Male Avatar Advice

[TheAumi]

I recently got my female avi all set. I've got a Maitreya body, Catwa head and a skin from Egozy. Now, I'm looking into making a male avi.

The things I put on my female avatar were through recommendations people told me. They told me Maitreya and Catwa were the best in their game. (?)

I want to know what y'all guys think when it comes to making a guy avi. What body, hair, skin, etc. should I use?

The look I'm going for is something that isn't too muscular and "hulky". I just want a lean body that is considerably "hot".

Idk if it's possible, but I also want my avi to appear Asian.

Here are some reference pics:

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited May 7, 2018 by TheAumi

[Callum Meriman]

• Signature Geralt body
• Catwa Dino Head
• One of the asian skins from Avi-Glam by Kendra Parfort but choose the soft body option
• Eyes from the same as the skin

My opinion is TMP is dead, Slink is too thick, front to back for a decent sian twinky look. Jake has flat biceps and bad fingers. Gianni is too muscled.

Cute pictures by the way, I wish there were more people with these looks

[AviNews]

Depends on what you have to invest.  I have an Adam w/Head, And a slink  w/classic head.   Both sorta mid-priced, thinking getting a Catwa head. They each have some very minor issues but am finding acceptable for the prices.

have no problems finding wide choices of clothes/outfits for either

[Chic Aeon]

There is a new altamura body and head combo that is pretty impressive at $900 complete with group tag ($50). It is fairly slim and has a calm and not too rugged face (of course the skin applier will make a huge difference). My friend has been trying it out but hasn't tried the various skins in his inventory yet. The default skin isn't bad and comes with many tones but there are likely others that would work better. Omega appliers will be needed. 

In general many Signature items fit and possibly some other mesh body fits. Worth a test perhaps.  I forgot the name but it is apparently right up front to try and sure a search will get you that info.  

 

 

[animats]

Post some pictures. The mesh male avatars I've seen either look gay or look like Twilight characters.

[Callum Meriman]

6 minutes ago, animats said:

The mesh male avatars I've seen either look gay

That's bordering on offensive animats.

[Paul Hexem]

27 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

That's bordering on offensive animats.

He's not incorrect though.

[AviNews]

I 'adjust' all my shapes.... using NONE as they 'come out of the box'.

The Adam body looks Extremely slender in store... but can add weight/bulk etc. (and OH Gawd, facial adjustments are endless) The Adam head (beta version.. with lifetime upgrade) does 'ok'... I didn't like the eyes at first. Tho with adjustments and lashes... they seem to be 'getting close'.

I'd say Grab a Demo and see what you can do with it.

Edited May 7, 2018 by AviNews

[Jae Villa]

This is going to be controversial so let's just state, up front, I hate TMP. It's too complicated and who knows if it'll even work soon or not. 

However... for the body shapes you've shown above I believe TMP is the best mesh body out there to achieve that look. It can be slimmed right down and give the appearance of a twink very easily. I've seen it, I've liked it and I've cried out in horror that it was TMP as no way I'll ever achieve that look myself (I've got the TMP body, I've just not got the will to tackle it ever again).   

As I do not like TMP I can't offer advice on skins... 

However, of course, for clothing needs Belleza Jake and Signature Gianni are your best bets. Gianni is very muscular but if you aren't going going to spend all day naked then it is probably the best bet for achieving a cool young guy look with a huge range of clothing and add-on options. 

[Skell Dagger]

Not sure why this was posted in General Discussion rather than Your Avatar, so prepare for it to be moved, OP.

That said, I'm going to agree with Callum:

• Signature Geralt body.
• Catwa Dino head.
• Avi-Glam skin ('Seiji' would work well, but I'd recommend demoing the 'abs' version as well as the 'soft' version, since the [shirtless] pictures the OP has posted all show well-developed abdominal muscles). Stray Dog also has some great asian skins, but they're more masculine and less twinky, and your images suggest you're aiming more for the twink look. They'd be worth demoing, though, in case one of them is right for you.
• Avi-Glam eyes.

For hair I'd recommend Dura, and INK. (Not logged in right now, so I can't go through my [extensive!] hair folders to be reminded of any others.)

With regard to other points brought up in this thread thus far:

Adam body and head
The style of clothing that the OP will likely be wearing on this avatar has to be borne in mind when it comes to choosing a mesh body, and Adam is simply not as well-supported when it comes to variety of styles. I shop a great deal and I see Adam support on maybe one out of 30-40 male clothing vendors. That's not to say it's impossible, but if you want an extensive wardrobe it'll be more work to hunt for items.

OP, by all means demo the Adam head, but check that you can achieve an asian look with it. The look comes not only from the skin, but also from the shape of the head. It's better (not to mention easier!) to start with an asian base shape to the head (as Catwa Dino already has) than to try and tweak a causcasian shape into looking asian.

Altamura body and head
I've tried several of these (full-price and free) and just couldn't get along with them. The body HUD is huge and features alpha sections so tiny they can barely be clicked on. The heads are not very responsive at all to slider edits. And yes, Signature-fit clothing works mostly on Altamura bodies, but that tends to still have the bulky Signature delts actually built into the clothing.

TMP
Regardless of how perfect it may be for this look, nope nope NOPE to TMP. It runs on its own proprietary system (which will be rendered useless once the external servers are switched off), it's unsupported, and hardly anyone is creating for it anymore.

Signature Gianni
Yes, it's one of the two main bodies being created for today (alongside Belleza Jake), and it's great... if you want to look like you're down the gym every day. The pics that the OP posted are toned, but not gym-buff. Gianni is far too muscular for what they're looking for, and can only be slimmed down by extensive shape-work (I know; I've spent hours doing that). Signature Geralt, while a new body that's still (very quickly) gathering clothing support, is pretty much exactly the shape that the OP is looking for, after perhaps a minor bit of work to tone down the quads.

Here are side-by-side comparisons (with a more detailed post here) of Gianni and Geralt, in their default shapes. Yes, I know shapes can be altered, but having spent those hours on Gianni - and still not being satisfied that I'd slimmed the delts down enough - I'd still opt for Geralt. Gianni is overall much more stocky and bulky; a 'prizefighter' kind of build with a lower centre of gravity. Nothing like the images the OP posted:

"Gay"
Aww, thank you!

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[Callum Meriman]

And on TMP; Having both both the TMP and the Geralt (and many others) the Geralt is as twinky, maybe more so, than the TMP.

It's a better than perfect replacement.

[Marianne Little]

I would say Stray Dog (Gac Akina) has good Asian faces. One of my alts is using his "Yejun" skin.

Link to his Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gac_akina/

And the "Yejun" skin, but he has some more Asian skins:

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Marianne Little

[Holger Gilruth]

Hey the pics looks like a little bit like me. The only difference is, my avi isn´t asian at all.

[Qie Niangao]

This is definitely the asian twink look I'm always always going for, so it helps to hear what others recommend here.

Firstly, totally agree about avoiding TMP. I gave up on it and quit using a mesh body altogether for months while hunting for a replacement. It was never worth the hassle and now there's just no possible excuse for getting it.

My main is Slink + LeLutka "Andrea" head. I created a homemade normalmap for the torso to get some ribs (emphatically not abs), and an eyeshadow tattoo to hide the double eyelid on LeLutka's Tableau Vivant skin. 

One of my alts uses Belleza "Jake" and Catwa "Daniel" from when Bento was new. The Catwa UI is just mind bogglingly disorganized and ugly compared to LeLutka, but nonetheless I may at least try the Dino based on the suggestions in this thread. The Jake seems to "twink-down" fine IMHO but I think the same of Slink, too, so maybe I'm not "twink discerning" enough.

Another alt uses Signature Gianni, which is much less successful at achieving the twink look. I might try the Geralt, but I kinda feel like I wasted enough money on that creator, having bought their head before testing the demo enough to realize just how godawful it is. On the plus side, Gianni really seems to be the easiest one to find clothes for -- which is mostly wasted on this particular alt who doesn't get out much.

One thing I never had any luck with is the asian-shaped AK head, and I tried the demo several times because it looks as if it should work. I'd be interested in a success story of a well-matched skin for that head and some decent body.

About Stray Dog: They have some nice-looking asian head skins for Catwa, but of their few LeLutka-compatible skins none looked remotely asian. And it seemed they only matched the Stray Dog body skin (?) which doesn't seem twink enough (among other quibbles). In both cases, maybe somebody knows better.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Qie Niangao

[Syo Emerald]

12 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

That's bordering on offensive animats.

Didn't you get the memo? Only bodybuilders with t-rex arms are now officially not gay.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The Catwa UI is just mind bogglingly disorganized and ugly compared to LeLutka...

In general, agreed. But did you try the Mini HUD which is available as a gift?

I find it much more handy for quick adjustments.

[Jae Villa]

4 hours ago, Syo Emerald said:

Didn't you get the memo? Only bodybuilders with t-rex arms are now officially not gay.

Oh dear... I better let the rest of the Aesthetic gays know we're doing it wrong...

[Lillith Hapmouche]

1 hour ago, Jae Villa said:

...the rest of the Aesthetic gays ...

Slightly off topic derail: how's the 2.0 update?

[Jae Villa]

6 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Slightly off topic derail: how's the 2.0 update?

The neck fix for Bento heads is... hmm... but I'm using it anyway to see if it grows on me. 

Very excited it's moved to auto alpha. Hopefully that'll help pick the clothing market back up again. 

Otherwise... business as usual. 

[Maitimo]

The Signature Geralt body is slimmer than Gianni but as it's so new I don't know what the clothing market is like for it; presumably Gianni clothes will be much to big. Whether it will fit a standard size, or maybe clothes made for Slink/Adam - it's worth getting a ton of demos and trying them out to see how you'd manage for clothes.

You can get slimmer than "gym bunny" with Gianni, but in no way can you get "twink", which is what you seem to be aiming for.

Just don't even think about TMP. The shopping experience is horrible, the way the body works is awful and when they pull the plug (which is likely to be sooner rather than later, in many people's opinion) it will be basically a brick.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

2 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

The Signature Geralt body is slimmer than Gianni but as it's so new I don't know what the clothing market is like for it; presumably Gianni clothes will be much to big.

Correct ... some SLink clothes do fit amazingly well. Even some TMP rigged items aren't too shabby. My personal enemy is the upper shoulder blades area, close to the neck. It's either some setting in m-alt's shape or there really is a rather steep line which tends to stick out of tops.

[Callum Meriman]

8 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Correct ... some SLink clothes do fit amazingly well. Even some TMP rigged items aren't too shabby. My personal enemy is the upper shoulder blades area, close to the neck. It's either some setting in m-alt's shape or there really is a rather steep line which tends to stick out of tops.

Yes, some of the Gianni tops will fit, maybe 20% of them, but there is a tiny little clip on the shoulders near the neck.

Like TMP, Jake has never been updated despite the bugs. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake stays V1.0 beta forever. I have hopes for the Geralt though, the Gianni had quite a few revisions over it's life. Some small changes to the alpha cuts to better support more clothes would be appreciated.

On the lelutka head, I like it so much, especially the hud, but skins are an issue, so many Catwa skins around, and just a small handful for the lelutka. And of course, lelutka failed miserably on rigging, the jaw is rigged to bento ear bones. Not sure why anyone would rig the jaws to the ears. I asked... and they said (paraphrased) "Well, the ear makers had so many other bones to choose from" >.>

[Skell Dagger]

32 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Like TMP, Jake has never been updated despite the bugs. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake stays V1.0 beta forever.

I suspect that there will be a fix for the neck issues, since - from what I recall - an updated neck was given to Catwa some time ago for her to calculate the Bento head neck fixes/sheaths in her Master HUDs. But I still remain surprised that Jake is now the second most rigged-for body out there, despite its flaws and the fact that it's still only a beta body. I have most of the male mesh bodies, and Jake is the one I avoid using the most, purely for those flaws.

Like you, I have strong hopes for Geralt. The almost-instant support for it (the very next TMD after its release had two clothing items already rigged for it, which was fantastic), but - as I mentioned in my Gianni/Geralt comparison blog post, and as you mentioned above - there are some issues with alpha cuts, specifically: Geralt has removed the lower side-torso cuts that made Gianni so popular when it came to open-fronted shirts and jackets etc. Without those, I'm left with the same screaming frustration that I have with my Slink body. I can either alpha out the entire front strip of a section that needs removing (so the alpha shows in the open front of the shirt/jacket), or I can 'poke through' and ignore it, or I can just... wear another body and hope the clothing has different rigs for that body.

Comparison of the Gianni alpha cuts (left) and the Geralt cuts (right) -

As to the Lelutka head, I love it for androgynous looks, but dear god those ears...

ETA: One other thing needs addressing with regard to Gianni/Geralt, and that is that creators need to stop using just the Signature logo on their ads and start stating which Signature body the clothing is rigged for.

Edited May 10, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[Shrev]

Good luck with that. I've been trying to find a black male avatar that looks ethnic and not like a black bull. Call me boring, but I just want something average and high quality at the same time.

[Destiny Marques]

43 minutes ago, Shrev said:

Good luck with that. I've been trying to find a black male avatar that looks ethnic and not like a black bull. Call me boring, but I just want something average and high quality at the same time.

Here's a link you might like:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/186321 <---- These shapes come with style cards that tell you where to find the skins.

Have you tried Stray Dogs skins?

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/176808

Akool has some too:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/164378

If anyone advises you to buy a TELLAQ skin, just run the other way! LOL

Edited May 30, 2018 by Kristen Beornssen