Sn@tch~Slick Leggings

So it all started with the leggings.

It had to start with something, right? So basically, it came down to the fact that I just wanted to rawk something awful. Lots of coffee maybe. I don't know. Every once in a while I come onto SL with just WAYYY too much energy and I load the IPod with lots and lots of rawk. Then, naturally I attack my inventory, looking for just that right thing. Wow, look at that! Slick Leggings from Sn@tch and Ivey Deschanel. Awesome. Bring it on.

Hmmm... what else... well, okay, put on my Dark Drow skin from Snowflake, and of course THAT skin just goes so well with my neko ears and tail, which go awesome with the Kagami hairstyle (including cap) that I blogged the other day. Well, this outfit sort of builds itself, huh? Hmmm... what else? Ohhh, of course my fave belt at the moment which ALSO happens to be from Sn@tch, the Oblivion Bondage belt and then let's add the Evangeline choker and some bracers from Cipher. Hmmm, oh! Black Bolt halter from Renegade and let's go!!

Sn@tch's Slick leggings are just that, Slick. Slick sexy and slick cool. Love them, and ooo an excuse to put on my Dirty Ego shorts from Sn@tch too. Geez, there's actually a lot from there...

Ivey's new leggings are lovely, with some nice hand drawn details texturing the leather and zippers, and the prim flares are easy to mod.

So yah, Sn@tch rawks. Check it out.

Sn@tch Slick Leather Leggings and Oblivion Bondage Belt

[Renegade] Black Bolt Halter

Snowflake Skins Dark Drow

Sadistic Hacker Kagami (purple/black)

.+*Cipher*+. Strap Choker++Evangeline++ (black)

Philotic Energy and Silver Wheel~Stuffs and Stuffs

I'm not even sure how to start here. I wanted to talk about how a look might evolve. Y'know, sort of a step by step from the whole digging through your inventory to actually making decisions on what to use for the day. There was going to be a whole paragraph on picking and changing, taking an hour to decide on an outfit, that sort of thing. How does this hair look with this skin? Hmmm, which makeup? Wings?

I take forever to get ready some days. Ok, so some of it has to do with my horribly messy inventory. It can take a while to sort through some of it. Add in sometimes just trying to remember the name of something so I can search it and pull it up too, and you've lost at least 20 minutes there. I don't know which takes longer, actually... the search when I know exactly what to wear or the search when I have no idea at all. Even just a little bit more stressful when I've got a blog post to write up (just one more of those 'grrr' moments I give myself.)

Every once in a while though, the planets will line up and something really cool happens. Maybe call it synchronicity; it's that time when you've got just enough of an idea and somehow your inventory seems laid out beautifully in front of you.

It started with Silver Wheel's new piercing from designer Arianrhod Gehlbard. Puncture comes as one piece with a nose ring, lower labret and vertical lower labret spikes. VERY easy to mod, and really lovely and simple. No bling here at all, which is nice, but then again this is a no bling blog.





So I had this piercing, what next? Ohhhh, Philotic Energy's Delphini, of course. Actually, I bought this the other day when I started playing with some lovely angel wings from DBS. Oh, y'know, I was wandering the store, not really looking for anything. There it was, Delphini, and the first thing that pops in my head is 'oohhh, my WINGS'. It works, and Aemilia Case has a lovely selection of punky sexy styles.

The rest just happened, I guess. I've been addicted to my Snowflake Skin for the last few days for some reason, and the lips worked so well with Puncture I had to keep it.

Either way, it worked. The experiment is complete. Oh, wait, that would have been in reference to a post from my original idea. The 'experiment' thing. Yah, I was going to go into a thing on experimenting with styles and compositions, about how Second Life is beautiful because of its potential. Whatever, don't worry about it.

Anyway. Go. Enjoy. Landmarks to follow.

Worn:
(Silver Wheel) Puncture

Philotic Energy Delphini (Jet Black/White Tips)

*Snowflake Skin* Dark Drow

DBS Angelical V Wings

Exxess Designs~Wild Thing

I've always had a short list of designers whose work I really really liked, but just never got around to actually owning anything. You know, sometimes the $L balance is too low, or maybe you just aren't in a shopping mood. Or maybe you ARE in a shopping mood but just not for that thing today.

I'd heard of Exxess Designs before the Digital Alchemy Nile fashion show a couple months back, but I'd never really gotten a close up look at anything from Exxess designer Layja Vidor. The show was a success, and I loved her 'Nepthys' look so much I just had to have it. Exxess moved to my short list of 'must see more' after that show, and finally I got around to visiting again about a month ago.

What a lovely shop, so much cool stuff. I wandered around, tried some of the hairs and looked at all the shiny prim outfits on display. I finally decided on 'Wild Thing', dropped some $L and scurried off to play.

So, let me start by saying first, I really loved this outfit. Okay, out of the box, I loved it...BUT, ahhh, well, there were a lot of prims to mod. I'm used to it, of course, I don't think there's much in SL that doesn't require at least SOME tweaking, right? Some outfits are harder to mod than others though... maybe you can't shrink it anymore or something just doesn't match up. Anyway, it happened with me for Wild Thing. Ohhhh, but no problem at all, because Layja Vidor includes a notecard in her folder that gives information on how to have your new and lovely Exxess outfit customized to fit just you! April was nuts, so it took me a month to send over my measurements and proof of purchase to Layja via notecard. It was a lovely exchange, and Layja sent me my now fitted outfit really within a day. Wow.



It was perfect, and a lovely service from Layja for her customers.

On to the outfit. The primmy belted skirt and tassles are really lovely and very realistic, and with custom fitting there's nothing that cuts through my AV when my pose changes. Wild Thing comes with boots, legband, belted mini, bikini bottom and top, and awesome prim wristbands. Schmexy, tough and really well made, perfect for a night on the prowl...

Worn:
Exxess Designs Wild Thing

Snowflake Skins Dark Drow

[Detour] Rawr! White Mix

Elixir~Latex Dress Uniform

Minx fun fact: I'm kind of a movie freak.

I mean, probably not as big a freak as some people; but, my room mate and I like to sometimes have movie nights and invite a ton of people over. Y'know, margaritas in the blender. Popcorn. Snacks. The whole thing. We like to watch a pretty wide range of genres too: scary movies, comedy, science fiction, even kung-fu stuff sometimes. We'll do subtitles even, but we usually avoid really sad dramas and serious ones. I like them, and so does my room mate, but those we'll watch usually with a smaller crowd. It's a party, right?

So, yah.. movies. I like to compare Second Life to movies sometimes, it's a pretty short jump really. The whole visual narrative thing I guess. While, yes, sometimes SL can be almost a bad porno, there's plenty of room for space opera too. That's what jumped in my head when I saw Elixir's latex 'Dress Uniform'.

These are really my favorite types of outfits to blog. Costumes, looks that put you someplace else... looks that conjur up worlds and fantasies. Looks that make a story. Khorus Magne's latest does just that, and does it well. The latex texture is lovely, but the real star of this one is the cool epaulets and sashes that really make this something interesting to play in. There's optional particle effects for the shoulder attachments too, so you can get a real glowing sci-fi thing going on too. It's awesome. I mean, I don't know what it's for exactly, but who cares! It's still a lot of fun.

So suit up and go explore that alien planet. Make sure to watch out for the carnivorous plants and the mysterious indigenous lifeforms.

I'll make the popcorn.


Elixir Dress Uniform

*Snowflake Skin* Ebony-Burgundy

Sadistic Hacker Ciel (Gold)

*Snowflake Skins* Battle Angel and Dark Drow

I think that how we each decide to define Second Life has to do with what we bring into it. Coders and programmers might look at the metaverse as kind of a technical exercise. Video gamers might see it as a huge game. Artists might use SL as a new forum for their work. We can be whoever we want, of course, but who we want to be comes from where we started.

I've always seen SL as a sort of story machine. I never played video games too much and I don't have any technical expertise at all, but I've always been a reader and a movie freak. I've even been known to pick up a comic book or two. So, when I found myself in a world where pretty much everyone communicates in text in a really interesting visual landscape, well, movies and books were the only real experience I've had that even came close.

We're all really in a story, whether you look at it as a video game or comic book or whatever. Even you strictly business types get to play a role, since you pretty much have to accept it on some level; especially when chatting land prices with an 18 foot tall dragon or neko cyborg.

There are a lot of stories in SL. We've got our Star Wars sims and Gorean sims, you can play as a knight in shining armor or a futuristic bounty hunter. Each sim has it's own theme sometimes with pieces inspired by if not outright borrowed from someplace else. For the immersion, well, we've got designers making skins, attachments, weapons, hairs, accessories and everything to make the world a little more real.

Snowflake Skins aren't all that new to the metaverse, Snowflake Chaika's creations have been inworld since 2007 at least, but they still deserve mention as beautiful and imaginative examples of adding to the story of Second Life. What's interesting about Snowflake isn't their realism, these aren't haute couture runway skins. These are skins straight from the world of anime. Tones, shading and makeups are straight from the painted pages of your fave mangas, and if you're a fan of the genre, these are the skins for you.

What's really cool about these skins is that while more 'traditional' skinmakers have seen their work sometimes maybe fail under the increasingly realistic glare of the latest and greatest windlight viewers, Snowflake's won't. Realism isn't the point here. The Battle Angel and Drow skins are beautiful because they're so unreal, not in spite of it.

Snowflake Chaika also has a shop called Bleach with some anime inspired hairs to add to your look. Not a huge selection but what is there is really quite nice too.

So enjoy! Pop in your Akira DVD and log in. Snowflake Skins are gorgeous examples of just another possibility in everyone's favorite metaverse.

Worn:

Pic 1:

Skin: Snowflake Skins Battle Angel (light tan)

Hair: Bleach Apocalypse (Black)

Bodysuit: Graves G87 V-Body


Pic 2:

Skin: Snowflake Skins Dark Drow

Hair: Emo-tions Wildlife Hair