Second Life has New Avatars!
Unless you live under an SL rock you will know that Linden Lab, our illustrious leaders recently made a few significant new releases to both Second Life in the form of a new viewer and to the registration avatars which are also now in the library in everyones inventory. You can find these in Library > Clothing > Initial Outfits. There are 6 male and 6 female folders and included in these folders are clothes, skins, hair, shapes, sculpted shoes, accessories, jewellery and sculpted jackets.
Damen and I at Adam n Eve made all of these avatars and in fact many more which Linden Lab plan to swap in and out of the registration process over the coming months according to Petra Linden’s blog post here. There are just the two of us at Adam n Eve and this was a large job, made to a tight brief over a short period of several months. We are proud of our work and honoured to be asked to do this for Second Life where we have both devoted a lot of time, creativity and energy during our 5 years. We believe that having a nice starter avatar collection will encourage more people to stay beyond first impressions and get to know all the wonderful things about Second Life that we have enjoyed like the wonderful places to see and the incredibly diverse creativity of the designers that are the life blood of Second Life.
I’ve noticed a few questions cropping up here and there about the avatars so I’m going to answer what I can quickly here.
1. Are there ethnic skins among the new avatars?
Absolutely yes. In fact way back in 2007 when we worked on the library ‘girl next door’ it was originally my suggestion to have some ethnic skins and this is something I believe in strongly. SL, like real life, is a multi cultural world and this should be represented! Though it is impossible to represent everyone without making hundreds of avatars so we did what we can within the limitations of the criteria. I never make caucasion skins and ‘colour’ them for ethnic skins, I always do my best to represent people as thoroughly as I can and to the best of my ability. There is still more diversity in the other, as yet unseen, avatars that are mentioned in Petra’s blog post.
2. Why aren’t there any furries, tinies, robots, dragons, dinosaurs, donkeys, uncle Tom Cobley and all?
How long is a piece of string? Obviously we couldn’t make 3000 avatars to suit everyone in a couple of months. The brief was for mostly human because human are the most popular choices at registration. People don’t come to Second Life in one avatar and stay in that avatar for the next 10 years. They tend to find their own space and style over time. These avatars are to give players a decent start so they feel comfortable and can take their time to decide what ‘look’ suits them best.
3. Why do the avatar skins have painted on underwear?
The brief we were given was that the avatars wear modest underwear. I believe that the feeling behind it is that ALL players should be able to feel comfortable if they accidentally remove all clothes when new, as a lot of new players seem to!
I think this is reasonable because you don’t need to be naked to look nice in clothes or to explore Second Life. If you do wish to be naked, why not purchase one of the many beautiful skins we have for sale at Adam n Eve, or take advantage of the many products & freebies that are frequently offered throughout Second Life.
Originally I was going to make t shirts and boxer style shorts for all avatars but when I started to make clothing it was clear this would be limiting to necklines, straps, and sleeves throughout the avatars but more significantly for the female ones. So in the end the females were provided with a boob tube style cami top and shorts and the male with a vest style top and shorts.
Note about Skins: All of the avatars have skin colours that you can modify in appearance with the Sl sliders so that you can change the colour as much as possible to suit your own taste. When editing skin colour, remember to edit hair colour also or you can get a mark where the default eyebrows are. You have to match BOTH slider colours for best results.
4. Why do the shapes have similar proportions?
Part of our brief was that the clothing be interchangable between the avatars. Because there was a number of prim items of clothing and footwear we felt it made sense to size the avatars similarly though they are all different, so that clothing could be interchanged more easily than expecting new users to try the complex art of having to mod prims while still learning to walk!
Prim clothing items can appear bulky in world so the avatars are ’slim’ to balance this. However since everything is full perm anyone who wishes a plumper avatar and is willing to have a stab at editing any of the prims can obviously do this. Your world, your imagination after all!
5. Why Invisi prims with a new alpha layer in the new viewer?
We didn’t get access to the new beta viewer until a long time after these avatars were finished. We didn’t know about the alpha layers until after the avatars were mostly delivered.
6. Why you?
This is a question that I cannot answer as I wasn’t the one doing the choosing. All I can tell you is that we are a small team of 2 with fairly diverse avatar making skills and we can work quickly to a good standard of quality. We work hard, are flexible and can make skins, hair, clothes, and sculpted prim clothing items and shoes.
It is good for Second Life to look great when people join because then they will stay. They will explore and visit your land, shop in your shops! A nice start is good for everyone.
When I was new to Second Life this is how we looked and all we had. I think we’ve come a long way.
