Ophelia's Gaze: 3 Secrets to a Sexy Second Life Avatar Shape

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

A couple weeks ago, Strawberry Singh stirred up the SL blogosphere with her avatar shape meme. Fashionistas including myself posted our avatar's virtual measurements, compared notes, and generated a lot of discussion about what goes into an attractive avatar shape. Much about beauty is subjective, but no matter what your tastes, I've got three universal tips to a more gorgeous avatar figure.

Fat Doesn't Mean Fat

There's a reason that when I shared my numbers I included "Body Fat", "Love Handles", and "Saddle Bags". These three features have a lot of unflattering RL baggage attached, but in Second Life they are absolutely vital for a flattering figure. They serve to fill in a lot of jagged an unpleasant areas of the avatar mesh, especially around the waist, hips, and joints. I can say without hesitation that I've never seen a female shape I liked that had these three categories zeroed out. Neglecting to put a little meat on your av's bones leaves them looking more like an insect than a human (not that there's anything wrong with insect avatars, as long as it's what you're actually going for.)

Keep reading for two more tips to shape up your shape!

Do Your Homework

While this won't quite apply to those going for a deliberately surreal shape, if you're designing a more or less normal human body consider looking up some anatomy and proportion resources for artists. It's tempting to just design a shape with no frame of reference (after all, you've had a human body for your whole life!) but we often misjudge proportions, particularly in regards to our heads and hands.

There are tons of resources, but this About.com article about adult proportions is a good start. Human body ideals vary depending on the style, so you should have an idea of your perfect shape in mind to find a scaling system that suits it. If you want a super-muscular frame, for example, you'd be wise to check out standard comic book character proportions.

Be Patient and Open to Change

I made my own shape when I started Second Life five years ago, and though I still technically use that same shape, it's been a constant work in progress. I've changed the hands, the hips, the chest, and most recently the lips, but even after all that I wonder if my avatar is too tall, if her arms are disproportionately thin, her legs too long... There is no such thing as a perfect shape, and a good shape is one that is perpetually being improved. Don't feel like you have to make your shape all at once and never change it again.

Additionally, don't feel tied to one shape. I have variations of my shape that I use depending on what I'm wearing: a shape with a flatter chest allows some hairstyles to fall better, a shape with a minimized read end helps keep system skirts from bloating my silhouette, a shape with slightly bigger lips helps keep Iris looking like Iris in certain small-lipped skins, and so on.

A final piece of advice: Making a "good" shape from scratch requires a lot of patience with a very fiddly system, and it's definitely not for everyone. If you opt to buy a shape just make sure that it's modifyable, so you'll still be able to make those little tweaks and changes as they occur to you down the line!

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Nalates Urriah]

Another shape thing I find people overlook is having a shape for skirts. One needs to shrink their usual butt and hips to something smaller to wear skirts and have them look right.

I have a modified copy of my shape just for use with skirts.

[Rowan Derryth]

I do that with the skirts too, the day I figured that out was a good one!

I didn't do the shape measurement thing, but I did have a peek at mine and compared. My body fat is at 10, and I get lots of compliments on the 'realistic' curviness of my look (my love handles and saddle bags are higher than average too). I am constantly disturbed at how thin most females look, and how beefed of most males look. It is fascinating.

[HALEY Salamon]

I dont do ANY THING to change MY shape with skirts I just have a big tush like in RL

[Tavish Flanagan]

Wonderful setting for the pictures that accompany the article!

[Aliasi Stonebender]

Kinda funny, my shape's body fat is 26, but my torso/leg muscle sliders are in the 80-90 range (as the shape is deliberately going for that comic superheroine look), which means nearly every bit of primmy clothing I buy has to be modified... or I do the outfit-specific shape thing mentioned here. It's a pain, but until we have an avatar mesh that can flex like real flesh, it's a necessary one, no?

[Annechen Lowey]

While I do not have a separate skirt shape (bustles are appropriate in most of the areas I frequent), I do have variations, such as a barefoot shape (because someone who is six feet tall does *NOT* have size 0 feet), one for modern dress, with a slightly thicker waist (because there isn't a corset imagined underneath) and still another for kimonos (that is a whole different foundation arrangement).

Still, my base shape is not quite standard in relation to the fashion ideals. The shape I wear on a daily basis was inspired more by Rubens than Vogue. Since I rezzed in 2007, I have only had two negative comments made to me about the shape, and one of those was an atrociously rude avatar that was 0 days old.

I still have to make adjustments to prim attachments, but I am willing to do so to maintain this identity. The fashion designers that provide a shape with their no-mod clothing do not get repeat business from me. I am not here to be their model.

(Goodness, where did that soap-box come from?)

[Seymore]

Ophelia's hot. just sayin'