Janet Voxel

No I’m saying since you’re claiming those sims are based off of rap culture ;back that up with some evidence. But since you can’t, it makes your point moot. Because it doesn’t, until you can provide evidence of that your statement is an opinion. Which is why I asked you is that how YOU see it.

And while we’re at it what does a redneck sim have to do with race play? I didn’t know there were sims devoted to rednecks, could you link me to one?

I never said it did represent all black people. The op was about race play, I was responding to that. But since you think those sims portray a rap culture style can you name for me one rap song that talks about the rapper raping and abusing women, white women in particular? I’ll wait....just give me one. again....the analogy doesn’t work.

Really? Is that how you see that?

I think the future is going to be AR (augmented Reality) not VR. LL might’ve backed the wrong pony on that one. I’ve been leery of VR since I was a little girl. Back in the day, Nintendo came out with Virtual Boy. I know it probably wasn’t true virtual reality, but I was about 10 or 11 when it came out. I got to play with it for about an hour. It gave me the worst headache I ever had in my life. I never forgot that, it was the first migraine I ever had. People are aware of VR’s limitation. Until it overcomes the motion sickness and headaches, I’d feel much more comfortable with something like AR.

Also, I’m not quite sure an analogy of being called a redneck equates to race play. It’s like the difference between being in and uncomfortably warm room and receiving a second degree burn. They both have to do with warmth, but they aren’t the same thing. The difference here is one is a little ignorant and contains about 5 minutes of banter. The other deals with people making WHOLE sims depicting a whole race as cromagnon looking troglodytes with extra long *****es who prey on women or are women that are completely, dominant and hate men. Somehow, I can see how one of those isn’t that big a deal and nothing to get butthurt over and one could be absolutely triggering when seen.

Sometimes it’s all about understanding where someone is coming from.

I think the issue more so is playing negative stereotypes of other races. Some examples I’ve seen over the years (these are for real too) that could be considered offensive: An avi named Cornbreesha. Profile of a neck poppin hoochie-mama. I'll say no more. This one is my favorite, because it was so weird I really didn’t know how to feel about it. One day I’m shopping and I get a random im. The woman standing next to me is asking where I got my outfit from. I tell her and we chat for a bit. I open up her profile and it’s got a male avatar for a profile pic. Hmm....so I read the rest. It was a little story. The avatar was a soft spoken man, kind of a pushover until one night he got bitten by a black woman. So now at night...he transforms into a black woman.(It wasn’t night btw) Now he’s strong, confident....sexy. So I picked his brain a little. That was how he saw black women and he wanted to know how it felt. Can’t be mad at that....can I? So yeah...it depends on how it’s done.

I’d say that’s an upgrade, Darius!

It looks like you have an applied from another outfit there. Nothing to panic about. Try turning off your layers and see what happens.

It’s funny this came up. I just helped an old friend put together an updated avi after his long absence. We spent the whole day doing it the other day and I have to admit it was kind of fun. We started with the bodies: Slink, niramyth and Jake. He went with Jake because it wasn’t too big or too small. He beefed it up a little from default but I thought it looked really good. The bonus here is you can grab an outfit right there. i’ll leave the heads out for the most part. He tried AK and Catwa. Catwa has the most support by far. So if you go that route later keep that in mind. Though if Genesis Lab made more male heads, I would have recommended that to him. I knew there was a men’s event from Seraphim SL, so I took him there. They had some casual stuff that was season appropriate and Belleza has a lot of support. So in the end, he ended up looking way better. We still need to get him a good AO. The one he has is very animated. He did want a suit too, we were both pretty exhausted after all of that. So my suggestion is to get three pairs of jeans: Dark blue, light blue and black A couple sweaters and a couple T-shirt’s whatever style you like. Slacks: black and brown and two dress shirts whatever color you like. get a pair of dress shoes black and brown, a pair of boots and a pair of sneakers. That should cover a basic wardrobe for you!

Yeah, but see here’s the thing. If someone is going to rip something, they’re going to rip it regardless of whether they have rigging info and skin weights. That’s not even going to slow them down. If someone who is up to no good wants a kit, they’re going to get the kit without applying for anything. The only thing that stifles is other creators. There are certain things like “established” , only gives the kit to “quality creators” that’s all subjective, because again...who’s judging that? The only people that kind of process is going to stop is going to be people trying to do it the right way. At the end of the day people are always going to take the road of least resistance. It’s human nature. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, and Belleza is hands down the best female mesh body. But why isn’t it the best selling body? Why doesn’t it have the most support? Because Maitreya made everything much easier: easier for the shopper and the third party creators. It all starts with creators wanting to support you. When you create obstacles to your product you start to create problems for yourself.

Simple business sense says you want your customers to feel like they are getting more value from your product. Everything LL does should have that concept in mind. They should be doing things to MAKE people WANT to be premium. Not go ‘meh....’

Increasing the land allowance might’ve had the bonus of more people signing up for premium too.

My biggest disappointment is how antisocial and uncreative SL has become. The days where people would just hangout and talk in world are gone. Meeting new people was much easier and fun. Now if someone you don’t know IMs you, it’s a pleasant surprise when it’s NOT something weird. You can’t even depend on the destination guide because people game them so hard, “popular” spots are empty. You even see profiles now that say “I don’t pay attention to local.” Wow! Mesh took out a lot of creative people. I’m all for mesh, love it. A lot of people didn’t adopt the change and either are still crying about it or just left completely. I’m not bashing mesh, but LL really should have done a better job of explaining or demonstrating that it not that different for building than working with prims and what the benefits are. As a result, SL is a little more cookie cutter in all aspects. LL let some of the social and creative aspects of SL slip away.

The problem with bodies outside of the “big three” is once you go outside of them, your clothing pool is quite small. Even though a couple of them have some great features (mod!). My suggestion is to join the EBody group and ask there.

Take a little look at Blenderella’s tutorials on YouTube. She has a entire series in modeling a mesh head. Blender is free and you’re sure to get what you want.

Spumoni!

There is a lack of selection and there isn’t for other bodies. I know that sounds funny so let me explain. Some fairs have rounds where the clothing is mainly Maitreya. But to be fair, sometimes it’s Maitreya and Slink or sometimes it will be Maitreya and Belleza. You’re right about the gatcha events. Some creators have machines for all three bodies. Some don’t say anything at all, but it’s always safe to assume it’s for Maitreya when it doesn’t.Then you have the creators that only make items for Maitreya. I won’t name them, but they’re known for making high quality items. The problem with this is it sends a subliminal message that quality is Maitreya. People are so impulsive at those events, when they see they can’t have something because they don’t have the right body, they’re going to go out and get the body that denied them. But you’re right, it’s not hard to find things for other bodies. That is if you know where to look. The thing is I think a lot of people only shop at events so they miss out on a lot of items.

You may need an omega kit for it. Hopefully it has an omega kit or activator.

Wow! That looks really awesome! I’m really tempted to get it just because of how photogenic it looks.

The best thing to do is to have the kit available to grab right from the mainstore. I don't know why some creators make this hard and have to go through a weird process just to get a kit. Successful creators make kits freely available. Often it's not the creator you have to deal with to get the kit, its another content creator who may or may not be the best content creator and it's in their best interests for competition NOT to have the kit. This happened to me years ago with a Slink CSR. 1) It streamlines the process and you don't have to wait for someone to be online and review your application. 2) Only people that want to make something would even be interested in the kit, so why not just let them?

The amount of choices are OK for Belleza. The problem usually lies with events like fairs. There’s been a couple times I went to a big fair like Collabor8 and 90% of the clothing was only for Maitreya. Usually though I don’t have that problem but it has happened. There are a couple of designers that I can’t wear because they are maitreya exclusive. Emory, Erratic and Foxes come to mind. But they all make things I can find elsewhere, so I do. The designer in me understands why so many designers only make clothing for one or two bodies. If you’re designing clothing by yourself modeling and rigging one item is time consuming enough. Let alone making adjustments for two or more other bodies, burnout is on the horizon. And let’s face it, putting out new items is how you stay relevant in SL. So I think designers stick with the popular choice. There are some fairs like one of those Fantasy fairs, the costumes are almost always for Maitreya. So you know what? I stopped going to those. And you know what else? Those fairs that cater to one body never seem as full as the other ones that cater to all the bodies. I think designers have keyed in on that for the most part. I think surveys have started this problem. One thing about surveys is they never take a sample of all of SL. They take a sample of people that tend to read blogs and those users tend to wear Maitreya because most bloggers tend to wear it. I blame surveys for this situation to begin with.

Ah ok, I got you.

I didn’t know we could list stores or I would have. I think since the op is a novice at avi making they should start with a shape. Since redbone can mean anything from light skinned black woman to mixed black woman there’s a lot of looks they could do. I can’t think of that many shape makers off hand, but the one that I do remember is Unified. Unified does shapes for all of the major bodies: maitreya, slink and Belleza. The only thing is her style cards don’t really tell you which skin she used, but op would have a good basis to work with and skin choice can really alter an avatar’s appearance. As far as skins, Itgirls is definitely a good choice. There’s also The Skinnery, Insol, Pumec, Milan. There are a lot of lesser known skin makers that make good skins for a redbone. As for bodies, I’d suggest Slink Hourglass or Belleza Freya. Those two would probably allow for what I think OP is looking for in a body type. Theres a thousand bloggers op could look at for style. I’d suggest someone like Volupturaptor Pearl or Coco Ranks. Its hard helping someone with their avi when you aren’t sure what they want. But OP should have a lot of choices from these suggestions. Good luck!