Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
I never expected to truly fall for a mesh head, but since I wrote about her last November I've worn LOGO's Chloe [Marketplace] [SLURL] in the vast majority of my SL pics. I've become surprisingly attached to that face, in spite of the fact that other high profile fashionistas had taken to her just as strongly. We all managed to retain our individuality surprisingly well, but we were all also eagerly awaiting the follow-up face that Logo had been teasing alongside Chloe. And then, finally, it dropped. Last week LOGO launched their second hybrid mesh avatar, which features a slightly more refined face and a significantly more streamlined HUD system, named Sadie. Obviously I had to check her out for myself.
So how does Sadie stack up against Chloe? Is she a good upgrade for existing mesh head lovers? Will she finally convert the skeptics? Hhere's what I think:
Okay okay, so if you haven't spent as much time staring at Chloe as I have, the differences between these two faces probably won't hit you over the [mesh] head. She still comes with a skin and a recommended shape for the best blend and fit, along with several skin tones and skin options. For the most part, Chloe's features are all a bit larger and more rounded than Sadie's: her lips are plumper and softer, her eyes are more open, her brows are thicker, and I might be crazy but her nostrils also seem a bit fuller. Sadie is Chloe if Chloe's features were all filed down and sharpened. Or rather... If Chloe's the pouty Ingenue, Sadie's her shrewder, girl-fridayesque older sister.
The real difference with Sadie comes in her HUD, though. The HUD now has collapsible sections (I've collapsed the Eyeshadows tab in the picture on the right to demonstrate) which makes it much less obtrusive. Better still, makeup upgrades which you can buy seperately come as scripts that you drop into the HUD itself to add new options, rather than having to wear three or four more HUDs on your screen.
Sadie's HUD also has plenty of new options. In addition to everything Chloe had plus hairbases (which weren't released with Chloe but came in a later update) there are lots of beautiful glossed and matte lip options, new eye makeup, brand new high-resolution eye add-ons, fun new expressions, and even 15 seperate locked eye positions. As usual, Sasy Scarborough's got a very detailed write-up on her blog if you want to know more of the technical aspects.
I've had a lot of fun with the two raised eyebrow expressions that come with Sadie in particular, since Chloe didn't have many "cheeky" faces to use. I've also found a little expression bug that I've had a lot of fun exploiting: If you select a raised eyebrow expression on the HUD and then quickly select another expression with a more neutral eye-shape, sometimes the raised eyebrow will stick and you'll get a combination of the two expressions. Of course if you don't want that, just click the expression you want a second time and everything's fine, but this is something I've been using to get an even wider range of expressions than are in the HUD. You might also be able to get similar results if you detach and reattach different sections of the head while using the HUD to assign different expressions to each if the other method doesn't work for you, but I haven't tested this method out myself (so I might be completely wrong.)
... Or I suppose you can just stick with the vanilla options if you're not quite that adventurous. There are 12 expressions to choose from, so there isn't exactly a shortage of choice in the first place.
Just like with Chloe, every blogger seems to look just different enough in Sadie -- for example, even though Sasy and I chose the same hairstyle, our interpretations of Sadie are absolutely worlds apart. I linked to her coverage earlier in the post, but be sure to check out Gogo's and Sophia's posts about Sadie as well.
Personally, I'm not sure if I'll be retiring Chloe now that Sadie's out. I'm very used to Chloe's sweet pouting face, but Sadie's super-streamlined HUD and new options are incredibly seductive. I suppose only time will tell. Whether you love Chloe or you've yet to be convinced that mesh heads are for you, take a closer look at LOGO's Sadie [Marketplace] [SLURL]; you might find that she suits you better than you ever expected.
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TweetIris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, 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.
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