Friday, September 9, 2011

Skin Drama (Sweetie Speaks)

The following is a repost of a comment Sweetie made on my piece about Second Life skins.

Written 8 September, 2011

Skin Drama!
One thing I notice about many of the skins, even the one that are drawn, is stage makeup. I find the photosourced skins repellent and I see very few painted photosourced skins that disguise the joined photo sections well enough to suit me. I eschew photosourced clothing and  building textures for the same reason.

What bothers me more than photosourced skins (as opposed to painted/drawn skins) is that on so many skins the shading is made for overexposed light sources.

It isn't that the eye make up is heavy or the lips are dark. I'm talking about the contouring of the skin being overwrought like the false shadows and highlights you use to overemphasize a character's features on stage.

The highlighting on the cheekbones are a full shade lighter than the skin and the hollows of the cheekbones a full shade darker. The shading is mirrored in the highlight and shadows on the breasts, the abs, the bottom, and even areas like the thighs and knees.

I look at these young avatars and the contouring on their skins is so heavy it is as if they're ready to step out center stage and play a character fifteen years older.

Why do they look so harsh to me? Because I live in an SL without windlight skies.

I know you're thinking "OMG, Sweetie, how can you deprive yourself of such beauty?!" But while you're thinking my frames per second are like 100 so i can Snicker-Snack with my vorpal  Katana, a blur of speed, can relieve my enemies of their over-highlighted heads before they can finish that thought, my laptop will barely get me into Second Life. To the same ninja ends, I also don't wear a nuclear face light so my enemies can hunt me down from three sims away.

So to look beautiful to myself (and really, who else can be harder to impress?) I stick to the older skins that don't look as if they'd fit in a Houri's with Abs! review and I let my Katana give off all the highlights it wants.

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