047: Colt Emerald sits on my deck

As I mentioned the other day in an interview, I'm just learning how to play Greedy. I dropped into the Greedy table at 3Bears and had a game with an experienced player, Colt Emerald -- who had some bad luck this afternoon. Instead of a table dance, I decided to settle for an interview and Colt graciously agreed!

[14:27] Rusty Redfield: *click* And we're on.  I'm here today with Colt Emerald, and I have to say this is the first time I've ever won an interview as part of a Greedy game ROFL

[14:27] Rusty Redfield: Welcome Colt!

[14:27] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): musclehugs rusty

[14:27] Rusty Redfield: right back atcha buddy

[14:28] Rusty Redfield: I understand you haven't seen my blog, but it's nothing to worry about -- no questions you'll have trouble answering

[14:28] Rusty Redfield: six easy questions and then the bonus round ROFL

[14:28] Rusty Redfield: so, first --

[14:28] Rusty Redfield: 1. Why do you stay in Second Life?  What keeps you here?

[14:29] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): The friendships, the experiences, the building, the beauty,,and yes the musclehugs and yes..the closeness u build with others..thats the build that never gets destroyed

[14:29] Rusty Redfield: oh, are you a builder?

[14:29] Rusty Redfield: definitely a skill I do not have

[14:30] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): always there to help out if a sim or a friend needs a hand..from houses to sex toys to harnesses and other things to make a guy look hot

[14:30] Rusty Redfield: excellent!

[14:30] Rusty Redfield: I can see you take your own advice about looking hot <grin>

[14:31] Rusty Redfield: is that a l'Uomo body?

[14:31] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): well the harness and arm bands and nipple rings are mine..clothing i dont do..i get cox stuff cause its hot

[14:31] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): oh yeah a zax luomo with a shape they made years ago cant find anymore

[14:31] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): zac

[14:31] Rusty Redfield: ahh okay

[14:32] Rusty Redfield: and a lot of people agree with your about the building closeness being important here

[14:32] Rusty Redfield: me included

[14:32] Rusty Redfield: which segues nicely into the next question --

[14:32] Rusty Redfield: 2. What are the qualities that attract you to people in Second Life?

[14:33] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): if they are drama free and honest..no not shady..well always just get along..lot of people on secondlife i am grateful to call friends

[14:33] Rusty Redfield: well put

[14:34] Rusty Redfield: now, I was going to ask you about the harnesses, but I knew already that question #3 would come into it --

[14:34] Rusty Redfield: feel free to do any kind of self-promotion you want, that's why I ask the question

[14:34] Rusty Redfield: 3. What are you working on, as a form of artistic expression or in order to earn money, or both?

[14:35] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): for fun...to create something no one else has..have a few friends i just build them something special then they are the only ones..its just a cool expression..act of love..of closeness

[14:36] Rusty Redfield: so there's no store where you can buy the harnesses?

[14:36] Rusty Redfield: that DOES make them special to the owners I"m sure

[14:36] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): nope not yet..i do emerald creations..where i make things..just building inventory..making stuff along the way...yeah i tell em..nope wont make it for another..makes them special and hot

[14:37] Rusty Redfield: will this be a store in the future, or on marketplace, or both?

[14:37] Rusty Redfield: "I don't know yet" is also a good answer LOL

[14:38] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): well i have sex toys on marketplace..eventually if might turn to a store....its just a fun break from rl work and the gym..something thats mine...when i see men wearing my stuff its like damn right..you are hot and special enjoy

[14:39] Rusty Redfield: okay -- so I'll throw in a link to Emerald Creations before I post this then, if that's how to find the stuff

[14:40] Rusty Redfield: BTW, I'm always amazed at how many guyswho wear muscular bodies here are gym-goers in RL

[14:40] Rusty Redfield: I used to think guys came here to get muscles they don't have in RL, but -- seems like the other way around

[14:41] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): colt looks similiar to me in real life minus the ear rings...230 pounds of muscle buzz cut baby blue eyes and work out 5-7 times a week..and yes im single in rl

[14:41] Rusty Redfield: wow! What part of the world might someone find those 230 pounds?

[14:42] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): the boring midwest rusty..should be 250 pounds of muscle by the end of the year

[14:42] Rusty Redfield: if we're going to advertise might as well go all the way LOL

[14:42] Rusty Redfield: <grin> I also have a theory that guys who come from boring places, like you and me, have more time ot work out

[14:43] Rusty Redfield: okay! next question ...

[14:43] Rusty Redfield: 4. If you could give advice to your earlier self in the first month that you spent in Second Life, what would you say?

[14:44] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): younger colt heres some drama free spray..use it often it repels unwanted drama..and here is some troll away cologne for the players that will waste your time..have fun..build..enjoy..thats what sl is for

[14:45] Rusty Redfield: <belly laugh> Troll Away Cologne, I think I could sell a case or two of THAT! ROFL

[14:45] Rusty Redfield: but yes, I am always amazed at how many people come here to NOT have fun

[14:45] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): true...

[14:46] Rusty Redfield: I think I may have anticipated the answer to the next question, but ...

[14:46] Rusty Redfield: 5. What do you like most about the way that your avatar looks?

[14:46] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): looks hot...not uppity..honest...and love the clothes i find from stan cox

[14:47] Rusty Redfield: that's what you were saying earlier, about Cox -- I have some of their stuff too. Very sexy

[14:47] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): i love his new sim cox resort..its cool

[14:47] Rusty Redfield: I'll throw in a Marketplace link too -- (Cox on Marketplace is here)

[14:48] Rusty Redfield: damn, you know, it's like you're reading my mind, my next question --

[14:48] Rusty Redfield: 6. What’s your favourite place to spend time in Second Life?

[14:49] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): there are four places i spend my time..3 bears, cox resort, suedland and rustic winds

[14:49] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): depends on what im in the mood for

[14:49] Rusty Redfield: gotcha.  Do you have a house anywhere?

[14:50] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): have a house on 3 bears..always someone to play greedy with..have a house on suedland a beachhouse i built and have a house at rustic winds..for relaxation

[14:50] Rusty Redfield: wow!

[14:50] Rusty Redfield: three, that's more than anyone I've ever met

[14:50] Rusty Redfield: I meet quite a few people who don't bother

[14:50] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): well i build...so when one sim is laggy i goto another house

[14:51] Rusty Redfield: <grin> when one sim is laggy, I go to bed LOL

[14:51] Rusty Redfield: well, that's all my usual questions, but I always offer people the chance to say anything they want

[14:51] Rusty Redfield: philosophy, instructions, yelling and screaming -- up to you -- any questions I should have asked you?

[14:52] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): ask another question of your choosing whatever you wanna know..open book

[14:52] Rusty Redfield: well, I hope I have a readership among newbies, so if you wanted to say anything to them, that would be great

[14:53] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): newbies...use your drama free spray..if you need help making your av hot look me up and realize this is a fun game..give it a chance..musclehugs

[14:54] Rusty Redfield: Great stuff! that's all I've got -- thanks again for playing along and coming for an interview

[14:54] COLT EMERALD (colt.emerald): musclehugs rusty..you have a good one man..woof

[14:54] Rusty Redfield: let me just turn off this recorder here *click*

Colt's a good sport, lots of fun, and very knowledgeable about working out -- that's something else you can ask him questions about if you run into him, we had a good chat after the interview about stuff like external obliques ... thanks again Colt!

033: Second Second Life: No freaking out required

Well, the big news on Friday afternoon from Linden Labs was that they're working on a new "next generation virtual world". I don't think anyone should be surprised at that; it's their business. The part of the press release that everyone is freaking out over is -- "[W]e don't want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start."

Judging by reaction in the blogosphere, and a couple of random comments I heard last night while I was out shopping, that announcement means that Second Life will be shutting down in about 20 minutes, and every cent you've ever spent on stuff in SL is now completely wasted, and, and, and -- the sky is falling.

For crying out loud, RELAX.

My friend Eddi Haskell has summed it up very well at his blog, found here -- and his post is called "Much Ado About Nothing", which is perfect. He makes four very good points that you really should read for yourself. But what it boils down to for me is, SL technology is open source and Linden Labs is still making money by running SL -- so I don't think SL is going anywhere soon. If Linden Labs sells it off, someone will pick it up (and personally, I'm thinking that Facebook has pretty deep pockets right now, and it's kind of a natural fit with their business model). Firestorm will continue to support a viewer as a third-party provider, I think.

And honestly, did you think Second Life was going to last forever?  This is, to me, just like the transition that I've lived through between VHS and DVD. Yes, I had to replace movies that I owned in VHS format, but the DVD format is a lot better and easier to use. I'm betting that once Linden Labs approaches the question of creating a virtual world with today's technology, with the extraordinary graphics that we've all seen in other games, and, yes, even with the potential addition of Oculus Rift to the mix, we will be happy puppies. The technological leap might cost us all time and money, but I'm thinking that it will be like the early days of SL all over again -- covers of magazines will bring thousands of newbies into Second Second Life, as you might call it, and the experience that we've all gained in our years in SL will pay off big-time in SSL. We'll all be able to start consulting services teaching people about the equivalent of Slink feet and l'Uomo mesh bodies and custom AOs, because we've already mastered the art of surfing the technology waves that pass through SL every so often.

So look on the bright side! Frankly, although I'm sure we'll be able to play in SL for a long, long time, I will probably be enthusiastic about leaving it behind and moving to SSL. We'll be getting a better environment in which to do the same things we like to do. And we'll be the only people who have experience at using that kind of environment. I can't say I'll be delighted if I have to throw away a lot of virtual clothes and furniture, etc., but I wasn't happy about throwing away a lot of VHS tapes either. It's a part of life. And I can't wait to see what they come up with!

018: Setting l'Uomo aside for a while

It's been on my mind for a while, and now I've done it. I've taken my l'Uomo mesh body off and I'm going to have some fun in SL without it for a while. (And, as you may have noticed, I've gone back to being the redhead as which Rusty started life.)

How did this all come about? Well ... kind of a long story. But it occurred to me that telling the story would be potentially useful for (a) other people trying to make a decision to go with any kind of mesh body or not, and (b) designers who are considering moving into the l'Uomo market. And that's because this started for me with a long conversation with Lion Valentino.

[caption id="attachment_146" align="alignnone" width="300"] Lion Valentino[/caption]

Mr. Valentino is a long-time SL resident and proprietor of Jungle Wear, a line of clothing I've been wearing for years. His aesthetic is for men who want to look sexy without necessarily looking skanky (not that there's anything wrong with skanky, mind you). A few years ago, he was the only designer I could find who was providing realistic body hair for a guy who wanted to look like he actually HAD body hair. And so I've been making the occasional trip to Jungle Wear over the years because Lion seems to provide clothes that I want to wear.

What brought me to his main store (seen behind him in the photograph; it's a huge layout with many, many nooks and crannies) lately was an announcement in the l'Uomo group that Jungle Wear was opening up a section for the l'Uomo man. And when I popped in to see what was going on, Lion himself was there. And he told me that he'd decided to go with the new HUD system for applying l'Uomo clothes. Or, rather, you buy the HUD, the HUD contains the textures for the clothes, and you rez the layer and ... well, it's all quite complicated. There are many advantages to it, including that the clothes automatically update, and if you want to make your own clothing the pieces are now modifiable.

Now, Lion had kindly provided a helpful and friendly assistant, Gare Claven, to help customers through the process of how to actually put the clothes on. And so I had a conversation with Lion, and a conversation with Gare, and I saved all the conversations to a word processing file. I thought that what I would do is study the instructions off-line, then come in and do a blog post as a how-to for people who were having trouble adjusting to the new system -- I learned that the inventor of l'Uomo, Miro Collas at Animations Rising, had made the same decision as Lion, to henceforth only sell clothes that had the applier.

So I bought a couple of excellent pieces of clothing, I saved the conversations offline, and I determined that I was going to knuckle down to my blog post. And I kept putting it off, and putting it off ... "It's going to take a while to learn this," I thought, "and I don't have enough time to devote to really grasp it today ... maybe tomorrow." And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow never came, and the documents and pictures have been sitting on my desktop for two weeks staring at me.

I've learned over the years that when I can't find the enthusiasm to do something like this, when I have a clear objective in mind and the tools I need on hand -- it means something in my subconscious is blocking me. And when I finally admitted I had an issue, it was easy to figure out what it was. Essentially, I just didn't want to move a step further into committing myself to l'Uomo. Even though I had been told that the new applier would fix the "holes in the shoulders" problem that's been driving me crazy ever since I bought my l'Uomo mesh -- it was a workaround step that I just couldn't bring myself to take.

I found myself looking longingly at "ordinary" clothes. Clothes that you could just buy, in a shop or on Marketplace, and you put them on and they fit. I was reminded of the old days when I used to go shopping with friends and buy things and be able to wear them, without worrying about holes in the shoulders and being restricted to only a few shops out of all the thousands in SL. (I have to admit, my recollections were coloured with nostalgia ... there are still problems with regular clothes. But I was in the middle of an emotional reaction and not a logical one.)

And all of a sudden last night, I just thought, "The hell with it." And I signed into SL and went back to a stored non-l'Uomo shape from more than a year ago and thought, "Damn it, while I'm changing everything, I'm going back to being a redhead too." With the results you see. I tinkered with the shape for a while, mostly to get the face a little bit more in line with what I've been telling residents about how to make your face distinctive and realistic. (Can you see where I gave people a facial feature to look at that was a bit skewed from perfection?)



I have to say that I've really, REALLY enjoyed my time wearing my l'Uomo mesh body. I am embarrassed to say that I have said on numerous occasions that I would never go back ... I very much enjoy the sense of being 7'8" and 280# of solid muscle, and it was good for my ego in that a lot of people were attracted to that body. But it was keeping me from enjoying Second Life in the way that almost everybody else does, for the reasons that I got into SL in the first place. I like getting dressed up, I like having fun with other people, I like creating looks and tinkering with clothes and shapes. Nothing was stopping me from exploring SL and having fun with other people, so the restrictions of l'Uomo didn't chafe for a long while (it's hard to be galled by the limitations of your shape when everyone around you is telling you how hot and sexy you look). If there's anyone reading this who is considering getting a l'Uomo mesh body, I would even still recommend it. It's a great experience.

And I have to say that Lion Valentino and Miro Collas are trying very hard to give SL something that the players need. Right now, I think that the l'Uomo mesh body is a kind of intermediate step to something that players in Second Life want to do, and they found a way to make it possible. What I think is that, eventually, every player will be able to set his/her body to a much, much wider range of sizes and shapes than is currently available, without the intermediate step of having to wear a body like a suit of ill-fitting clothes. And then everyone will be able to go into a store and buy a sweater and have it fit. It's a little discouraging, but I think that Linden Labs will eventually devote the resources to make it possible, in order to keep moulding Second Life into an experience that people will continue to want to have.

Even though I'm sad to be setting aside my l'Uomo body, today I'm feeling very good about going back to my "regular" shape. And I think it was the right thing to do because, immediately I made the decision last night, I wanted to get started on a blog post. So, folks, bear with me while I make the adjustment. I'm feeling like it's a time to make changes in how I do things in Second Life, so I'll also probably be re-working my house and furniture completely in the next little while. Because I no longer have to contribute to the fiction that I work out about three hours a day.

And I still have my l'Uomo body on file and it's easy to take it out to play if I want to!

Your comments are welcome; I'd especially like to hear from anyone who's made a decision like this.

 

 

015: Notes on shape (Part 2: face and head)

This is the second post in a series. The first, dealing with affecting the shape of your SL avatar, is found here. But the face is the mirror of the soul, and it's where you should put the most work in; if you think of your own experience, when you zoom in on someone's av, what you usually look at is the face, isn't it? The face is the area where people focus their attention, and it pays off if you focus your attention at learning how to master the sliders. The most realistic avatars are the ones that get the most attention, in SL, and I have a few areas that I've learned over the years that people will benefit from looking at.



First, though, I want to share a tip that will possibly be of interest to all of you in this context, and I'll share how I learned it. Years ago, I read an anecdote in something like TV Guide about how Vanna White got her job. (The perennially lovely Ms. White is shown above.) Apparently Merv Griffin was re-casting Wheel of Fortune after a couple of less-than-perfect experiences, and was offered a series of women from whom to select for the job of evening-gown-clad letter-turner. Merv's finger stabbed down on Vanna's picture.  "Her." Why? someone asked? "Because her head is too big for her body, and that makes people look at her on television." Look at the picture carefully; you may agree.

Personally, I think that a large percentage of the avs I see in Second Life have heads that are too small -- and especially too small for the bodies they've selected. In part 1 of this essay, I suggested that  if you were going to have, say, an ectomorphic body, you should have the matching head shape (see that part for more details). So if you're designing a long slender body, have a long head. If you're designing an average body, have a round or triangular head. And if you're designing a muscular body, have a square head. Now, I venture to say that gay men who are designing avs in Second Life have one of two things in mind -- they either want to be an ectomorph, for which read slender twink, or an endomorph, for which read Tom of Finland drawing. Those are polar opposites, to be sure, but they share one characteristic; they are extreme. And if you're doing an extreme body, you need to have an extreme head to go with it. Whatever shape that head happens to need to be, whether long, round, or square, is just fine. What it should also be, though, is with "Head Size" set at about the 90 point. Yes, you run a little bit of risk of looking like an animated bobblehead, especially if you happen to have a slender neck. But given what I'll call the "Vanna rule", your head should be too big for your body because people are essentially looking at you "on television". And believe me, Merv knew what he was talking about.

This will have the not entirely unexpected side effect of making most of your hair too small, so you will have to hope that you purchased wisely and haven't impulsively deleted the sizing menu. In fact I have my head size at 90-ish, and routinely add 15% to the size of any new hair before I even bother fitting it. Because, yes, you will have to fit it, and adjust it to the massive dome that is your new large head. But the extra work will be worthwhile because it will make people look at you a lot more.

And at this point, I'd like to pause to thank my fellow blogger -- hell, blogging role model, the man posts good stuff so regularly it's embarrassing to the rest of us, and has done so for years -- Eddi Haskell. Twice. I can't find a reference to which to link, but my belief is that he has endorsed the idea of a larger head size himself; he may have put his point of view differently, though, so let's just say the two of us are talking about the same kind of thing. Make your heads bigger, guys. (The second most common fault I see is arms that are too short.) The other reason I have to thank Eddi is that today he posted a lot of nice pictures of a real-life hot guy, British rugger bugger (I wish) and fitness model Stuart Reordan.

[caption id="attachment_124" align="alignnone" width="199"] Stuart Reordan[/caption]

Now, let's just take a moment to thank a munificent providence that there is such a human being in this world that has a face like that, am I right? The man is one in a billion. That's just an extraordinary combination of genetics and environment that produced that particular heap of bones and muscles, and I for one am grateful for it.

So let's start from the mutual assumption that Stuart Reordan has a strikingly handsome face, bone structure, eye colour, hair, skin tone, beard, yada yada yada. As it happens, strikingly handsome faces are what Second Life is specialized to turn out in large numbers and real life not so much. If you want to build a SL av that looks kind of like Stuart Reordan, it's relatively easy because the sliders are there to do things like precisely hollow out cheeks or square off a jaw. In fact, there are potentially three or four components in Second Life to reproducing what we see here; skin is primary, but things like added facial hair and ears would also go a long way to verisimilitude. Underneath it all, though, you need a shape, and that's what you need to learn how to affect. I hasten to add that there are many SL designers who will sell you a decent shape, and one or two who will actually sell you a superb one. So if you're looking for the easy way to accomplish the ideal of a strikingly handsome avatar, you can do it by merely purchasing it, either as a pre-set group of sliders or a mesh body like my l'Uomo one. If you want to learn how to do it yourself, read on.

So put your av on a pose stand and zoom in, and crank up the sliders to change your face structure. You should have in front of you a couple of photographs of, say, Stuart Reordan that will be sufficient to try to copy his bone structure, much like I advised you to have photos of a body structure to copy. The easiest way to seem real is to copy real. Now, I trust you will recognize that Stuart Reordan has a head that is slightly larger than average; the Vanna theory bearing itself out. Now separate out the parts that will be affected by the shape sliders. So ignore the eye colour, the eyebrows, the stubble, the skin tone -- and focus on the bone structure. One way to look at it is to mathematically divide the face into six equal zones, then notice how one part is larger than another. In Stuart, his forehead is a little oversized. He compensates for this visually by having a very wide jaw and a strong chin; the wide jaw makes the face look more rectangular and the head size actually begins to slope outwards just above the ears (honestly, the man won the genetic lottery in every way). His eyes are quite far apart. His cheekbones are so high that in a straight-on shot like this, they actually deform his sideburns in a very SL way; a little zig just above the earlobe. His nose is straight and relatively unnoticeable, and his lips are thin. And -- an important point -- his ears are about 25% too big for his head.

So the first general principle I have to offer here is, "In SL, perfection is easy, and it's imperfection that gets noticed." The second and linked principle is that "Everybody, no matter how beautiful, has something wrong with their face. Sometimes that imperfection is what makes the face memorable."

There are lots of shapes available that will give you a face that the designers might call "classically handsome" and I would call "another SL Ken doll". In fact, I'll give you a way to get a "classically handsome" face -- go into your face shape menus and very carefully set every value to 50. It's a basic handsome face that won't offend anyone and won't really interest anyone either. There is something you can do, though, that goes back to advice I've mentioned before; if you're trying to create a look, think of a way to describe it in a phrase, and you'll be closer to achieving it. The 50-slider face only says "corporate drone". You can make a truly original face by coming to a careful balance of the sliders; deform one part, like the forehead size, and then see if you can balance it out by adjusting the rest of the face. Alternatively, you can work by trying to match a photograph of someone like Stuart Reordan. You won't get an exact match -- skin has a lot to add to this, as would a carefully chosen set of facial hair. But you can match the height of the cheekbones and the width of the jaw and their relationship.

And then the key point that I've learned over the years is -- just like Stuart Reordan has slightly large ears, you need to introduce a single flaw into your av's facial structure. Ears are a really good way of doing that; large, small, jutting, flat. Eyes that are too close together make you look slightly hard and untrustworthy; too far apart make you look mental! Making the character's lips a little too large suggests mixed Negroid ancestry, tilting the eyes adds a hint of Asian ancestry. One subtle one that's available is skewing the nose to the right or left, but I'm not clear whether this actually is interesting or merely a bit creepy. You can make the jaw a bit too wide, the neck a bit too thick, even these days the hairline a bit too receding. The point is that you need to have one thing that makes the viewer look at your face until they are much more likely to accept the kind of person that you're telling them you are. Subconsciously, people think something like "Oh, he'd be really handsome if only it wasn't for the scar in his eyebrow." whereas it's the scar in the eyebrow that makes you look 100% more real to their subconscious eye.



It's also very useful to get photographs of the same person from a number of different angles. Notice how this photograph is canted a bit so that it shows how the ear inserts into the back of the jaw, and the general neck size, and roughly how bulbous the nose is? You should be looking at your av from a 360-degree perspective, to be sure, but it doesn't hurt to have a couple of different takes on the relative sizes of each facial part.

So first make a perfect face, and then pick a trait by which people will remember your face. "The guy with the scar in his eyebrow," "The guy with the cleft chin," etc. Use the same method I told you about in part I, whereby you consecutively name each successive "save" by VER 01, VER 02, etc. Save before you start, have some fun with it, but if you spend the time to figure out the relationship between the sliders and what you see on the screen, and then introduce a single memorable fault, you will be halfway to being truly memorable.

 

 

014: Notes on shape (Part 1: body and proportions)

As I've said a couple of times, and now have a post-it saying so above my desk <grin> I need to get on with completing the articles that were suggested by an article by Angelik Lavecchia called "10 Steps to Impress" in a new digital magazine called Manshots (click on the title to read it).  All that's left is the largest topics, and I think the best place to start is with an absolutely crucial one: shape.

If you think back to your first days in Second Life, I'm betting that "shape" was the most incomprehensible idea that you had to cope with. I know that many people don't get the hang of clothes, hair, and AOs before their first 30 days are up, and shape -- well, that's something we all approached with great trepidation. When you invoke the menu, all of a sudden your av acts like it's posing for the central figure in da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" and you're presented with a whole bunch of menus and, OMG, you can be taller and shorter and have bigger pecs and longer legs and and and ... instant overchoice. I've talked to a couple of guys who said after two hours of fiddling around, they went out and bought a nice shape and stuck with it forever.  Shape is the kind of thing that we tend to do once and then never touch again.

But I started in SL quite a few years ago, when there weren't quite as many worthwhile ways of affecting your av's shape, and I was always too stingy to buy a shape when all the tools were there to do my own. (I have to say, this is about the only area of SL that I feel this way about; I probably would have trouble making any prim more complicated than a box.) And over the years, as new tools and sliders became available, I have tweaked and fiddled and played with the sliders a tich here and a tich there, and I'm fairly confident that I can put you in a position where you can affect your own shape and be happy with the results.

Now, if you're planning on purchasing a mesh body like l'Uomo, or you already have one, quite a few of these hints will be useless -- just skim through this and move to the post about how to build your face, which I'll provide in the near future.

So here are some basic hints and a couple of very important insights that I've learned over the years. First, the basics.



Just like the last post about having a philosophy that underlies what you're doing -- start by thinking, okay, what kind of person do I want to look like? The easiest way to accomplish this is to have a full-length photograph of someone wearing as little clothing as possible, much like the handsome gentleman in the green underwear immediately above. What you're looking for, though, is not his beautiful eight-pack or his gorgeous tan -- those, you get with the right skin. What you're looking for is the ability to see his proportions -- the bone structure not only of his face but his body. You're going to use this as a model.

And then that photograph also has to make you think of the kind of person that you want to look like. If you are interested in looking like a slender twink, Mr. Green Shorts is not for you; he's too well-built and too old. If your tastes, like mine, run to the l'Uomo type of pro bodybuilder, this guy is a little too slender. And if you're interested in looking like an "average" guy, Mr. Green Shorts has spent too much time at the gym and is too young, but he does have the right legs.

The good thing is, there is one thing that the Internet is very, VERY good at, and that is showing you pictures of naked people of every conceivable size and description. Some of them are beyond the capacity of the ordinary set of sliders, so if you want to look like, say, a pro bodybuilder or a Sumo wrestler or a little person, you may have to get professional help. But it will be a lot of fun looking at pictures of naked guys until you find one where you can see most or all of his body and that you say, "Oh, THAT's the guy I want to look like."



Here's a helpful hint. There are three basic body types for men: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph.

• Ectomorphic: characterized by long and thin muscles/limbs and low fat storage; usually referred to as slim. Ectomorphs are predisposed to neither store fat nor build muscle.


• Mesomorphic: characterized by medium bones, solid torso, low fat levels and a narrow waist; usually referred to as muscular. Mesomorphs are predisposed to build muscle but not store fat.


• Endomorphic: characterized by increased fat storage, a wide waist and shoulders and a large bone structure, usually referred to as fat, or chunky. Endomorphs are predisposed to store fat.

[caption id="attachment_113" align="alignnone" width="198"] Frank Zane[/caption]

Mr. Green Shorts is a mesomorph, but you don't have to look at his entire bone structure to be able to tell. The helpful hint is, when you're looking at photo, you can tell by the circumference of the wrist (as a rule of thumb). The  thinner the wrist bone, the closer to ectomorphic the man will be. Mr. Green Shorts has fairly thin wrists for a mesomorph, so he's probably altered his basic body composition with diet and exercise. It can be done; although most pro bodybuilders are endomorphs or mesomorphs, there are a couple of ectomorphs, most notably Frank Zane. Check out his wrist bones in the  photo. The nice thing about Second Life is that you can merely decide you want to be a muscular ectomorph and go for it.

Once you know what body type you want to be, make sure all the pieces fit. You shouldn't have an ectomorph's arms and an endomorph's waist; it just looks weird. Keep to one style of body and you'll look more realistic.

Each body type tends -- it's not an absolute relationship, but a tendency -- to have a certain shape of face and head. The key is to put the right kind of head on your body. Check out the drawing above. Ectomorphs have long thin faces, mesomorphs have average sized roundish faces, and endomorphs have blocky large square faces. Keep that relationship in mind and you can't go far wrong.

One important hint: If you intend to be a non-white-Caucasian av, start with a picture of someone who is the race that you want to be. Different races have naturally different body proportions; the differences are slight, but real.

Now that you have an idea what you want to look like, get your photo in front of you and put your av on a posing stand. (This is so you can see your feet without having them sink into the floor.) Then call up the menu and get to work.

If you've purchased a shape and it's no mod, you're going to have to replace it with a shape from the library in your inventory that you can modify. Don't worry about what you look like to start; that will definitely change.  The first thing you do is save that shape with today's date and a name, and probably as the first characters something like VER 01. This is because you're going to go through a LOT of versions of this shape and you want to be able to locate specific ones in your inventory easily, so at the very beginning of the name, put the version number.

Start with the basics; height, torso length, arms and legs. Leave the head and face for last, since it will take the longest. What you're trying for is relationships. For instance, see where Mr. Zane's knuckles touch his upper thigh? You need to balance that out when you're tinkering with the leg length and the arm length and the torso length, so that your knuckles end up there in the finished product. That's why you need a good photograph, so you can see all those relationships.

[caption id="attachment_116" align="alignnone" width="166"] Zac Efron (ectomorph type)[/caption]

Remember -- save your shape, giving it a new version number each time, and save OFTEN. Nothing is more frustrating than losing half-an-hour's painstaking work on getting something juuuuuuuust right and then having a power failure. And you know the way the universe works; it always goes wrong just at the crucial time. This also means that you can go back to a previous save if you find you don't like what you did with a body part after all.

There's a tendency for guys who are playing with their shape for the first time to bump up the pecs and biceps to 100, fool with the thighs and butt, and call it a day. And connoisseurs of the male shape will know what you did, believe me. This is the equivalent in real life of having a 54" chest and a 27" waist, and you'll stand out in SL in the same way you would in RL, not necessarily in a good way. Your basic shape, the one you get with most avs the day you enter SL, is more or less 50/50/50 -- everything is pretty much average. Making small changes is better; you can wear the shape for a couple of days and see if you need to tweak it again. One good ratio is 75/25. 50/50 shapes are for average looks, 100/0 shapes are for extraordinary looks, but 75/25 is a good balance if you want to look like you go to the gym, but perhaps not three hours daily.

Also worth noting is that, if you have a very dramatic body, it limits you in the kind of "looks" you can pull off. Slender ectomorphic twinks or huge bodybuilders tend to not look good in a business suit, and you might even be limited in the specific clothes you can wear. These days, with mesh clothes, it's less of a problem, but it can still be an issue. If you have an average mesomorphic body, you can wear anything and buy it off the rack without worrying too much.

In the next post, I'll tell you how to approach doing the really hard work; creating a face and head shape that works for you. But it can be so much fun getting into the fine details of the sliders that you might want to get started now. And be warned; in a future post, I'll talk about how you will want to make small changes to your shape once you find a skin that suits you; you'll want to show off your skin to its best advantage, so if it's drawn with long biceps, you'll want to have long biceps. So don't think this is a once-only process. It's worth taking a little time now to tweak your shape, though, so that you can get used to how the sliders work.

So at this stage, find a picture of a body you like, play around with the sliders, save your work early and often, and have some fun with it. Below is a picture of the three body types with famous bodybuilders, so you can see what a good build looks like with each body type. Check out, for instance, the trapezoidus muscle (the one between the neck and the shoulder at the top of the body). See how different it is between Jay Cutler on the left and Frank Zane on the right? You can figure out the relationships between body parts by looking at these pictures, or just trying to approximate a photo of a body you like. Enjoy yourself; if you've saved, you can't go wrong.



 

 

 

012: Nice outfit, Fenton! (Fenton.Luik)

Aqua on a Saturday night is always crowded and fun, especially when Lex Solari-Holland is DJing and his partner Christian Holland-Solari is hosting -- I think I heard Christian say there were 35 guys on the dance floor and I can believe it. Popular events like that are always laggy, and I was in the middle of about six conversations at once with friends, but when I spotted Fenton (Fenton.Luik) in a corner of the dance floor with his partner DannyA (DannyAyers) I figured I had my next "Nice outfit!" post.



It's not just that he's wearing a great white T-shirt from Redgrave -- which made me envious and pissed off at the same time, because Redgrave doesn't make clothes that fit l'Uomo bodies.  Part of it has to do with the fact that I wasted some money today buying myself a white T-shirt that doesn't fit worth a damn -- the usual holes in the rear shoulders and a prim attachment at the bottom that doesn't even line up with the top layer.  Aaaarrrgh.  Isn't that a great Redgrave T-shirt, though?  It looks like something that a guy would wear in RL, maybe somebody with a nice muscular body who doesn't feel compelled to wear Lycra or Spandex and let everyone know every ounce of his bulking progress at the gym. Instead, this is shaped like it's on a man's natural body. I even took a photo from the back to show that the T-shirt is carefully shaped to look like there's a natural waistband of a pair of jeans underneath it.  The sleeves of the T-shirt end right where they should to show an armband tattoo right where men actually have them. And the neckline is exactly the shape it would be if a thick cotton T-shirt had been washed a couple of times.  Emilia Redgrave is a really, really good designer, isn't she?



It was the T-shirt that interested me, but then I liked the whole look that went with it. I took a shot of Fenton's lower half just so you could see that the whole outfit goes together to create a consistent look. He looks -- normal. No fuss, no jewelry, simple haircut, and even an ordinary pair of everyday white trainers. Understated, natural, very masculine, and the whole outfit works together to give the viewer a picture of a guy who has the good sense to let his natural good looks be discovered by the passer-by's eye rather than calling attention to them.

Don't get me wrong. His partner DannyA (in the cut-off T-shirt that says "Baiter" on the front) is also a handsome guy with a consistent look who looks like he dressed to go out to the club; a little more put together, a little more stylish, and showing a bit more six-pack. And, since he's in a club filled with gay men, that makes perfect sense; he's dressed for where he is, which is always appropriate. Fenton looks like he might have been running a little late and didn't have time to go home and change after the gym, or a day of errands, or something ordinary like walking the dog. I like that idea a lot, because it's the look of someone who doesn't dress for where they're going, they dress for who they are. It's a philosophy that can take you anywhere, in either RL or SL. Maybe it's just that I always tend to assume that men who are dressed simply and well have a confident personality, and confidence is always attractive. Fenton turned out to be a nice, confident, and friendly guy, just as you'd expect; he looks like what he is.  And that always looks good.

Nice outfit, Fenton!



 

 

 

 

002: Shoulder holes

I was at a wedding reception this afternoon for two nice guys, Vady Halston-Darwin and his husband Wes Darwin-Halston. (Congratulations again, you two: long life and happiness!) The location was beautiful, the guests were having a good time, the music was great, and in Second Life, if people compliment the food, you know you've done something special -- a table of gumbo and other southern delicacies to match the Mardi Gras theme was a delightful idea.

The invitation said "Casual/Mardi Gras", but, you know, for a wedding reception, you want to show up looking like you took a little bit of trouble if only so you'll look nice in the pictures. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another, I didn't have a lot of time to put together an outfit. In fact I had approximately ten minutes, which was only enough time to find a shirt that covered my navel.  Seriously -- it's the first time in weeks that my navel has been covered. My go-to outfit these days is a little tank top and a pair of low-cut jeans.

Now, that has to do with a couple of things. Principally it has to do with the fact that there's not as much available for a l'Uomo avatar in the way of clothes as there are for non-mesh bodies. Non-mesh avs can go and get a well-designed business suit "off the rack" and it will fit them beautifully; they can shop at hundreds of stores, perhaps thousands. I'm not sure how many stores sell clothes for l'Uomo avs, but I think it's fewer than 50. The other thing that affects my wardrobe choices is that -- well, I've chosen to look like a professional bodybuilder, and the designers who design for my body have borne that in mind when they design clothes. As I have half-jokingly remarked in the past, I only have a few choices for the "looks" from which I can select: off-duty stripper, off-duty escort, off-duty personal trainer, on-duty leatherman or nudist. The T-shirt and jeans you see in the picture are very nearly as sedate as I can get without going to my all-purpose tuxedo. I've seen one or two business suits for l'Uomo avs and, while I'm sure they're well designed, a guy my size just looks like a dressed-up gorilla either in RL or SL.



But if you have a good close look at my lousy photograph by clicking to expand it, you'll see something else that's a problem. It's a little easier to see in the second picture; it looks as though there are holes in the shirt over the rear head of my shoulder muscle; if they weren't so symmetrical, it might have been that someone splashed me with acid, or that I flexed my muscles the wrong way and tore the shirt. As most of you will know, what it means is that I'm not wearing the correct alpha layer between my mesh skin and my shirt. And I think you know that it's just as tacky to go out to a wedding reception with holes in your shirt in SL as it would be in RL.

I have to confess, I'm not absolutely sure how this all works, in a technical sense, but it's something that I constantly find infuriating. I can only rarely manage to find a shirt/alpha combination that manages to cover my shoulders properly -- when I do, I immediately save it so I can go back to it, and I'm never really sure that it's going to work properly when I return to that outfit. I know that alphas hide what's underneath them and don't allow your skin to show through your T-shirt; I have no idea how it works, though. And what I find truly annoying is that whether it works properly or not can depend upon which order you add your layers, which is kind of like magical thinking. It's almost as though you have to cross your fingers in real life to make it work.

As it happens, it always seems to be my shoulders that poke through my shirts, and so I have come to rely on tank tops. And that means that I am misleading the designers who want me to look like an off-duty personal trainer. ("See, he wants to look like that, so let's do more tank tops and crop tops!") So out of this experience today, two things. (1) I would like to have an ordinary button-down dress shirt that covers me above the waist, with no holes, maybe -- and this is just a wild suggestion here -- maybe with an included alpha layer and directions on what to put on first. (2) My apologies to Vady and Wes for showing up at their beautiful and cleverly-planned wedding reception looking like a doofus.  I had a great time, and feel free to crop me and my stupid shoulders out of the pictures.

001: Sitting on my deck

This is a selfie I took at my house this afternoon. Again, this is at the level of most of the snapshots I take -- I'll see if I can improve for the future.  Actually I'm sitting on the beach in front of my deck; you can barely see my house behind my head, but you can see the beautiful blue-flowered trees I picked up recently and which I enjoy so much.

One reason for posting this is that I wanted to get some practice in identifying items.  All links below are to Marketplace.

Hair:Dura, Dura-Boy 22
Facial hair:
Goat beard: Labyrinth
Beard: Fe Style 4ED
Eyebrows: Jaryth's Barber Shop
Body hair (shoulders): Jaryth's Barber Shop

Skin: RGDW, Alfred (Tone 3)
Eyes: KMADD Mesh Eyes, Soul: Brown 2
Tank Top: HUG'S (available for l'Uomo and non-l'Uomo)
Shape: Made by hand, not for sale
Mesh avatar: Animations Rising, Bruce

Of course, there are a couple of tricks up my sleeve that I'll keep to myself; I've put a lot of work into perfecting my shape.  I intend to talk about this at greater length in a future post, but you get the best results by making sure that your shape is tweaked until it shows off your specific skin to its best advantage.

000: Welcome to my blog!

Hi folks! My name is Rusty Redfield -- this is a shot I took of myself last night when I was out dancing at a club, the Grindery.

As you can see, I use the l'Uomo mesh body (mine is the "Bruce" type), which makes me a pretty big and muscular guy.  It also makes it pretty difficult for me to find clothes since they pretty much have to be specially made for my body type.  So that's one of the things I'll be talking about here.  There are a fair number of gay guys in SL who use l'Uomo mesh bodies ("meshies", as I've heard us called) and I hope this will be interesting to them.  There are some common problems with l'Uomo clothes and I'll talk about them and how I try to deal with them.  I'll also talk about the clothes themselves and try to put together outfits and stuff to show you.  (You may have noticed I have a big ol' black eye in the photo above.  I'm currently interested in damage -- how damage is represented on SL avs, and whether it is more interesting to look at than the usual perfect flawless av.  So I'm likely to be posting pictures of me with bruises, marks and scars.)

Like many SL residents, I'm also interested in taking pictures of myself, and the people and places that I encounter along the way.  And you know what?  I'm really bad at it.  So much so that I have kind of stopped taking a lot of pictures because I'm usually ashamed to show them to anyone.  But I've recently had some photographs taken by a really good photographer, Joe Nussbaum, and it's inspired me to see what I can do to learn how to take better pictures myself.

That's why I added the shot I took last night.  This is, pretty much, the average rubbishy snapshot that I usually take.  I'm not happy with the framing, especially unhappy with the lighting -- this, for me, is the zero point.  Some time in the future I think I may come back to this spot and take another picture and see how much better I can make it.

This blog will be rated X.  It's common in Second Life for avs of gay men to be nude and there will be plenty of nude photos, sometimes of highly sexual subjects.  I intend to make that clear to everyone before they arrive.

Your polite and non-commercial comments are welcome.