What skin?

[Tansyuduri]

is This This This This This and this

There apears to be a trend were he names the shapes after the skins but I'm not able to find them.

Yes I know it says that he includes a style card. The issue is he does not include that card in any of his demo versions. I'm not so rich that I want to buy those shapes before I know what skin they use because I've tried the demos with other skins and they do not look half as good. I do really want what he shows in the pictures however so I need to know what skins he used ahead of time.

[Alwin Alcott]

telling what skin it is would make the reason to sell a shape with stylecard useless don't you think?

 

[Tansyuduri]

Wait... so you are telling me that people rip off the skin makers by using their skin without credit on their shapes and not telling which skin they use exept when you buy their shape on purpose!? Thats benifiting from someone elses work. They are selling the location of the skin? Thats just outragous and coniving and wrong!

[Madelaine McMasters]

I don't believe shape creators are ripping anybody off. They must drape a skin on their shapes to show them and it's perfectly legal and ethical to buy a skin and use it to demo shapes. It would be in the best interest of shape and skin designers to work together, as skins and shapes are highly interdependent and you can't demo one without the other.

Because skins and shapes are so highly interdependent and it's the combination that you're viewing in an advertisment, it's not surprising that a style card might have some value. And it could be for this reason that the shape designer didn't include the style card in the demo. The shape gets you only halfway to the look you want. It's frustrating, and neither you nor I would do it, but it's not nutty.

After several long and frustrating searches for a pleasing shape for a skin I got off the web and modified, I finally gave up and played "slider wars" for a day to create my own. There are better looking skin/shape combos out there, but I've got mine to where I don't dislike it, and I'm free to mess it up in any way I wish.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Tansyuduri wrote:

Wait... so you are telling me that people rip off the skin makers by using their skin without credit on their shapes and not telling which skin they use exept when you buy their shape on purpose!? Thats benifiting from someone elses work. They are selling the location of the skin? Thats just outragous and coniving and wrong!

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Yep.

Shapes in SL are almost all very poorly made and anatomical disasters. So you're basically buying a link to where to buy something else.

I suggest ignoring shape sellers and just buying a skin, then using the shape dials until you have the look you like.

 

But I will disagree with the benefiting aspect - a large part of what goes on in SL and in RL is people making things that make things other people have make work better or work well together.

Shapes on the other hand, are mostly a scam.

 

[thebaekai]

I agree with everything here. If you have a really good skin, you can make your own shape easily. I feel personally your skin is 90% of what makes your avatar look good (with the exception of tattoo layers, hair and etc.), while your shape is only 10%.

To OP: I won't say it's ripping off exactly, but I wouldn't call it ethical. I definitely don't see whats wrong with including a lousy stylecard in the demo. Hell, a good percentage of shapes out there don't look good without the shape. I remember buying a shape just to get the style card, and when i opened it, it said I didn't have permission. I contacted the owner and she never replied.

Basically, just get a really high quality skin, and make your own shape. I usually just buy a "decent" 50L shape and tweak it up.

[Vulpinus]

I tend to agree with the OP, having recently paid about L$600 for a shape (that I couldn't even get a demo of, possibly because the vendor isn't here any more) then finding that the skin would cost me another L$1500.

If it was at least mentioned in the advert what it cost, even if the actal skin was kept secret until purchase, it would have lessened my shock.

Now I know that such is the going price though.

I did realise that the shapes could be home-made; there is nothing in them that we can't do ourselves, unless...

...like me, one has the artistic talent of a dead snail. I spent hours trying to reproduce another shape I was looking at, only to get frustrated and waste that time. While I could have learned to do it eventually, I decided that the cost of the shape was less than the value of my time trying to make it myself. It's not what I wanted to spend my time doing.

Funny though that I've ended up using a different (slightly tweaked) base shape that cost me half as much as the previous one. Still worth it to me as a starting point rather that wasting more hours trying to replicate it myself.

It's all a learning curve which I'm just starting on, and if we don't like the way something is being sold, we can go elsewhere or learn to do it ourselves.

The positive of all of the above for me was that I found the skin for the first shape to be just what I wanted, and I might not have found it otherwise. It went well with the second shape, better than the skins sold for that shape IMO.

[Starfire Rhapsody]

First skin is from essences, second is pinkfuel.. looks like harley maybe.  Third skin is from league. Fourth skin looks like glam affair.  Fifth skin is a older laq skin aswell as the sixth skin.

Sorry I do not know the names of the exact skin. but since I've got quiet a collection I've bought from over the years I do remember the faces etc

[Jade Nova]

I couldn't tell you which face specifically but I can tell you that the first one looks to be from Essences, the second is from Pink Fuel (Harley maybe?), third is from League (definitely Isla), fourth is from Glam Affair, and fifth and sixth are older skins from LAQ/Laqroki.

[Marianne Little]

Coming late to the thread, I was not sure if I should say something but: It is put down a lot of work in these shapes. Not just working on the shapes, but on creating an original charachter for each avatar. 399 L does not seem like a high price to me, if the style card includes details on clothes and accessories too. The creators of these benefit from it, so does the skinmakers. 

You can either buy a shape or work on it yourself, and here it seems the proportions is better than most. The demo version is easy available on the marketplace. No one is forced to buy shapes without demos.