[D]oki [D]oki Jellies and Fate Eye Poser Goodness

One of the fun things about inventory sorting is the fun clothing combos which fall out when you shake an overfull folder! I don't know how long ago I got this adorable Jelly Mer set from [D]oki, but it is a lot of fun and can work with almost any body! Best of all, for me at least, there are five - count them five! - rainbowlicious options. The Jelly top is editable, so you can make it larger or smaller as you like, and the tail and added tendrils are all flexible and move slowly, gracefully, through water or air. I had difficulty picking one to show off! I paired it with half of an outfit from Violent Seduction, inspired by mermaids and perfect for pairing with fins or a jelly body! Adding in the fantastically tendrily hairstyle from Asset simply finishes my jelly-mer transformation, leaving me fit to dance above or below the waves! I really love how well rigged the long hair is - it moves naturally, and tolerates a lot of different poses.

Worlds of Pink and Gray

I always set myself higher bars for Fantasy Faire... and I always fall short! This year was no different, but as always I had fun and really adored taking pictures. Towards the end, I managed to sneak in some shots of the outfit I build before the Faire began, and one I quite enjoyed wandering around in! It's very monotone, but I had fun layering blacks and grays, and was proud I managed a degree of body coverage which is nothing short of remarkable; despite this, the look - I flatter myself - still looks quite sexy.

It's the latest release from FATEplay and FATEstep which my whole look revolves around. There are five color options but I went with the lightest one, a soft gray with brown accents primarily in the wonderfully slung ammo belt. It may not be immediately obvious, but the outfit is four pieces - the long pants which are cut to fit into boots, the ammo belt which is slung low and rigged to stay on top of the pants, the half top with its cunning buttons, and the mask, which tucks up over the lower part of the face, and tucks into the loose cowl of the top. The mask is deceptively simple; it seems to be made of two pieces: one which is a loose hood that catches over the mouth, which quite realistic wrinkles, and the second which is a very long, narrow scarf wrapped around the neck with the long ends flying out behind.

The mask is rigged to the face, neck, and chest but the long ends remain static, and offer a nice hint of movement in an otherwise static world. The top is similarly well rigged, with wrinkles around the elbow and upper arm which make the fit seem much more natural and helps conceal the awkward elbow joint which is the bane of so many creators! My favorite part is the cowl and buttons combination, with the buckling between the buttons and the curves as the cowl falls against the top. The pants also sport these wonderful wrinkles around the calf, as if the fit wasn't quite right. I'm really struck by how the wrinkles add verisimilitude, bunching appropriately against skin and making it seem as if skin and muscle lurk right below the layers of cloth. And the ammo belt is one of the first I've seen that sits well on the hips and seamlessly rides over the hips as I move - fantastic rigging, and a whole lot of fun to wear!

The boots are also from FATE, FATEstep this time, and have the enormous wealth of options available in all of his shoes. They are fit perfectly over the bottom edge of the pants with a three-band style around most of it except for the smooth back. Like the clothes, his shoes have a wonderful attention to detail. The smooth back starts at the zipper and ends under the long three bands down the side; the bottom band makes a complete circle. The bottoms of the boots are rough textured perfect for hiking and riding across abandoned wastes, or marching around the Fantasy Faire tracking dirt through thirteen sims. The final touch are the spurs - although at a distance they look like they are built into the boots, up close you can see that they are actually built as a separate piece, with bands over the top of the foot and along the base of the heel, and the thicker metal of the spur itself.

Everything is color changeable via HUD, and the HUD also includes several pre-set slots - including the gray arrangement I'm showing in these pictures. They are also highly editable - in fact all of FATE's clothing is; you can select the entire item to tint or select faces to tint subsections of the outfit. I love the sheer versatility; this can be made into anything from the simple gray I'm showing here to the brightest combination of colors you could ever wish for.

I accented the FATEplay ensemble with a few touches form a dark future, or in one case a mechanical past. The corset around my waist is from Rosal and is steampunk in design, though I thought it really worked with the overall futuristic and mechanistic effect. I have to admit I splurged on almost the entire set, even though I only showed one piece of it here; there are two types of boots, gloves, and a neck corset in the same style. The combination of metal and matte was pleasing to me, as was the pinstrip effect of the fabric texture.  I also added my new wings from C L A Vv, which are my go-to choice for rough mechanical these days. The rope-dangles work particularly well, echoing the fall of the scarf if not it's ultimate angle. On my face I pulled out the Noctis bike goggles from a past Genre; the dark color of the frame matches up with the rest of my look while the lenses offer one of the little bits of color I wore. The other bit of color is my hair, a lovely, bushy style from Underscore (a store no longer in world, but one of it's creators, Syndel Daviau, has some wonderful releases under the brands Asset and Tribal Soul Designs) which looks pleasantly windblown and wild; I liked it for how thick it was, with lose and heavy curls.

Among the cherry blossoms, even an apocalypse looks beautiful.

Two Entwined

The second Charlie released the Dominic male skins in Drow shades, I knew I wanted to try my hand at couples poses. I'm not practiced in these sorts of pictures at all, either in setting them up or arranging things so that bodies don't go through bodies! I'm further hampered by a dedication to being both short in body and long in arms, and prior to very recently my male alt, poor Quatre, looked horrid.

All of that was fixed this week!

Well, I'm still short in body and long in arms, but the rest got modified around. I started with Quatre's shape, picking up the free set of base shapes from the marketplace and then making minor modifications until he looked more like the Quatre of my dreams - isn't he a hawty? His skin is, of course, the newest release from .:Soul:. in the lightest Drow shade - a gorgeously textured piece of loveliness with several different tattoo options for musculature - I'm showing athletic but there's also muscled, which is much more heavily demarked, and soft, which is very gentle and could work for fembois or androgynous figures as well; I've seen it on a female shape, and the effect is striking. It also comes with several stubble and brow options, nails, and appliers for a lot of bodyparts, like kissers, SLink hands and feet, and the Mesh Project. The .:Soul:. Uni ears I'm wearing came with a HUD which gave me all of the .:Soul:. skin tones, so that was incredibly easy to set up, and I used the human skin HUD to give myself lovely little ear tattoos - a fun bonus to the Uni ears. Deoridhe is also wearing a .:Soul:. Drow skin, in her case the Catalina in the darkest on offer - there is also a tone in between these two, but I thought the contrast of burnished silver and rich onyx was the most fun.

Dressing my poor, neglected Quatre was also an experience, as I've never tried to dress a boy before! The shoes, at least, were easy; I knew FATEstep had just had a huge release, and that all of the shoes came with a ton of options - so Quatre ended up with some slick shoes that should do well by him in a wide variety of styles and outfits. They fit perfectly into pants, as I can now say from experience - I tried a ton of different pants from a ton of men's stores, trying for a mood and feel that worked, and I ended up at a store I don't think I've featured before, Lapointe and Bastchild. These leather pants were slick and tight without cutting into him too much, and they had a subtle style that I really appreciated. I wanted something belted in particular, since I knew I was going to make Quatre stay topless to show off his chest, but the zippers and gold accents were simply a bonus. For his hair I dug into my Arcade extras and found this male hair from Olive in the perfect shade of "I am a creature of the Underdark" white with a bit of curl and sass because he is secretly really Drizzt - unlike all those other fakers on the grid! His eyes are a fun set from Devae that I picked up at Christmas; I have a funny habit of picking up gifts on all my alts, and in this case it really paid off! I just wish I could control his eyes...

I hope you all enjoyed my foray into couples' poses and my attempt at dressing a man!

FATEstep Makes a Splash

In his characteristic perfect overkill, Damien Fate started a new branch of his powerhouse of a store, FATEstep. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to handle it; there was, of course, always just filtering his sleek and astonishingly customizable shoes into my looks - and going forward that will be happening, but somehow I wanted to make a bigger splash given I had a folder full of shoes, and only some of them would fit my feet. I'll give a brief overview of the features, but please believe me when I say they're worth taking some time to explore the shoes that particularly appeal to you! Each come with additional socks you can wear, which I've never seen before in Second Life, offering a fantastic bonus both for these shoes and for other shoes you might want to slide over these charming foot additions. The women's shoes come set for both SLink and Maitreya feet. All of the shoes come in pairs of styles (check out the additional pictures for labels for each) with texture differences which add to the variety; in particular, the Nylon Chucks feature art from Nylon Pinkney, a wonderful SL artist and store owner in her own right.

The HUD for those chucks (shown below) is fairly representative of the amount of individualization available. The Part Selection highlights the parts of the shoes as you select them, and you can select multiple parts at once. The texture options vary from shoe to shoe, with some of the shoes having simple colors while others have patterns and pictures. Below that is both a tinting mechanism and a slew of extra features, which vary from actual parts of the shoe changing to the amount of shine available. Finally, at the very bottom is a series of presets you can save over as you come up with different styles you enjoy - a feature of FATE HUDs that I particularly appreciate.

Definitely swing by to FATE Island to try on some of these new shoes and walk the grid in style!

Rusting in the Swamps

I've always loved the image of an abandoned doll.

There's something haunting, sweet, creepy, and profound in it for me - something which tugs at my heartstrings and makes me pause for a long moment, as if listening for the tinkle of classical music.

This face of the rusted doll comes courtesy of Fallen Gods, and went round-ear for the experience - the texture being too difficult to match effectively. It's a gorgeous skin, both for the base texture and for the delicate carvings laid on top of it. I particularly liked how it frames the face with delicate curls along the edge of the cheek; with my KOY hair, it looks like the fringe on the wig edges is simply continued in metal. Rust is a gently tumbled skin with a greenish-brown cast, and the sort of shadow-defining edges which really make it unique. Appliers can be bought separately, and if you've already gotten the Materica appliers HUD then just ask for a re-delivery at his store, and Rust shows up there like magic! Now to just convince someone to make ears and ear appliers... The wings I'm wearing are also from Fallen Gods, and were a freebie during the recent Clockwork Spiral event. I love his thematic add-ons deeply, and this is a really awesome melding of key and wings.

My FATE eyes are another awesome release, but no where near as new. When it came out I spent a great deal of time playing with all of the options and am really blown away by how unique these eyes can be. Firstly, the number of options is jaw-dropping - from tinting and adding additions to the sclera, to multiple layers for the iris, to additions on top like the circuitry I'm showing here. There are also multiple iris shapes, though I went with a round to match my clock-face rims, so you can be human, animal, or something completely alien. Each layer is tintable, which means the sky really is the limit, and the HUD comes with a selection of pre-sets to give you a sense of just how wide the variety is. It really has to be played with to appreciate - I firmly believe you could match just about any requirements with this single set of eyes.

My hair is a tight skullcap from KOY which isn't my usual, florid style but which works gorgeously with the rest of my look and is very well made. I love how he is using smaller bits of hair to add verisimilitude around challenging areas like bang-openings and along the nape of the neck - and how the bottom edge of the bangs is unified enough to look like a hairstyle, but has distinct edges and pieces so that it doesn't look too perfect. It's also good hat-and-tall-collar hair, which I think everyone needs in their inventory.

My outfit is a hodgepodge of different stores and times. The bulk of it is a series of editable gacha wins from Remarkable Oblivion, and you really don't want to know the lengths I went to get all but one piece of this particular gacha set. None of the pieces are rigged, which means they can be moved and resized around every body. I ended up scaling the top hat down to a fascinator size, but it and the collar would work as well on a man as they do on me, and with a similar level of Gothic panache. I love the oversized effect of the collar tips, and how they curve over the individual feathers twisting this way and that. The cage skirt is a lovely example of the type, complete with a variety of different bows which makes it seem less uniform and add some whimsy to it, and the garter is simply a fun touch for any look - I think a version should be added in blue for all of the Second Life Weddings out there!

My top a Spring Bunny hunt prize, from Ambrosia, and a lovely example of what quality can be found even from a free event. The checkerboard is very Alice through the Looking Glass, and I thought the shift in texture worked well with the remarkable stripes on Remarkable Oblivion's collar and skirt. It has a fantastic curve along the bust and is cut high on the hips so that a little metal peaks through along the waistband of the cage skirt, giving my whole look a burlesque edge I'm rather fond of. Under the cage skirt I added a set of very cute, rigged shorts from G Field, and then tinted them slightly gray in order to match up the blacks. I've been wearing these shorts on and off since they were released just after the advent of mesh, and they're as solid as they ever were.