Shopping in Second Life, Part 1

OK, Im not the expert on shopping by any means. Actually, I dont actually buy a whole lot of things. But the few things I bought, I spent a lot of time checking around and trying out $1L Demos.

First, I have a pet peeve about item permissions. If you are a vendor, please listen: I need Copy/Mod rights to all items I buy. Ill take just Copy rights. I do NOT need Trans rights. Instead, most vendors provide Trans and no Copy/Mod. This really screws up my wallrobe system, since I make lots of copies of things like shoes and jewelry so I can just drop an entire outfit on me. Look, I buy the item for personal use. I dont steal your secrets/textures/etc or plan on reselling the item. But if I can only put it in my inventory once, I can only use it in 1 outfit. That wont work for me :(

Here are the items I bought and where I got them:



1. Skin
This is the biggy. This separates the oldies from the newbies. This makes you a real SL resident (or gets you ready to work for a strip club).

I like to look as realistic as possible. This is hard to do, since SL texture maps are 512x512 pixels max. You can only get so detailed in that amount of pixels.

Also, I like a good skin tone, nice face, and nice neutral makeup. I dont like the cartoon or super-goddess look. You dont need to look like you had cosmetic surgery to look good in SL. Everyone looks good here. But its harder to look real :)

I know its not easy to make a skin. It takes art, skill, patience, and lots of texture uploads to get a skin right. But some people manage to pull of some beautiful skins.

There are skins that sell for $4000L and up. Really fancy ones with six pack stomachs, knuckle details, and probably realistic...bits. None of which I really care about, because Im not planning on stripping. I want good skin tone, nice face, and makeup.

I use Celetial Studio's Passport skin (SLURL: Celestial City (36,219,26)). These are their older skins, and they lack some of the above mentioned stripper details. If you plan on stripping, you should look into another line of skins. But I love the facial details and the makeup on the Passports. And they go for $1000L, which is reasonable. You can get a freebie version of the Passport skin at Free Dove (its labeled "CS Passport Skin - Malibu/Brown").



2. Hair
This is my current addiction. And Gurl 6 is my dealer (SLURL: GuRLyWood (110,111,22)). Gurl 6 has prob the largest selection of hair under one sim. Theres so much there, I get dizzy after a while from looking at all the hairs under that Betsy Johnson decor. This is the ultimate temple of hair.

Gurl 6 does flexi prim hair right. In most cases, her hair doesnt look like you have a bunch of rods stuck to your head. Her flexi is nice without overdoing it to crash the servers. And she has nice hair textures and colors.

I like longer hairstyles that go down in the back (not the styles that go up into some fancy configuration). Im a brunette in RL, but I normally use black hairstyles in SL, since black textures look best in SL. Also fewer people use black hair (most are blondes and reds). I like to stand out by being normal. :)

Incidently, I started using blonde hair when I do role-playing. This helps me separate fantasy from virtual reality. OK, whatever...



Heres me with my Dance hair for those Salsa clubs and pose balls.

Gurl 6: if you are reading this, can I get some free hair, please, please please? I promise to plug you guys! ;P