skin fun

First some basic facts:
Basically a skin is the deepest texture layer of an avatar. Clothes, like shirts and trousers are covering this basic layer. T-shirts for instance are easy to make and cover the upper body.
Clothes can be taken off; the basic skin can never be pulled of. Skin is the most fundamental layer.
Even when a skin is replaced, it replaces the last one. No avatar is without skin; also this skin cannot be transparent. The most simple is the Linden skin layer.
So skins you can choose to wear are replacements of this basic layer.
Does everyone need a skin? Every avatar has a skin to start with. It is a basic model. Other free skins with features, make-up, tattoos, are easily found and freebies. “Opium” -skins are found everywhere, and are not bad.
When do you really need a skin: actually only if you plan to show it, that is if you don’t want to wear too much clothes! What is the point of buying an expensive skin, and then covering it with clothes?

Skins are different form “shape”, and the added features like eyebrows, beards and whiskers.

Normal skins: drawing and painted (by computer), abstractions of skins. Some skins are only partial, for instance upper body. These skins can be altered, in darkness lightness or color.
Photoskins: photoskins are based on real photos. This leaves the abstraction of an avatar a bit behind. Photo skins can be too real. Photoskins can have very convincing shiny effects, only turning around such a skin reveals that these gleams are fixed and parts of the skin, not reflection effects.
The third category: fantasy…try throwing a texture in the texture boxes for upper and lower body parts, this is great fun!


Colors:
When do you see the color of a skin: well, when you don’t have much on as clothes.
So with good prim hair (can be found free) and make-up (make-up too, it comes often as a part of free skins) a basic skin can be very sufficient, because you don’t see much of it.
But then showing yourself (haha what is yourself here?)
Going around in shorts or in tops which leave the shoulders free can already be embarrassing in a basic skin. The area of the neck and the décolleté are rather poorly represented. The subtle play of shadows fails quickly and gives nasty effects.

Adjusting the color. Trying to get “black”.
Going around tanned can be done by adjusting the top slider in the appearance menu of skins.
Some skins give the possibility of going really dark, but then there appears to be a problem: the whole detailing fails and the avatar looks like a dark blob on the screen: see the picture.

That might be the reason why the black African skin is not too much around in Second Life. Is Second Life an all white affair? That would be terrible! Asian skins are around, but these are mainly fair skins too. (The Asian effect resides also very much in the “shape” of course, the way the eyes are placed and the detailing of the face.)

So what about the African skin?
This idea of finding out about the darker colored skin became a small obsession. It is very difficult to find these dark African skins doing “normal” shopping. Also the Second Life finder doesn’t help much. The SLExchange finder neither.
White skins seem to be “normal”…???

Searching the internet gave me 2 clues, which were linked. Two blogs in which the same question was posed: what is wrong with wearing a dark skin?

Two problems: the first the one is already stated; the screen colors go very well with fair colored skins, the darker have this problem of becoming dull. (This is the same for movies and television.)

The second seems to be pure discrimination! Here are the blogs referred to:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2006/02/the_skin_youre_.html
http://brace-coral.livejournal.com/50040.html

Avery good reason to try to buy such a skin!
In the blogs there were references to shops. Only two shops offer well made real dark African black skins. (Although pretty good abstract skins are freely available too, but you have to search quite a bit for these darker skins.)

In the end 5 bought such a skin. A photoskin of Midnight at 1500 L$, wow!

The face is realy realistic, in contrast with the absract SL head. Ears for instance, hmmm maybe even too realistic. The specials are the shining surfaces, quite a lot of work for the designer to get this right! The features cannot be changed in the appearance menu, not darker lighter, etc. The shape can be changed of course, this textures always fits around.


Then 5 had a nice skin, what a problem!
5 always went around in a gothic outfit, which covered all of the body! As stated above, if you have a skin like that, you have to show it, wearing only a few well chosen articles…so the whole habit of clothing is changed by a skin!

Worse: a good, nice skin (real beauty) wants to show itself, it seems to have a will of its own. 5 never knew this before!

Actually, as could be foreseen, other things attached to the avatar, for instance the prim hair can make quite a difference too. As seen in the images a black skin becomes really African, when the head isn’t covered by a fancy hair piece.

To accompany this blog a difficult question had to be answered: how to show the differences between the skins? Well, not by showing only the face. Ok that is the reason for this general striptease!

5 is showing of in different skins, the names are covering some all to intimate parts (5 hopes) You can see clearly the difference between the skins, abstract, basic and photo. And then the influence of the hair and eyes can be appreciated. This being able to feel “a bit” in other persons skin is one of the most fabulous features of Second Life for me.

Last question: walking around in a black skin: is 5 discriminated? Not at all! Friends walking out on 5? Not at all!










Shops:
Offering the photo skin, also a couple of good male skins (see the upper part of the picture):
Chip Midnight: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Freelon/50/62/23
Offering an abstract, but very good skin: (below in picture)
Ayesha Bisiani: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20Within/120/139/28


















Bojana Vella showed me Allessandra Island,
with two great dark skins (1200 L$)

Later i found this shop: Archan, 990 L$ with shape included...