Skell Dagger

If you're aiming for an Asian look (and you've not yet purchased skin appliers) then I strongly suggest visiting Stray Dog (creator: Gac Akina - look him up in search and get the current Stray Dog SLurl from his picks section) to pick up some demos. He has some truly fantastic Asian skins, and has also just released Belleza body appliers to match them. I mainly wear the Slink body, and I agree that sometimes it can be frustrating. I'd just love for the front of the torso to be divided into more vertical cuts. Quite often I want to mask off the sides but not the front, and I can't do that with Slink, so it limits my ability to wear some clothing. I do own the Jake body, but I love my Slink so much I hardly ever wear Jake. Be aware that Mina's Myrtle hair was a gift at SL14B, so it might not be out in the store. Also, it's a female style, so it'll dig in a little bit between your shoulderblades at the back. For hair that looks that great from the front, I'm usually willing to overlook that, but if it's available and still free I'd definitely pick it up anyway. When it comes to appliers, I'd recommend looking for Omega body appliers. (Stray Dog do have Omega appliers, if you decide to go with their skins.) With the Slink and Belleza Omega relays, these will work on both your Jake body and Slink feet, so you won't need to buy separate Slink feet appliers. Buy the relays first, since you'll probably want them at some point anyway, and then demo some Omega-compatible skins from designers you like. Usually, body appliers will also tint the feet, but a few of them don't, so it's always best to check first.

Belleza's Jake is still a fairly new body on the market, but already there are quite a few designers creating specifically for it. I suggest checking out The Mens Dept and Men Only Monthly events to begin with. You'll also find that most clothing that's fitted to the Signature Gianni body will also fit your Jake body, as they're very similar. I haven't seen much in the way of footwear fitted for the Jake body, so you're best off getting the Slink Flat feet (lots of footwear available for that) and using the Jake HUD option to wear Slink feet. As to longish hair, can you give us more of an idea of what style you're looking for? I tend to wear short hair and when I go long I go long, but if you browse a few pages back through my Flickr you might see a style that appeals to you. I wear a lot of hair by Exile, Stealthic, Dura, etc. I credit everything, either on the Flickr post itself, or in the linked blog post under the Flickr image.

Yep. Usually, half a dozen people immediately respond with "Don't click!" (group chat lag permitting) but every now and then I still see some numpty saying "OMG, you saved me! I was about to log in!" (and being quite serious about it). I've even seen a couple of people say things like "Oh, I logged in. Should I not have done that?" And all of this within about a minute of the scam links being posted. It's just boggling how, with so many warnings around, people are so impulsive and careless.

Stealthic need to stop making hair for a while. My wallet can't keep up! L$2000 on two fatpacks today Credits Clef de Peau and Stealthic for The Mens Dept. Hair: Stealthic - Psycho Skin applier: Clef de Peau - Colin (T0) Vest & tee: Kitt Ragu for K - Trucker Vest Homme (black) Necklace: Lapointe & Bastchild - Swear Dia De Muertos Charm Necklace Eye appliers: Avi-Glam - Elysian Eyes (fjord) Brow appliers: Odeco - Catwa/Omega Mens Eyebrow (shaved) Head: Catwa - Daniel

Ugh. The hacked scammer accounts are out in force tonight. Catwa group got hit twice in the space of ten minutes, and three other groups I'm in got hit by the same person within seconds of each other. As much as I feel sorry for the people whose accounts are hacked to do this, they've only got themselves to blame for clicking that link and then actually logging into their SL account... on a website that's not even an SL one. More fool them for not taking a second to read and realise that Marketplace is NOT at cx dot altervista dot org

Also, I suggest joining the Catwa Head Friends group. If you have any more issues with your head, they'll be more than willing to help.

I still remember very clearly logging in for the first time after Windlight. Daros and I went to some random water region that had a pier with a beach house on the end of it, and spent ages staring at the glistening water and wispy clouds. It was gorgeous. I still love that moment right at sunset where the light turns water a brilliant hot pink for a few seconds.

Gotta say this, Rhonda. You always (well, at least when you're in vanilla mode and not being all demonic-like ) look so classy and elegant. You have a great sense of style - classic and understated - and it always draws my eye.

Like most others in this thread, I would ditch the mesh head and keep the body (although, since I wear Slink, I'd also be keeping the hands and feet). I'm a relatively new convert to mesh heads (the last three or four months), but I've worn my mesh body for two and a half years and I wouldn't want to get rid of it now. I really love the two mesh heads that I currently have, but I've noticed that it's much harder for me to achieve certain looks with them that I often created with ease on my system head.

I'm not sorry!

Second look for the day, since I was wearing that other one practically all bloody week while I worked on it Every now and then I give a makeover to one of Skell's personas. Today it was Rockstar's turn, because I felt like leathering up. Every time I get long black hair and my leathers on, I feel like I've come home. Credits Hair: Exile - Future Outcasts* Sunglasses: ZOOM - Aviator Classic (petroleum) Vest & Tank: Kitt Ragu for :K: - Trucker Vest Homme (black) Pants: Lapointe & Bastchild - Swear "Harness" Leather Pants Bracelets: Body Factory - Hazard Bracelet (black) Skin applier: Avenge - Matthew (peach) Nail appliers: Odd Eyed Cat - Claws Base Slink Nail Polish Beard applier: CDC Creations - Beard 46 Catwa Tintable Tattoo applier: DAPPA - Merk Tattoo Head: Catwa - Daniel Body: Slink - Physique Male Hands: Slink - Dynamic Male Poses: Diesel Works *review copy

Well, the ad has just been sent to me, and it's just gone out in group notices today, therefore I can now reveal the full look that took me hours to put together, mainly thanks to the hair. The brief was "Luke Evans, as he looks in Dracula Untold" and this was my reference image. I already had the face pretty much down, but added some age detail as well. The hair, though, practically gave me conniptions. I eventually found two hairstyles, each of which had part of what I needed, so I wore them both and edited them down into a single style. That took me two and a half hours, because one of them was a very long unisex style, but I think it was worth it in the end. The brief was also "shirtless", since the ad is for a necklace, so I didn't worry about finding any armour The pics below are my own, not the one for the ad, and they don't feature the necklace. Since I'm not sure if I can post the ad here, this is a link to it on my Flickr. (It feels rather odd to see my face so brightly-lit, since I usually prefer darker images - heh.)

What Alwin said. The thing about using a HUD to throw out the same few phrases and gestures every couple of minutes is that the people who have been in the venue for more than half an hour will have seen them all time and time again. And that gets very boring and irritating. The point of being a host is your personality. Have you ever been served in a store by a checkout assistant who's clearly bored out of their skull from reciting the same script a hundred times that morning? (Many large stores have checkout scripts, as anyone who has worked in retail will tell you.) - "Hello. Did you find everything you were looking for? Do you have our loyalty card? That'll be [amount]. Thank you. Have a nice day." Contrast that by recalling if you've ever been served in a store by a checkout assistant who's clearly got the same script, but deviates from it a little, remarking positively on your purchase, smiling and adding their own personal touch to that script - "Hi there. Did you find everything you wanted today? Oh, what gorgeous flowers! Your garden's going to look beautiful this summer. Do you have our loyalty card? That'll be [amount]. Thank you. Have a lovely day, and I hope the weather holds so you can get those beauties into the garden!" It takes just a couple of seconds longer, it still adheres to the store's requirements for the script, but it personalises the transaction. It makes the shopper feel like a valued customer rather than just another sale. The same thing holds true in an SL club.

Throwback Thursday This week it's April 2014.

You're not the only one. I always end up laughing at myself, because when I get that shot, I usually blurt out to myself "Aaaaand THAT'S the money shot!"

What I took away from Lillith's response to your question was "This appears to be an occasional problem with that head. While there may be some random person here on the forum who can tell you how to fix it, you'll probably receive better and more timely advice if you go straight to the creator and/or their support group", rather than "We know about this but we're not allowed to say anything". In short: common sense. If you're having an issue with a product, contact the maker of that product or their support option before you ask a random bunch of people if they know how to fix said issue.

It is. I absolutely love the underlying skin of that look, but I've had to add even more to it to get it like that. Putting together a look like this one requires no small amount of cursing, effort and finagling with appliers. Just in that cropped image alone I have: a mesh head, a skin applier, rigged eyes, eye appliers, brow appliers, age detail applier, hairbase applier, and mesh hair. I've also got a facial hair applier on, which I'm not showing here. Getting all of those to play nicely with each other on the different layer options of the mesh head is why I've got the bloody thing ready well in advance of the shoot! That starter image is pretty much SL as it was when I started, and while we looked awful compared to today I wouldn't swap for anything the wonderment I experienced during those early years as I discovered everything about this place.

I do have my moments, although I usually have to lie down for a while afterwards... I tried several variants, since I'm usually fussy about how I block my colours (on the rare occasions when I wear them). I tend to top-and-tail (hair and footwear) or accent (hair and accessories) when it comes to colour. With the top also red, the colour of the boots was off-balance: red hair, red top, red pants, black boots. Even with the beetle jacket being black, it didn't look right. As to how I look today, I can't show all of it since I've got my avatar ready for Friday's photoshoot and I probably shouldn't spoil it. However, since I've had to age Skell a little and make him more rugged (lordy, I should hand in my pretty boy card after this - lol!) I can give a teeny sneak preview of his eyes and furrow-y forehead (Yes, the image is fully-loaded. That's all you're gettin'!)

Hehe! I'll admit the giant beetles gave me pause, but it's the kind of thing Mother Monster would wear, so I thought hell with it, I'm wearing 'em.

I'm channeling my inner Little Monster today. Paws up for Mama Gaga!

This is one of the many reasons why I refuse to recommend TMP. You don't actually have money left over. You have credits left over. The actual leftover money is sitting in the pockets of the TMP people, and you can't get it back.

Yep! When I first tried them on I felt as if Skell was clawing at his face and screaming "GET IT OFF ME!" When Bento came along, I tried one or two heads, but then Catwa released 'Daniel' and that was it. I had some initial WTF moments when I realised that you can't just put a mesh head on over your usual shape and expect it to look good (I looked like one of those videos where babies are given lemons to eat) but once I put on the included shape, edited the body sliders to be my usual ones, and then started playing around I was happier with it. I now own two Catwa heads and have already put in my request for a more androgynous one to be considered.

I gave up trying to recreate Skell's original face shape, to be honest. Kind of funny, really, after all the ranting I did about mesh heads before I finally succumbed to getting one

Signature Gianni isn't all that new. It was released in February 2016. If newness is the reasoning behind recommendation then I would expect everyone to be falling over themselves to recommend Belleza's Jake body, since that's the latest one on the market. Much of this Signature Gianni recommendation that I see in the groups I'm in tends to come from women. I suspect it's more to do with the fact that men are mostly regarded as wanting a quick-n-easy option when it comes to looking good in SL, and Signature does offer that in at least two respects: It's a full body complete with hands and feet; no need to purchase those separately It's one of the two male bodies that currently have the most body-specific fitted mesh created for it (Slink being the other, although Belleza is catching up) and non-Omega body-specific skin and tattoo appliers (the reasoning here being that Omega relays are just one more thing that the 'average guy' probably doesn't want to fuss around with) In short: for the "I just want to chuck on a body, add a few clothes, and that's it" crowd of guys, Signature is an obvious recommendation. On the other hand, the guys who tend to recommend Slink are the ones who are willing to spend a bit more time actually dressing their avatar as opposed to putting on jeans and a t-shirt and some footwear (if that makes sense). Personally, I will always recommend based on the answer to one question: "What kind of build do you want your body to have?" For most guys that's pretty important, moreso than how easy the body is to wear. If the answer is "I want something as close to TMP as I can get it" I'll recommend Slink, because it's lean but can be given broad shoulders and slim hips. Right now, it's the best option to recreate the TMP build. As a sidenote: I've seen some guys refer to the Slink body as "stick-thin", which is absolute bull. You can add up to 5% body fat to the Slink body and make it look pretty built. Take a gander at Nigel Riel's blog to see how good he and his partner can make that look. As to other answers: Soft and slim ("metrosexual") = Adam Lean and slender with optional muscle ("swimmer's torso") = Slink A little more muscle than Slink = Belleza Jake Middling-muscular build ("young prizefighter") = Signature Gianni Very built ("Muscle Beach") = Niramyth Aesthetic

I recommend that you do, yes. Regardless of whether fewer designers are creating for TMP or not, the fact that the body will most likely be rendered completely useless if (or, rather, when) they switch off their external servers is reason enough to find yourself a current mesh body that's being regularly updated and created-for.