Avatar Cosplayer Creates Tracer of Overwatch By Recycling Second Life Parts

Tracer SL cosplay by Alexandria Brangwin - see high res version here 

Avatar-based cosplay has been popular in Second Life since the world started, but the introduction of mesh into SL has somewhat spoiled the fun, since it's not uncommon to find unauthorized 3D models that have been ripped and plopped right into the world. Where's the challenge in that? Longtime gamer and SLer Alexandria Brangwin, however, created this truly impressive Second Life cosplay of Tracer from Overwatch the old-fashioned way:

"There are a lot of pre-made full avatars on the Marketplace but they often suck really bad," as she tells me. "They're scanned or lifted from other game files so they miss a lot of fine detail and end up looking very low quality -- even have no animations, no bento hands, not even eye movement... death to the project if you're trying to achieve specific poses." 

So instead, she went virtual world dumpster diving through Second Life's massive library of content looking for parts to recycle:

"[A]fter some practice you learn the keen senses of a thrift shop scrounger, like any real world cosplayer," as she puts it. At right, some of the elements she pulled from random Second Life content, to reconvert into Tracer:

"You look at shapes, ones that start almost near your goal and can be shaped later.

"Base layers that are full perm so you can [customize] color and texture, props and parts you can turn all which way to form armor from plumbing parts, freebie hair (in this case it was low poly enough to look cartoonish)."

In the end, she ended up with a Tracer that at first glance, looked to me so much like the original from Overwatch, I first assumed she had been Photoshopped in. But no, she tells me, this is Tracer in Second Life, made completely from Second Life items:

 

Tracer is just one of many avatar cosplay characters Alex has created -- see her Flickr for much more.

"I think it's the changing nature of our media landscape," Alexandria Brangwin tells me, explaining for inspiration. "Kids today don't recognize the same heroes of our stories we did. When you want to parody/tribute something it's easier to do something everyones heard of."

Which includes, yes, Second Life-based Fornite:

Comments

[Anonymous]

Bullshit. It's ripped model.