How Has Your Avatar Evolved?

[Dana Hickman]

I would've sworn I had a couple old pics from back in early '07, but I guess they're on my backup drive which I dont have access to at the moment. Anyway, the only real changes from when I joined in '06 to now is my skill with editing and access to better quality clothes, skins, and accessories. My shape hasn't changed hardly at all since then, which is an enhanced approximation of my RL shape, although I have shrunk a few inches. I've always masqueraded as different forms on occasion, but don't seem to stay away from human form for very long.

[Mags Indigo]

Hi Dana, it does seem as if most people on SL are 'meant' to be either fantasy or human. Those who love the fantasy shapes find it difficult to stay human for long - those of us who feel comfortable as humans seem not to spend too long as anything else.

I wonder if this has some profound psychological meaning..?

Nah - it's just we're all funny old people :smileyhappy:

[Unti Kamala]

Yes, most people seem to have a 'base' form they feel comfortable with. Some are pretty consistently human, others something very different. That's the way with me too, much to my surprise.

Back when, I thought I'd use the opportunity to try different looks: male, female, human, furry, robot, swirling vortex of trash. In a way it was fun to teach a class simultaneously in both worlds, with the RL and SL versions dressed identically but different genders. Still, that experimental phase lasted only for a couple of months, and after that I've been almost exclusively a (human) woman roughly based on a high school picture of the RL me. Still, it's nice to have a bearded skin for the benefit of wannabe Romeos, or a tiny owl avi in case there's need to be a cute chick.

[majestic12]

Started off with the generic female student, shopped for a bit in a freebie marketplace, buying and testing several skins.

Did some experimenting on my shape, also asking for advice from innocent bystanders who were very nice.

Through one of my newfound friends, I was offered a free upgrade, no strings attached.

He treated me to a new skin, hair, eyes, the whole buffet at LAQ, just so he can see me as beautiful.

Since then, I do some minor changes to my eyes, hair color, and hairstyle depending on clothes that I buy.

[LilyMcKinney]

Hey! We are two students who are interested in researching on what grounds people on Second Life choose their avatars. We would very much appreciate if anyone would be willing to answer us some questions for our project! We would like to talk to you in Second Life or on Skype? Please reply to this message if you would like to help us!

[Manda Mosswood]

My formation was quiet quick because I met the right people who helped me out allot! Oh dear, back when I was a noob though I thought I was so hot! With my horrible skin and giant shape I was 7 feet tall! And hair very terrible I look back now and can't help but shake my head!

It started with getting nice hair and realistic looking eyes then a friend bought me an LAQ skin and helped me get a great shape and I feel in love! My latest adition is cleavage enhancer which I think is absolutely GREAT!!!!! And some piercings and REALISTIC looking tattoos brrrr I can't stand fake looking tattoos on avies can't beleive I use to wear them!!!

[Pussycat Catnap]

I write fiction and I've always been a story teller - the idea of making my character in a video game based off of myself just never occured to me. But I still had no idea what I would make my character in Second Life resemble when I first entered.

So I started out just trying to get a shape that looked appealing on screen while I figured out what the heck this thing was all about. I joined during a 2006 bug that had a lot of things rendering as gray - so I had no textures and thought it was my iBook being under system reqs rather than a bug. Spent my first 2 hours on help island editing my shape. Had the avantage of not being distracted by a texture so that the resulting shape was and still is good and in fact is now a freebie I give out.

I didn't last in SL - a game where everything is gray and it took me a couple of hours to figure out how to get to the event I'd been invited to (my reasonn for the initial log in) didn't seem appealing at the time. So I left only to return in 2009.

Shortly into exploring in 2009 I found a freebie box and wore the contents - discovering myself to now have a tail and cat ears. I'd seen Neko and catgirl art before and had always loved it - and when I found I could be that, my sense of self in SL got some direction to it.

A few weeks in I took to putting money into SL and earning money at dance contests and on 'stripper poles'...

...(I love being nude in SL, and so why not and for me there is no conflict between this and my faith since original sin was wearing clothes in shame of Jah's image anyway (See Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan where he shows its clothing and not the apple)...

...But once I hit that point I searched out a quality neko kit and the skin I still wear. On this 'character' that skin is my only non-furry skin (we'll get to furry and me in a moment).

Over time I've improved the shape in little bits as I've learned how the dials work -together- (yeah, saddle bags and leg length affect butt shape - to different degrees, but I didn't know this in 2006, and some shape settings work better with some AOs and -the one everyone knows- skins).

But this character is still mostly my 2006 version, with up to date neko bits and a 2009 bought skin.

I did branch into furry though - once I found some nice feline avatars. That started when another character of mine wore the contents of a freebie box and found herself a black fox furry. I spent a few days wandering with that on and looking at furry makers products and realized I really liked the look - so I went out and spent some 10k lindens getting furry avatars for all my characters (accounts). Took me some 3 different furry avatars to find the 'right one' for Pussycat - which you see in my profile image.

But recently I gone back to neko - using a neko kit made by AX, the maker of my furry avatar. I bought her 'tan colored' neko tail / ears / leg-fluff / arm-fluff kit and recolored it the red-brown I like on Pussycat (very easy kit to mod - furry makers tend to always make their stuff easy to mod). BTW: Furry makers make the best neko tails. Way better than what the 'neko only' makers put out.

One thing that has become a 'rule' for me is each 'character' is her own angle of my exploration of myself and SL - so each is her own account, and I don't share their inventories much. Each has her own wardrobe, and each has her own furry avatar and sometimes other creature or hybrid avatar.

My friends get a little confused because friending me means you end up friending 4 or 5 different accounts and having to remember they are all me and some of them might show up sans clothing while the others never will (the more furry I am at any given moment, the more PG - with rare exceptions).

To me they are characters, role I play; but which are also extensions of myself. So while I don't do SL romances and don't bring RL into SL and vice versa - I try to treat everyone as Jah commands; with a good heart and a kind hand. I get into scraps on forums a lot, but inworld I've managed to pull that off most of the time.

[Minareth Irata]

My avatar has changed a lot too, I've also tried many kinds but kept coming back with my idea dubbed The Bubblegum Kitty, it's a terribly silly creation, but it fits me well. Everyone pretty much is what they want to be but I guess people also have the habit to reflect what they like, in my case, cats, pink and another thing, I'm not mentioning it, should be obvious! :smileytongue: Go Captain Obvious!

Now there is one thing about me that I think makes me different from most folks, and that is that I'm terribly perfectionistic, and by that I mean extremely. One pixel not aligning well, a hidden seam, an attachment's color is slightly off when the skin's color in certain lights, it can bug me so much that I feel like hiding. :smileyindifferent: So I learned myself how to build and texture and if something doesn't suit my taste, I mod it until it satisfies me. So yeah, my avatar has had hundreds of changes I even ended up creating my own skin, based on two other skins though I might add. 

Not only did my avatar change visually, also internally, as in scripts. Shoes I buy for example I strip of scripts and the head of my avatar also had some scripts that were for adjustability and were removed, other scripts that were small were changed back to LSL instead of mono to save memory. A friend who is an expert in scripting told me mono is better for large scripts. Rendering Cost is also kept low, I'm using very simple hair that is only 27 sculpted prims which really cuts down Rendering Cost. So eventually my avatar only uses 960kb of script memory, and the Rendering Cost is as low as 1203. (I probably sound horribly Nerdy now, but I believe that if we want to make Second Life less laggy, we should start with ourselves before complaining. :smileywink: )

Anyway:

That's me in Second Life then, some even think I'm the sister of The Pink Panther. :smileyvery-happy:

Wish I had some old pictures of my avatar like some others here have, that's really cool to see, guys! Sadly I can't find some of mine but perhaps I could try to dig for my old versions, but afraid I deleted them in hope of keeping my Inventory a bit tidy. :smileysad:

[piecheese]

I started after a while as a Renamon, with this:

Then, into Anoch:

Several changes later, I decided I'd do an infernal approach:

And, just today, this:

Holy hell, we "Lindeans" really change a lot, don't we?