball thing before rezzing and anyway under lag you may not rez completely. Heck, you stand a good chance of ruthing (that's basically making your avatar look like one of the default avatars who's not the best looking chick in town - but don't worry it's temporary).

So okay, the shoes I used are sculpty, they're from Surf Co if you're wondering. But basically you can throw around different shoes and see what works best. As for the hair, it's usually sincerely prim heavy so also from Surf Co (odd coincidence, nothing else), I found my lag-head cover. Now this is good for telling you another thing. This head scarf actually consists of two different parts which mean you have to count them separately or if you want, together like I did. How to do that? Simple. Go to edit mode with one, then hold down shift and click on the other one. Now you have them both selected and you also see their combined prim count under the general tab.

When you're looking for lag-hair, it's good to keep in mind that usually short hair take more prims then long. That's a general guideline, it can be wildly different on occasion. On shoes - please keep in mind that high boots that have all kinds of spikes, bling, chains and whatnot aren't by no means lag friendly.

So here's my result. 18 prims is a crazily good result so it's not something you can surely achieve when opting for the use of hair and shoes. Now something I've noticed in my lag-travels: people don't actually care how you look like unless you're heavily primmed in these events. Many people can't even rez properly under lag so they might not see your full glory anyway. Basically: don't worry about your looks but care for yourself and others - there's always at least one idiot who puts on maximum prims in all available attachment points and leaves AO on, in worst case even constantly shifting through the poses etc. But please, don't let that be you.

Now as for lag events, one more thing that's been on my mind that I think people just don't realize. Let's say a huge hair shop has opened and you go there, there are like 30 people, everyone is decently dressed down for lag and then everyone does the completely silly and redundant thing to do under those conditions - they start trying on the hair demos. Okay, trust me on this one - it's not good. If you want to try demos of hair, shoes, whatever, take as much demos as you can, whatever you might find interesting and tp out. Go home or to a sandbox and try them there. Seriously, the demo trying in store usually kind of loses the point of dressing down in the first place. Specially given that you keep changing the demos which forces other people to load them as well.

So as a summary:

1. Before going, take off everything - you can right click on yourself and select detach all (or something like that)

2. Make sure you're not wearing any HUDs - AOs, Mystitool, whatever.

3. Wear some clothes that do not use prims.

4. On shoes and hair, try to go with under 50 prims - it's also a good idea to go with only hair because hey, if you're barefoot it's not that noticeable plus it might be a hippy thing:P

5. Don't rez any prims on the event itself.

Okay, this wasn't particularly interesting to people who already dress down, I hope to come up with something for you guys as well soon:P Anyway, I hope you at least got some ideas out of this and always feel free to IM me, comment, send me a notecard (I'm having issues with missing IM's lately so if you don't hear back from me, send me a notecard - I never ignore anyone). Also, if you have things you would like to see covered, contact me in any of those forementioned methods. I do like to hear from you guys, it's great to get feedback. Plus on the new issues, there's one of me and many you so whatever problems/questions/issues you have with SL, throw them at me and I'll do my best to help you out though I'll add a strong disclaimer: I'm no professional at any of this, I'm just around half-way figuring stuff out:)

Okay I hope I didn't forget anything - I'm a complete mess lately with huge loads of information to gnaw through with my school work:)

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How to - adjust prims, a quick tour

Adjusting prims is a huge topic, this one here is a rather quick one since I'm trying to cover a huge load of things. Actually once you think about it, there's absolutely no difference in fitting any prims really. So this one is about the same thing from different perspectives. So here goes.

Let's start with fitting jewelry since this is the easiest. Also, a lot of people do not seem to realize that their prims are in the wrong place or wrong size. So study the picture and compare the before and after to really understand why prims need to be fitted. In case of this necklace, it just needs moving. Jewelry usually doesn't require resizing or fiddling with individual prims with the exception of chokers. A tip with that - if you are on the tinier side, chokers and belts will always be too big so pay careful attention to modding rights. And even that might not help because often times the main prim is as tiny as it gets which means you can not make it smaller with one move, without modding each individual prim. In those cases it's best to contact the creator. So okay how to move prims?

First off, to edit something, right click on the prim(s) and select edit. You will get a building menu (shown on the lower left picture). For moving, ignore the menu and concentrate on the arrows that the item gets. Just drag from the arrow that points in the needed direction. Always scroll around to see if all angles are okay. With necklaces it's important to also see if the backside is looking normal. Leave a little air between yourself and the necklace for movements. Also, a useful tip - when modding something, remove other prims in that area. If you leave hair on with necklace moving, you might not see correctly plus there's the risk of accidentally clicking on hair and moving it in the wrong place. So yeah, clean workspace! Now what else is important when you're new to it, is to take copies. Take a copy before you start fiddling around! If you forget to do so and screw up, do NOT detach the item, take a copy while you're wearing it and use that - it doesn't save if you don't take it off, so you can start fresh again. If you managed to detach it and totally screw it up, contact the creator. If you forgot who that was, you can see it from the building menu under the general tab or just right click in inventory and get properties.

Now on to earrings. As you can see, they are buried in my ear. Zoom in using alt+dragging or if that isn't good enough, use ctrl+0 (after that to finish that view mode, press ctrl+9). With earrings, you should get the earring to sit quite in the middle of the earlobe and check all angles to see if its correctly placed. You might need to rotate it a bit but not always. To rotate, either select from the building menu rotate (upper area - you have the position by default) or hold down ctrl key. You should see a ball kind of thing, dragging the directions will rotate.

Be careful with rotating, it's not too good to rotate in a direction you are straightly facing, it will go bananas and rotate very.. um.. wrong. So keep it angled. If you need to rotate straight towards you or away from you, move the camera a bit and then rotate. If in any time of editing you lose the blue arrow when positioning prims, it's still there, you can use it but you don't see it.

So here you see the skirt that needs fitting and obviously the problem is that it's too big. That will need resizing. You can resize, again using the building menu and switch modes from there, or hold down ctrl+shift and you can then drag the appropriate things. Now the white dots in the corners operate the whole size, colored dots change one side. With skirts and hair, you will want to use the white dots in the corners. There are two approaches to this. You can either rez the item and shrink it on the floor or wear it. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Going with the rezzing it will be uncomfortable because you don't see in the process if it's enough. Anyway, in that case go with subtle changes and right click->more->take copy and try on if enough.

When you're wearing the prims, their location will change. Yes, you do see if they fit now or not but now they will need repositioning. Not a whole lot usually but still. Try out both ways and see what suits you best. And don't forget - take a copy before meddling with it or if you forgot, don't detach it and take a copy while wearing. Usually skirts only need resizing and repositioning, don't rotate them, they will get weird on you. Sometimes however it is needed to adjust single prims on it. For that knowledge, use the next section about hair.

If your head size is about 50 all around, you mostly don't need to resize hair. However if you still do, consult the resizing part in the skirt section. Hair usually needs a bit of repositioning, just a tiny nudge regularly and now, the new part - individual prim editing. So go ahead and start with positioning the hair a bit - it's good to keep in mind that one brand of hair is usually done by the same avatar so usually one brand always needs the same repositions. Like in my case here, this is hair from ETD and all of their hair need a tiny nudge left and up for me. You can even keep notecards with that info in your hair folders to make life easier on you.

Now as you can see my ears don't look all that good at the moment. That's the most common problem so always look at that when wearing new hair. Now what you want to do is to go to edit mode and check the box that says edit linked parts (see - it has a yellow circle around it on top right picture). When that is checked, click on the prim that's causing problems. Look at lower left picture to see what happens. Now all edits you do, apply to only that prim without affecting the rest but still leaving it linked to the rest. Okay so I would suggest in this issue not to move the prims, but to resize them a tiny bit using NOT the white boxes but only the lower one to make it shorter from the lower end. Don't touch the sides that are allright, you might end up with bald spots. When that is done, you will see if that's all or maybe it needs some other prim also adjusted. To find the prim that's causing problems, just click on the part that's covering the ear. Use tiny nudges and see how it goes. Always do backup copies! If you forgot, do not detach the hair, take a copy while wearing it and you can start fresh with that. Okay so now one ear done, do the other one as well. Sometimes you might have bangs poking in your eye, that problem is also easily fixed by just making the lower end of the prim a bit smaller thus raising it. Or you can move it a bit. That depends on the individual style. Scroll around to see if everything is in order at all times. A very good idea is to zoom out from your av to start with because sometimes bald spots appear from further away. In that case you might want to move the hair in that direction a tiny nudge. If that creates a new bald spot where you moved it from, the hair needs resizing (refer to the skirt section). Also watch for the link of a good hair fitting tutorial in the end of the post.

Now that we have covered the basics of prim adjusting, let's move on to the thing most people dread to do - let's adjust prim eyelashes. What annoys my perfectionism with these is that they're really not possible to fit perfectly thanks to system lashes that interfere. Okay so first off, if you still have system lashes, turn them to 0. You will still be left with these tiny lashes. So after that, wear a skin that doesn't have eyemakeup or has very little of it, you just can't see what you're doing otherwise. Now wear the lashes. So far so good, relax, take a deep breath. You're going to be fine. Ah yes, take copies before meddling on. Now zoom in. Use alt+dragging or better yet ctrl+0 because that way you can get way closer which in this case equals better view. To end that viewing mode press ctrl+9.

It's generally said that sideview should be fixed first. In most cases it's true. However, I suggest fix the sideview moving the lashes as close as you can to the system lashes and later when fixing the front view, consult the side view often to get the maximum compatibility. In this part you will need to move, edit linked parts and quite often rotate the prims. Start with one eye, usually right-handed people have more trouble with the left eye (from users point of view, not the av) so start with that, it's easier that way. But trust your guts, whichever seems harder, start with that. Now go into the edit mode and check the edit linked parts box. Using the sideview and front view, position the lashes closer, if needed use a tiny bit of rotating. Start with the lower eyelash, you can always get to the higher ones. Now most eyelashes are usually made of two prims - upper and lower. This here for the sake of covering everything, is a three prim creation. If that happens, when reaching the upper eyelashes, take the outer one first but move the inner one towards the nose so it wouldn't be on the way so much. Consult all kinds of viewing angles to see that everything is okay. Now the space you see on the upper right picture is about how far away it will usually stay. In my career of trying to perfect my lash placement, this is the best I've gotten with these particular lashes. It depends on your eye shape and prim shape so test different eyelashes to see what fits you best.

On the lower right you see a weird texture problem that if you get, can be solved by a new trick I'm going to teach you now. It's changing only one side of a prim texture. For that, find a box that says something in the lines of "select texture" and try to click on the part you need to change of modify (sometimes skirt panels might need a bit of stretching). Now you can go to the texture tab and if youre having trouble with the alignment of texture, just use the offset or repeat. Try them out to see what they do - it's a good idea to test different things to find out what happens. You might want to edit the values manually because the automated steps from the arrows are often too big. Anyway back to the problem at hand - odd black side of a prim. Select the texture (careful, very slim) and click on the texture box that shows what texture it uses. Use a transparent texture on it. If you don't have one, contact me, I might be able to send you one (don't remember the perms) or direct you to where to get it. But this problem rarely happens so you might not need to use it at all.

So okay, when you're done with one eye, do the other one. Might be a good idea to take a breather inbetween cause this can be quite frustrating. Try not to be perfect but to get it as good as you can. There's an awesome video tutorial on it by Celebrity Trollop, I'll link to that in the end.

Now when you're finished fitting your eyelashes, you might want to do a few more moves to be covered later. Now see the top pictures about what can happen when prim eyelashes and hair meet. Not too pretty huh? So this needs only a few moves to fix. Make two copies of your fitted eyelashes, rename then something like "left" and "right" and wear one of them. Now select linked parts box checked, select a prim from one eyelash. Holding down the shift key, select the rest of them too (keep in mind - one eye not two). Now just push them in your skull. Somewhere in the middle would be nice. Yeah, a gruesome idea but hey we're full of scrap prim anyway. Now once done, wear the other ones and push the other eyelash in using the same method. Now you can wear eye-covering bangs that go both ways without worrying ever again.

I will do a longer story on texturing and tinting and all that happy crap quite soon so don't worry about that for now. If you've never touched prims before, don't worry. It's not rocket science. Remember when you got to SL and you couldn't move around without looking like a drunk duck? It's the same with prims - it just needs a bit of getting used to. The key is to be bold and don't be afraid - the worst that can happen is that you will gain a bit of experience while coming out with no fixed things at first. That's if you take copies. So TAKE COPIES!!:) Okay, next week will be about either texture stuff or AOs. Haven't quite decided yet. We'll see where life takes us. Meanwhile, practice-practice-practice. And visit these two marvellous tutorials as well to get a clearer picture:

Practical Guide to Modifying Prim Hair by Caliah Lyon in the Soigne blog

How to edit Prim Lashes by Celebrity Trollop in Second Style Fashionista blog (video tutorial)

Take care and see you all next week!:)

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How to - buy a skin and change your look easily

Hello again. It's been a while - I've been insanely busy in real life so sorry for that:) Anyway, today I'm going to talk about how to buy a skin and a little about hair and eye colours since believe it or not, deciding on those is often closely related to skin.

Okay, starting with skins. I went out and got a load of demos to show you all of these in demo form since this is how you will be deciding on whether or not you like the skin enough to buy it. Skins are rather expensive usually so they're not usually impulse purchases (unless you're buying new makeups for the same skin:P). I'll start by showing you the difference between a freebie skin that you can get in any freebie place and a skin you pay for because I know many people use those freebies because they simply don't know the difference. It's not a bad thing, just something that is a natural stage in our SL lives.

As you can see, the left one is the freebie and on the right is a demo for Celestial Studios Vogue line skin that costs 1000L (quite a usual price for a good skin). The main difference is not so much about skintone (though that too), but the texture itself and shading of it. Most freebies have the problem of looking really flat which is totally okay but if you're hungry for really good looks, you should seriously consider buying a skin. So study the difference a bit and when you're ready, let's move on to how exactly could you decide on a good skin.

First of all it's good to lay down some checkpoints of what you want the skin to have. You can even write it down because the amount of different skins is mindblowing and you might get confused. Okay so for example you definately want your skin to have freckles, nice fingers and pubic hair. Now in addition to that, it's good to decide on what kind of skin you want. Skins can be roughly divided into three groups: completely hand-drawn, photosourced and a mixed version. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages, mainly dependant on your taste. So as an introduction to skins, let's start by looking at the difference between the two extremes - photosourced realistic skins and hand-drawn one.

On the picture the left and right ones are photosourced skins, the middle one is hand-drawn. I wanted to put these in one composite to show you the remarkable difference. In all cases there is no wrong and right, there is only what you like and what makes you happy. So with these too, some people want to look as realistic as possible whereas others like the painted-on feel. If you haven't surely decided on the style of skin, I suggest trying all three categories on to find the skin that gets you going "ooh". It is absolutely crucial to try on demos for several reasons. First off, to see if it goes well with your shape and second to study it closely and also get a general feel. I for one walk around in a demo in my home for a while to see how it feels.

So these are the kinds of skins you can mostly see inworld, not specifically brand-wise but in style. Without having some knowledge in the field you can not tell if they're photosourced or hand-drawn. Mostly these skins are combined technique. The selection for this style is alot bigger then for the previous two. By looking at some of these pictures I'm sure you've noticed how it changes the look. I used one shape with all of them and the look varies quite a lot so basically you can toy around with your look with skins very well. In any case, think outside the box. You do not have to get a million skins because "everyone has alot". You don't have to buy the brand either, buy the skin that clicks with you. At the end of the day, it comes down to if you feel good in your skin or not.

So now you should have some kind of an idea about how different types of skins can look and how they can alter the appearance of one shape. Now let's get to buying a good skin. First of all, take your time. Getting a skin that is perfect for you might take time. Just enjoy and get as many demos as you possibly can. Get all kinds of different skins - brands, makeups, skin tones, the whole lot. Whatever looks slightly interesting on the poster, get a demo.

Okay, now you have a load of demos. What now? Now it's time to grab a cup of tea and have your patience with you because rezzing a whole lot of skins in a row can be a pain sometimes. Relax, smile and lets see what to look in a skin.

To start, a disclaimer that I'm using again the Celestial Studios skin because it was the last I wore:P So let's take a look. Now prepare for scrolling around alot because you wish to see every detail plus zoom further away from your avatar to see how it looks from a distance. If you do not know how to move your camera, hold down alt key and press and hold your mouse. Where you press will be the focus point. It's insanely hard at first but soon you'll be a total pro of panning and it makes everything easier - I use my av only to go close enough for things to rez:P So okay, important points in skin: overall look (zoom out), face, ears, boobies, hands, stomach, legs, legpits, back, buttocks and toes.

With all of these, it's good to watch the shading. It's good to have muscular shading but too much can ruin the big picture. As you can see, this particular skin is with a milder shading, not too much of anything. It might be a bit too mild if your taste runs on the wilder side. For the fingers, watch fingernails because those say a lot about the skin. In general - it's very important to have a face that you adore BUT look at everything on the skin because you should be happy with the whole product, otherwise you might not be satisfied with your purchase later. I know I've done that mistake. So now, in list form for easier following: how to approach skins.

1. Get as many demos as you can;
2. Write down what you want to see in the perfect skin;
3. Create a demo folder in your inventory to put all this happiness in;
4. Create two subfolders in that folder: like and not so much;
5. Try the skins on with your list in hand (but be gentle in judgement the first round) and do
a rough division on them into those two folders;
6. Take on the like folder and try them all again, following the important points of a skin. 
Move the skins that you don't like so much into the not so much folder;
7. Keep rounding them down, trying them on until you go down to around 2-5 skins.

If by this point you're utterly confused and tired, put on your own skin and forget about the demos for a day. Do something else and have fun. It is possible that you have found the perfect skin midway of this process but more often the impressions need a bit of time to settle in. So fast forward into the day 2 of skin buying...

Yay, good morning, day 2:P Now you are down to ca 2-5 possible candidates. Do another round of trying on and comparing to your notes about what you want. Remove those that do not seem right. At the end of this elimination process, you should have one left that is the best for you at this moment in time. If you are stuck and don't know what to remove, you can make a list for every skin noting their pros and cons and comparing those. So suppose you get down to one but it's not IT? You can either start again or go get more demos. Anyway, ALWAYS keep an eye on the body, specially fingers and toes.

But what to do if you have absolutely no idea what a good skin should look like? For that, I suggest watching blogs and looking at pictures and comparing the overall quality. You can also use the pictures from this post, just click and open in new window and save the bigger version into your computer for easy finding. So you can see how the skin you like compares with other skins that have been approved by the general public to be of good quality. Just like the first composite with a freebie really. It does help. If still in doubt, ask your friends how you look with a demo.

Now upon buying a skin it's rather good to decide on your haircolour, specially if you're buying a skin with no mod on eyebrows. The thing is that if you go blonde, it's not good to have black brows you can not change the colour of. And that leads us to the next topic - hair colours. They can change your look quite a lot, just like in real life. Let's take a look.

Here you can see the everything is the same except the hair colour. It's not a choice you have to make until the end of time. You can easily change hair colours if you want, it's just good to know that some skins do not support our habit of playing around with colours. In any case most people usually develop their range of colours (some even just one) that they usually wear. Like for instance, I'm mostly seen in red or brown. Less in black recently because of the same eyebrow issue. It might not be important at all to you but be warned:P. I will go into more detail on hair quite soon, talking about hair in general and how to fit them.

Another thing that dramatically changes our looks is eye colour. This picture illustrates some of the differences. The selection of eyes in SL is huge to say the least. So you can be a blue-eyed fairytale girl or put on red eyes and play the devil. The colour is not the only thing that differs with eyes. The white part of eye can look very different - some have perfect whites, some grayish some even make small veins to make eyes more realistic. Again, a matter of taste. Also, the irises themselves can look very different with reflections and texturing. So experiment, eyes aren't usually wildly expensive and you can have fun while choosing:)

So I hope you got some ideas and tips to make your life a bit easier. The most important thing is to have fun, if buying a skin or whatever else becomes a tedious chore, take a break from it because you won't like anything being tired and bored.

Next tutorial coming next week and the topic will be hair and a bit of general prim fitting. Until then, have an awesome SL experience!:)

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How to - build a shape from scratch

Now I'm starting a series of how-to's. The point of the first one, how to build a shape, is not only how to make one from scratch but how also implement the same basic ideas to modifying an existing shape. I'm doing both female and male shape but if you're only looking for a male instructions, it's still useful to keep an eye on the female guide as well since I won't be repeating everything. As a remark - this was my first male shape ever so it's not mr Perfection.

Throughout this guide, I suggest opening the pictures in another window so they would be remarkably bigger plus always there to compare with the text.

Allright. So to start, open your inventory and choose create from the inventory menu. Under that, go to body parts and select shape. Name your shape and wear it. This is how you will look. With a different skin maybe but still. I'm using a Blowbop Mellie skin for this tutorial. I suggest choosing a skin you wear the most to get the maximum compatibility. Otherwise you may end up with skin not matching the shape. If you're completely new and have a shape you got when you started, dump that. Those are so hard to change into looking more decent since we're kind of stuck with what we see in the beginning. The shape you get with create is rather neutral so it's a nice start.

Okay so strip down (if you haven't already) and right click on yourself, choose appearance. We will work with that menu from now on to create your new you. 1. Body - Throughout this, stick with the shape menu from the most left. Now the first menu that opens up is body. Experiment with the sliders. This is a general bodyshape, you can sculpt your body further from other menus. No matter which menu you use currently, it DOESN'T have to be perfect immediately, you can always go back to polish things up again. Throughout the actions, ignore the numbers on sliders, go with your guts and clear logic. For body, height is something you might want to check with height detector. If you want to blend in nicely with most of SL crowd, go with around 60-75. I think 50 was something like 6 feet in real life, anyway around that.

2. Legs - Now with legs, I would actually suggest doing the torso part first but keep in mind for torso the approximate length of arms shown on this picture. This is NOT set in stone, nothing really is, but human body tends to be the way that fingertips are around midthigh. Try to avoid extremes like to knees or waist. Generally female legs are not too muscular unless the whole body is. Now while you're at legs, change the feet size to 0 since shoes in SL are somehow gotten that for a standard. Might look a bit awkward at first but 1) you'll get used to it and 2) shoes will cover them up.

3. Torso - Okay torso is definately a bit more tricky then legs. Maybe cause there's more things altered by this menu:P Okay so what to keep in mind is the basic shape of female form. The hips are ALWAYS as wide as shoulders or wider. NEVER remarkably thinner. Seriously girls, you don't want to look like male swimmers here. Also, keep it easy with the breasts - I know boobjob in SL is free but try to stay focused on looking pretty not "eek!". Now if you're creating a slim shape like I am here, don't think everything has to be in 0 in the fat department. That's a no-no. Always scroll around your avatar while making the shape to make sure if everything looks normal. With the body in general, if you're feeling completely lost, put your SL client in a window version and find a picture from the net of someone on red carpet for example - they tend to stand rather straight there. Don't try to copy them but just look at the general position of stuff.

4. Head - Now this is the basic shape of your head. If you're not too comfy with prims, I suggest just sliding everything to around 50 because most hairmakers in SL go with that as their default size for hair. If you go with 70 everything, you might cry about messing up hair later (yes, I will do a tutorial on editing stuff too but in general it's a wise idea not to go extreme with the head). Also, during this whole thing, zoom out and in and change angles constantly to see if everything is how it should be and well proportioned. You don't want to end up looking like a pile of muscles with a pea for a head. Or okay at least I think you don't.

1. Eyes - Now as we start moulding the face, it's wise to move back and forth in the menus not trying to finish off with everything on first go since the features change alot and won't match. So take it easy and have patience. It's particularily important with eyes because this changes the face a LOT. With eye spacing it's very smart to change a little and do something else while you get used to the new look and see if it needs more nudging. The starting shape has relatively far spaced eyes so you might want to move them closer together. Whatever you do, don't make yourself eyes that take up half your face. That's not a good thing. Also it's suggested to put the eyelash length on 0 for future prim eyelash use.

2. Ears - So on this picture you can see a basic sketch of ear proportions. Everyone has different ears but in general if you set your camera to front view, the highest point of ears is about the same level with eyebrows, though usually a nudge lower. You can change this by changing the ear size, there's sadly no way of moving anything just up or down except for the mouth.

3. Nose - Nose is usually the trickiest thing to do. In here you will surely need alot of camera movement to constantly check the profile view as well. In here it's best to wear your own skin because the nose tip can do wonderful disasters on skins. The general idea with noses is that the higher bridge is approximately the same width as the nose division, a bit wider but not much. If you want a longer nose, you have to use the turn tip down thing cause again it's missing the vital slider of longer and shorter. It will appear longer if you turn the nose tip down but CHECK THE PROFILE!!

4. Mouth - Okay this is again the place where you didn't just get a free voucher for looking like Angelina Jolie gone wild. Before and during the mouth adjusting, play with the chin, you can make chin shorter and narrower or wider or however you prefer, but with mouth chin is like a twin, they are closely attached. In this picture, I've already gone ahead and done the chin so you can compare it to the other pictures to see the difference. With mouth the wise advice is that it's usually positioned halfway between nose and chin and the upper lift cleft is usually around the same width as the nose division. See the pattern on the face here? Okay actually most of the body appears with a certain pattern.

After you've done the face, zoom out again and go over the body and face one more time to polish it all up. And now since we are doing the shape, it's a wise idea to also make a bald head to fit eyebrows better if you don't already have one that does so.

So to make your eyebrows you can either create a completely new hairbase or edit an existing one. If you choose to make one from scratch, again the create menu but now choose hair. If you're editing (and god knows every hairmaker adds one in their pack) just copy the original somewhere and rename-edit. If you went the first way, then you need to get rid of system hair, just put all hair sliders to 0. Anyway once you're bald, choose the eyebrow tab. All the bushy and other things append to system eyebrows, most skins do not show these at all so forget those, just edit the placement. There are three sliders that you can use to position your eyebrows - the higher-lower, arced and pointy one. So play with these until it looks good with your shape and skin. Don't make your eyebrows too arced and pointy - that will just end up looking weird, not attractive in any way. It is advisable to make one bald base like this for every different skin brand you have because skins have brows in different places and what looks good with one skin can look dreadful with another.

So here's the end result. I didn't want to stray too far from the beginning so you could follow what I'm doing. In any case, if you feel lost and unsure, what helps is practice and more practice. So what if your shapes look odd and freaky at first - they will definately look better once you get used to sliders and you can use photo reference for help. Also a good thing to refer to is Leonardo daVinci's Vitruvian man. But for the start, just try out the sliders to see what they do. Also if you're scared of messing up, save your shape often and make copies of the progressing shape. Much like layers in Photoshop really. So you can always go back to the point where everything was nice and dandy. If you're just trying to modify a shape you bought or got somewhere, copies are your friends! Definately make a copy of the original before doodling on.

So bestest of luck in creating the perfect shape for you:) Much like with drawing, everyone has a different handwriting in shapes as well and once you get the hang of it, you can easily make quite a personal shape and look different.

So on to males. Again, the same treatment of create->body part->shape. Don't get freaked out because that is how you will look at first. Yes, it's indeed a female. No worries, we will deal with the gender changing in a moment. Before we do, I again suggest reading the female part because much of that applies to males as well. There's not much difference in tactics of approach.

1. Body - To start off, lets go male now. See the picture to locate the manlyhood button. Choose that and voilá! Congratulations on becoming male. Anyway as for the body, males are generally more muscular then females. However you do not have to look like Hulk, seriously. Most girls prefer a sleeker man anyway so keep the 100s on sliders down. Anyway now with the body, just make a first-time general shaping of the body. You can always return to this tab and tinker some more later. 2. Head - As with females, try to keep the head sizes around 50 to have way less problems with fitting prim hair than with some extreme sizes. As another plus, 50 usually keeps the head pretty much proportioned to the body. In any case, return to here too later if the head looks too small or too big later. And move your camera around alot to see things closer and further away to keep an eye on proportions.

3. Torso - The basic shape of male figure is, as you can see, wider in the shoulders. I am yet to see a man with wide hips. So keep that in mind. But also we girls like it when our men fit in from the doorway so try to have a sane approach to the width of your shoulders. Now hopping ahead for a moment to legs - men generally have more muscles on legs then arms so keep that in mind.

4. Legs - You probably want a bit longer legs then the default gives you so zoom out and try to have straight frontal view to have a correct estimate on the proportions. As for the feet size, I can not give you a single answer on that since male shoes in SL seem to lack a standard. Anyway my impression is that it's good to go with 0 in the end. Like 20, 30 or 40. About the butt - men do not have big butts. And the male pride - it's missing, I know. However keep the sliders in that part modest too. If needed, wear pants and see the profile. Go look yourself in the mirror and don't go bigger than that. In fact, it's better to go with less. We don't look at your little fellow in SL cause we all know it's not there but in your backpack somewhere.

1. Chin - So generally male jaw shape is not so much pointy but more like square. But then again, try to avoid the "I have a box implant in my chin" thing. Handle with care:P 2. Ears - Okay in here, the same logic applies as it did with female ears. It's only a guideline, like some kind of a marker which to follow so you wouldn't end up having tiny ears on your shoulders (luckily that's not even possible). 3. Nose - Go back and read the female section on noses. If you're too lazy - higher bridge is around the same width as nose division. Be careful with the nose tip and certainly check your profile often.

4. Mouth - Quick guide again in case you don't bother to read the female part - mouth is usually positioned about halfway between nose and chin. Upper lip cleft is about the same width with nose division (yeehaa for logic and patterns - me like) and men are not on Botox so easy on the sliders, cowboys.

Now go over the body and then face once more, check your proportions, polish here and there and you're done. I do suggest making yourself a bald base to form eyebrows as well (see female guide for that - same tactics). Also if you're not sure what you're doing - practice, copies, photoreference!

This is how mine looks in the end - again I didn't stray too far from the default for the ease of following the changes. In any case, the main thing is to copy, practice and keep it real. We do actually laugh at those guys with bloody huge shoulders and teeny-weeny waist. So shape yourself, you will get better, everything won't be dandy at the first try and doesn't even have to be:)

So good luck girls and boys in becoming unique and special, whether you're small or tall, thin or fuller, girl or boy. 90% of making a good shape is actually just stripping down and messing around with it - here it doesn't require technical skills or even artistic sense. Practice, practice, practice:) If you have more questions or if I missed something (huge post you know), feel free to comment or IM me:)

Next tutorial coming soon and you can also suggest topics that you would like covered:)

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