Have you seen the new avatars? July 2017

[Marianne Little]

 

Wow, I can't wait until I am home from work and can try them out.

Today we’re excited to announce a set of 8 new starter avatars which are themed Renaissance, Mystic Heroes and Angels & Demons. In this release, for the first time ever, we’re offering Bento avatars!

Yes you heard it right, all but the Mystic Heroes in this offering will be Bento-equipped. Some of the avatars are ride-alongs, which mean they include horses as a Bento attachment, while others boast animated wings!

 

[Skell Dagger]

I just quickly logged an alt to check them out, since I don't have much time this afternoon to be inworld on my main. From my brief first look at them I can say they're pretty damn good. Two angels, two demons, two 'mystic heroes' and two fantasy characters with optional rideable Bento horses, and a nice mix of diversity as well. The horses are fantastic (also a nice touch that the female avatar rides sidesaddle) and the Bento wings on the angels and demons (especially the angels) move beautifully. My only quibble would be that the head accessories on the angels and on the female mystic hero are attached to the hair and are no-mod, so they can't be removed. On the demons the horns and hair are separate items, but I would have loved to have the head accessories separate from the others' hair, too, since I'm often telling newbies and people who don't have $$ to spend inworld that there's great mesh hair in their inventory library.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   They're available on the sign-up page as well. I don't know why any part of these should be no-mod. Surely by now LL understands the freedom and value of individual creativity. Uniformity, whether forced or accidental puts a bit of a damper on this offering.

[Skell Dagger]

To be fair, I only gave them a quick look-over. The 'no mod' was noted from the worn item in my inventory. I didn't try to remove the items and rez them to see if they could be modded thereafter, which is sometimes possible.

ETA: One more thing I wish that LL would do with the non-mesh starter avatars is to have the hairbases as separate items from the skins, rather than painted onto them. SL creators have been doing this since tattoo layers were introduced years ago, so I don't know why new default avatars still have hairbases painted on. The average newbie will attach the entire folder, so it's not as if they'll forget to add the hairbase.

Having these skins with optional hairbase tattoos will, again, offer more variety to those who can't spend (or don't want to spend) money in SL but who still want to customise their avatar as much as they can.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Skell Dagger

[Clover Jinx]

Oh wow and I was just looking at rideable bento horses yesterday. Can't wait to try these with my alts.

[Marianne Little]

I just tried the horses on. The female option with side sit is adorable.

I don't know why, but the male has a strange looking horse. It is not the horse, but the male shape and figure that makes the horse look more like a llama? Because I tried the female shape and AO with both horses - the brown and the white - and the horse body looks so much better when the female shape and AO is worn.

Maybe some genius can suggest some changes to the male shape that makes the "llama" front go away. The front feet is placed too far back. And yes, I used the included shape. Tried some quick edits, not lucky so far.

Nothing is modify on the two avatars I tried on. I don't think the others are mod either.

[Ceka Cianci]

22 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I just tried the horses on. The female option with side sit is adorable.

I don't know why, but the male has a strange looking horse. It is not the horse, but the male shape and figure that makes the horse look more like a llama? Because I tried the female shape and AO with both horses - the brown and the white - and the horse body looks so much better when the female shape and AO is worn.

Maybe some genius can suggest some changes to the male shape that makes the "llama" front go away. The front feet is placed too far back. And yes, I used the included shape. Tried some quick edits, not lucky so far.

Nothing is modify on the two avatars I tried on. I don't think the others are mod either.

So the females can ride regular as well?

If so I'm gonna go and check them out

 

ETA: Just went real quick to the blogs..They look really nice =)

Also I never realized we can get them from our inventories,from what they say in the blog..That's kind of nice..

 

Edited July 7, 2017 by Ceka Cianci

[Ceka Cianci]

I've never actually looked for them in my inventory before..

They would be in the library right?

For the life of me ,I can't find them if they are in there..hehehe

 

ETA: Never mind,I think I found them..In the clothing folder?

 

hehehehe

Edited July 7, 2017 by Ceka Cianci

[Marianne Little]

The sideways rider AO for females can only be worn with a female shape.

The common rider AO (one leg on each side) can only be worn with a male shape.

BUT you can trick the system. First wear the horse, the male shape and the rider AO for male. Then, change shape to female. I got 1 warning, "This AO can only be used with the male shape". But nothing happened. I was still riding as the male, with one leg on each side. I tried teleporting to another sim in case the AO would only work in the sim I was in. But it works just as well after teleporting. Logged in another avatar to look, and the alt saw just a normal rider.

It is not possible to wear the male rider AO directly with a female shape.

 

 

[Monti Messmer]

While this avatars may be nice for starters but they just add on confusion.

I wish they would remove the system avatar and replace with a standard modifiable mesh avatar, all creators can use to build clothes and stuff.

And that long ago before we had different mesh avatars with incompatible "shapes" and functions. And mesh-ava-creators that can´t be bothered to support even smaller creators with a developer kit.

Anyway that´s too late now 

Monti

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

38 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

The sideways rider AO for females can only be worn with a female shape.

The common rider AO (one leg on each side) can only be worn with a male shape.

BUT you can trick the system. First wear the horse, the male shape and the rider AO for male. Then, change shape to female. I got 1 warning, "This AO can only be used with the male shape". But nothing happened. I was still riding as the male, with one leg on each side. I tried teleporting to another sim in case the AO would only work in the sim I was in. But it works just as well after teleporting. Logged in another avatar to look, and the alt saw just a normal rider.

It is not possible to wear the male rider AO directly with a female shape.

 

 

   Wow! The AO checks your shape gender. I really did not expect that level of BS. What happened to "My Imagination"?

[Kymrie]

I've been playing around with them and they're really nice. I think the angel and the mystic hero are my favorites. Those bento wings are fantastic! I wish the head accessory for the mystic hero were detachable, though, or at least mod. I want to wear it with other stuff.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   Wishes. I'll just reiterate this. I wish all of them were fully mod. I wish the whole lot could be used as a grab bag, recolored, retextured, unlinked, relinked with some other thing... the list...

list My_wishes;

                      .... goes on and on and would have to be compiled with Mono.

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

   Wow! The AO checks your shape gender. I really did not expect that level of BS. What happened to "My Imagination"?

Not to mention it being totally sexist by insisting that the female ride side saddle.

[Zsigmond Alcott]

3 hours ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

What happened to "My Imagination"?

Don't you know that that kind of thinking is long gone now? In today's world people are trying hard to make sure they control what you imagine daily!  BTW - you're correct! Whats a bunch of BS!

[Ceka Cianci]

I don't know how back then,they road side saddle everywhere..But then again,I guess if you are wearing a birdcage under all that,it would be kind of hard to ride regular..

That's another thing..How did they even ride at all with all that stuff on?

I don't think there is a day that goes by that I don't ride a horse..Every time I feed,I'll jump on a couple of them just for bonding and letting them know I still love them..

I don't think I could have done what they did back then and enjoyed riding..

[LittleMe Jewell]

While it was definitely the norm for women to ride side saddle, even back then there were the occassional times when they rode astride. This world is not supposed to mimic RL exactly in every aspect, so it just seems odd that they'd "force" the female avatar to mimin the norm of the times.  Then again, it seems odd that the hair and accessories are one object for the females, but not for the males.

[EmperorNapoleonBonaparte]

What is the next theme for their next set of avatars? Will they do 18th century next time?

[Talligurl]

2 hours ago, EmperorNapoleonBonaparte said:

What is the next theme for their next set of avatars? Will they do 18th century next time?

IDK do you think there is much demand for the 18th Century?

[EmperorNapoleonBonaparte]

16 minutes ago, Talligurl said:

IDK do you think there is much demand for the 18th Century?

I'm not sure because I'm new in this game.

[Talligurl]

19 minutes ago, EmperorNapoleonBonaparte said:

I'm not sure because I'm new in this game.

The game is made up of a cross section of people from popular culture, Those things that are in demand in popular culture will be in demand here. Do you see a large demand for things related to the 18th century in popular culture?

[EmperorNapoleonBonaparte]

12 hours ago, Talligurl said:

The game is made up of a cross section of people from popular culture, Those things that are in demand in popular culture will be in demand here. Do you see a large demand for things related to the 18th century in popular culture?

Ok, but I see a lot of 18th century clothes in the marketplace. People can demand anything historical. I see Linden money being in large demand. As for clothes, I'm not sure. I see many clothes.

[Zsigmond Alcott]

LL doesn't release new avis that often , I am trying to think of the last time they did before these. Had to be at least a couple years,.. right?

[Skell Dagger]

28 minutes ago, Zsigmond Alcott said:

LL doesn't release new avis that often , I am trying to think of the last time they did before these. Had to be at least a couple years,.. right?

They're getting a lot more frequent than they used to be. The ones before the current release came out in September 2016. Prior to that was November 2015, and before that we had the disastrous all-mesh starter avatars of May 2014 that left newbies completely confused how to customise them. Before that, the previous set were pre-mesh sculptie-accessorised ones from 2012.

To answer the 18th Century question: I highly doubt that Linden Lab will include that genre as part of any future starter avatar set, mainly because it's too precise a time period. The starter avatars are intended to cover a broad swathe of potential genres, which is why we have vampires, dystopian, fantasy, urban, etc. Narrowing it down to one specific 16-year era such as the Napoleonic one was - or even broadening it to include general 18th Century and the overall Baroque/Rococo period - is far too specific.

Any long-term resident will tell you that the primary roleplay and themed areas in SL are the ones that have survived, and these tend to be things like gritty urban, SciFi and dystopian, vampire and other gothic-related (including dark Gothic Victorian and Lovecraftian), steampunk, and the book-related fantasy stuff such as Gor. By contrast to those, places such as the new Edwardian London RP region that have sprung up are niche locations. That they appear to only offer a freebie outfit for female avatars doesn't surprise me in the least. It has always been far easier to customise a female avatar on a budget (even if that budget is no cash outlay whatsoever) than it has a male avatar.

49 minutes ago, EmperorNapoleonBonaparte said:

Ok, but I see a lot of 18th century clothes in the marketplace.

Search 'Rococo' on Marketplace and, under 'Apparel' you will find 1618 results for female items and 317 results for male items. By comparison, search 'hoodie' and you will find 13954 results for female items and 16854 results for male items. That's a comparison of an entire historical era versus one single item of clothing from the modern era.

49 minutes ago, EmperorNapoleonBonaparte said:

People can demand anything historical.

They can ask for it, sure. But ask yourself what is more worth a creator's time and energy: spending hours to make an item that perhaps 30 people might buy, or spending those same number of hours to make an item that hundreds (or even thousands) might buy? Yes, some people create items that don't sell very well, purely because they have a deep and abiding passion for those things. I mentioned Le Grenier du Château to you in another post, and that store is a typical example of someone creating purely because of their passion for that era. But for most creators in SL, this is a business, so they make what sells.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Skell Dagger
Typos

[Kymrie]

I could see them doing Victorian outfits, maybe, since Steampunk is still pretty popular. 17th century French could be fun, but the only designer I've seen that was crazy enough to try it was Boudoir. Waay too many details for LL, and there's not much demand for it anyway.

It would be cool if they expanded on the fantasy theme, though. Or maybe if they tried fashion from various cultures. But since they just released a set, I don't think they'll do another one anytime soon. Following that timeline, the earliest would be next year.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Kymrie