New World Notes

Cajsa's Choices: Seven Stylish Second Life Male Fashion Photographers

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

One of the most common complaints from men in Second Life is the lack of clothing and events that cater to them. Some defend the lack of options as the natural result of men’s disinterest in fashion, but that reflects a reality more than twenty years in the past and not the current reality where the growth in menswear outstrips the growth in womenswear. Men in SL are interested in fashion, and thankfully, there’s a cohort of talent male fashion bloggers to guide their way.

Ian Dark blogs at El Eterno Resplandor. His pictures are casual, slice-of-life photos–a man enjoying himself about town and SL. I like his attention to the background. His style is very casual and relaxed, but he gives his pictures life with well thought-out settings and vignettes with him surfing, playing basketball, and just having a good time.

Roy Mildor blogs at his eponymous blog. All his blogs are titled with inspirational quotes such as “Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent……!”  His photos are varied, from portraits such as this one to gorgeous black and white photo that opens this article. He is experimental, trying out different styles, black and white, color, and experiments with light, action shots, portraits. His photostream is fun and filled with variety.

Many more metaverse males below!

SL Fashion Bloggers Rarely Criticize Badly Optimized Products Because They Usually Get These Products for Free (Comment of the Week)

Good point from reader Myndy Heartsdale on why SL fashion/accessory bloggers rarely criticize products they blog for poor optimization and other technical flaws. Part of it is because they're mainly using these products for solo fashion shoots, but there's also a subtle incentive at play. As Myndy puts it:

One little thing that's not mentioned: many bloggers get the product for free, then they speak positive things of it; so far I have not seen a blogger criticize a product because of their possible issues.

"That is absolutely true," concurs SL blogger Chic Aeon:

"But bloggers DO HAVE A CHOICE in what they blog... It is OUR credibility on the line too. So when readers figure out that we blog everything from "deeigner VGY" even when there are obvious mesh issues, you can't move in it at ALL etc. -- then our fans have our number and likely won't be reading much of our musing in the future."

Chic's own blog has a good recent example of praising a new product (above) while also gently pointing out some issues:

Second Life Fashion Bloggers Don't Care About Optimized Products Because They're Mostly Used in Solo Fashion Shoots

Good point from reader "Seph", responding to my suggestion last week that Second Life's many fashion bloggers should point out when an item has poorly textured mesh or other problems, because performance is just as key a selling point as the way a product looks. Not so, Seph argues:

This is out of touch.

A Second Life product is much more likely to be bought for a blog post, a Flickr photograph or just to lounge around with at 10 FPS chatting or roleplaying than it is to have any use at 30-60+ FPS.

Second Life designers don't build towards the same use cases as videogame designers. Stop assuming ignorance where a much more obvious explanation exists. Designers don't build towards the debug panels they build for the THOUSANDS of blog posts and photos shared every week, not for the few situations where 60 FPS would be nice.

Now that Seph puts it that way, this sounds largely correct. The vast majority of SL-based images on social media seem to be fashion pics with a single avatar, usually taken in a virtual studio, sometimes with a RL backdrop (as above, randomly pulled from Flickr), and often with heavy post-processing. In other words, most avatar accessories don't really require optimization, because they're not typically used in contexts where optimization matters all that much.

Even if that's correct, however, I'd still say SL bloggers should point out bad optimization:

SL Avatar Body Survey from Top Fashion Brand Dominated by Maitreya

Mishi Akin, owner of the massively successful virtual fashion brand Blueberry, recently ran a survey among her subscribers, asking them which mesh avatar body they use.  2879 customers responded (a very impressive data sample), and the results (above) are striking:

They show an overwhelming preference for the Maitreya body sold by Onyx LeShelle. In Mishi's survey, respondents could choose more than one body ("they could choose all if they wanted to", she tells me), but even then, Maitreya was far and away the clear choice.

Her reason for conducting this survey also provides insight into the state of the Second Life avatar economy: "I check to see if another body rose in popularity more than the six I design for," she explains, "so I can optimize my products. For example, if a new body was more widely used than the least used body on my design list I would replace it with the new body."

She tells me she conducted a similar survey 2 years ago, and the top choices are unchanged from what you see above: Maitreya, Slink Hourglass and Physique, and Freya, Isis, and Venus from Belleza. Or to put it another away: Three SL avatar body brands overwhelmingly dominate the market. This is partly due to what's called vendor lock-in: Once you buy a product that's dependent on specific accessories, it's very difficult to switch to a competing product.

But why is Maitreya far and away the market leader? Mishi has a fascinating theory there:

Get Free, Full Permission, Bento Hand Poses for SL Avatars from Emiliana

Now that the SL grid seems to be stabilized after this week's epic DDoS attack, I can finally post about this free offer from Emiliana, one of Second Life's best and stylish fashion photographers: Basic but beautiful Bento-based hand poses -- free, and full permission. Click here to get them from her in-world store.

Created in Blender, Emi is offering them to replace the default poses. "There just seemed to be a need for them," she tells me. And really, they're just basic so I'd feel bad charging for them. I've bought a few cute hold-able things over the past few months only to find that there weren't Bento poses in them. I wondered if maybe they couldn't find any, so maybe this will help."

Of course, like the street and technology, Second Life finds its own uses for things:

A Decade of Virtual Fashion in Second Life, Documented by Strawberry Singh

From 2008 to 2018, Strawberry Singh has created a history of virtual fashion in Second Life, noting all the technical milestones which improved the graphics and physics of outfits along the way. (I'd also love to see an analysis of styles as they've evolved over the years -- maybe in a follow-up, he hinted.)

But what's Strawberry's own favorite year in virtual fashion?

Woman Gives Second Life Husband Youthful Makeover to Keep Up With Virtual World's Bias for Avatars Under 35

Alicia Chenaux just took fashion makeovers to an extreme, changing not only her SL partner's avatar appearance and wardrobe, but his age too. (Before and after above.) She breaks down every avatar accessory she bought to make that happen, and the final tab is pretty steep as far as virtual makeovers go:

So the grand total for everything… L$6380, or about $27 USD.

Totally. Worth. Every. Penny.

"Does changing his avatar change how you feel about him?" I ask Alicia.

"No, not at all," she tells me. "It's still him on the other side of the avatar."

Notably, Alicia reports, her objection to his avatar looking like a dude in his 40s or 50s wasn't about a personal bias for youthful beauty, but an acknowledgment of the Second Life avatar industry's bias toward the young:

The Blinking, Deus Ex Eyes of Ms. Arbenlow: Coming Soon to Second Life

Stare into the new eyes of Daeberethwen Arbenlow, and do not look away. They're inspired by Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one of her favorite immersive sim games: "It was a game with great characters and cool sci-fi concepts." (I'm also a fan.). The thing about these blinking, glowing eyes, is they're eyes anyone in Second Life can plug into their own avatar's eye sockets -- "ANATOMY cyber eyes", to be precise, available starting November 17th, for the big Remnant event (details going live later).

She won't precisely say how she made them, but hints a bit at her process:

Recovering from Hurricane Irma, Strawberry Singh is Back Creating SL Unboxing Videos

Strawberry Singh, Second Life vlogger supreme, just uploaded this new unboxing video, which is worth a watch, especially if you're into SL fashion subscription boxes. More importantly, this also means that Strawberry Singh, IRL a Floridian facing down Hurricane Irma, has emerged relatively unscathed.

"We have power and all is good," she reported some days ago. "Just been helping the neighbors a bit. Had some fallen trees around the hood, there are still many places that are flooded, many people that don't have power. We will try and volunteer and try and help where we can so won't be around for another few days."

Many other Floridians, of course, were much more impacted by Irma. Fortunately, Strawberry also created this long list of donation and support sites to help them.

Step-by-Step SL Photography Tutorial Turned Into an Animated GIF

Anya Ohmai is an awesome SL photographer who creates luscious images like the one above, and she just put her in-world photography and Photoshop post-processing techniques into a detailed, step-by-step animated .GIF tutorial -- cool technique as compared to the usual YouTube video. When you're on a PC or laptop to see it in full, go here to Anya's sight to view it. 

Also read more background on her Flickr page, and how her artistic process evolved as Second Life's technical features changed: