Shopping for the Prettiest Female Avi Skin, Hair, Etc...

I would like to update my avi's looks and become the most georgeous Avi in SL *grins*. I did a search, but haven't found any recent threads on where to buy the best female avi skin, hair, and so on. You who are knowledgeable about where to become beautiful, please give me some hints. There are some blogs devoted to Fashion and beauty, I think. Anyone know where?

Here are the brands I have been using:
Female skin: Redgrave seems the best. Abyss is also good. I also still like =RaC= which is now Lakroki.

Female shapes: I'm using the Redgrave ones with minor tweaks.

Female hair: I like long flexi the best: Cake's Faith in pecan is my current favorite. I also like Calico's Tabitha II in ash. The guys seem to like these long, blond locks on my avi . Also, I love the texture of the Analog Dog hair, although I can't quite seem to get the color quite right on the Analog Dog product. One hair I use sometimes is the Analog Dog Madison in blond - it has a lovely, wild-woman kinky texture. Bewitched also has some lovely hair.
I haven't found any sculty hair that seems quite right yet. I also can't find an updo that I really like.

AO: I've been using either a freebie sexy female walk and stand AO or the Abranimations Female II AO.

Other goodies: I use the eye sparkle from In-Shape, I belive, and the Naturalsmile from...oooh! I'll have to look it up...

Face lights: are these good or bad since Windlight? I'm not sure. Any opinions?

Thankyou so much for your help!

Boots

I wont comment on your other questions Boots, because most things are so much a matter of taste, but to my mind, since Windlight, face lights are essential... but I did get complaints about one i was using being too bright and lighting up the whole room and I found the one i had (a freebie that came with a dress) had four big sources on full beam so I must have resembled a lighthouse!

I then made my own, two small sources, low output, and tinted a nice shade of pink to bring out my colouring..

Free with full perms to anyone that cant make one, cant amend the one they have, or just wants a copy - just send me a note inworld.

Imogen

Thanks, Imogen!

I have also gotten complaints on my facelights since Windlight, so sometimes I wear it, sometimes not....I just wasn't sure what was best....

Thankyou so much for your kind offer of a free facelight. I will take you up on that when I am next in-world. ^_^

Boots

Lakroki ????

You might get more ideas if you search around the fashion blogs.

Curious- what is "Eye-Sparkle"?

Skins:
All good choice. Also take a look at Sin Skin and Body Politic (sp). My personal choice is for RaC (Laqutious of Borg or something like that now ...) but then I'm picking out a male skin. There are a lot of good skins out there but the real trick is to find one that matches the shape you want, especially around the nose, lips and chin. Get your shape first, then pickup the demo skins.

You can use RaC's shape as a base but I feel it needs to be heavily modified around the torso and hips. The shape was intended as a model for the skins and is much beter suited for the 2D photos than normal 3D. Alady has a lot of shapes, but they are no mod if i remember correctly. My wife loves them, tho, since they come with a skirt shape (no butt at all) too. If you are tweaking your shapes, don't be afraid to add 5 to 15 on the body fat slider. It helps to smooth out the lines along the torso and hips.

Hair is a matter of taste and there are so many good places. I like Jolie Femme. Calico, Naughty, Gurlywood are some of the bigger names, but if the hair fair is still going on now is a good time to go look around there. Find a few designers you like and head back to their main store.

AO: You can find a lot of examples at the Animation Warehouse. Vista is one the better places to get an AO with all the animations; sit, run, fly, jump ... lots of options. Try to find one with ZHAO-II hud. If you are comfortable with the idea, it is not hard to add more animations to you AO hud. Places like Bits and Bobs or SineWave/Bellcurve sell seperate animations for a little extra mixture.

Extras: There are a lot of great eyes to be had. Most skin places also sell eyes. If you use a twinkle, just please make sure it is subtle. Most I have seen are so that should not be a problem.

Smiles: The ZHAO-II comes with a free smile hud as well. If your AO does not have it you can pickup a free and almost empty version of the ZHAO-II in game. I can't remember the name of the place, but if you search for it and the listing is a store that sells wings you are in the right place.

Facelights: Go to a dark place (or set the environment to night) and wear it; then hit Ctrl-Alt-T to show transparent objects so you can see it. Edit it and bring the light radius down to 1 meter. Adjust the falloff and intensity as you like but you are looking for just enough to knock the shadows off your face and that hole in the avatars chest. You could do without it altogether now but the original facelights are way too glaring for windlight as you have noticed.

Prim gens and or Xcite parts: completely optional. Think of them as toys, because that is really all they are. If you like them, have fun; if not, it will certianlly not make you any more or less attractive whether or not you have them.

Bling for your eyes.

That has got to hurt!

Gabby posted a pick not long ago and i mentioned that I liked the way her eyes sparkled when she was about to feed. Not sure if you remember the pic.

Any way, there is a tiny sparkle just at the upper rightpart of the eye. You have probably never noticed these, but they are gaining in popularity ... and now that Boots mentioned them you will start seeing them

Subitlty is the key. Just a small sparkle at a modest interval. If bling jewlery were like this there would never have been the term bling-tard.

The name of the store is Material Squirrel's Wings, and they have several good AOs there on the cheap.

Argh! Some other thing I will have to remember to put on! Smile? check, Manicure? check, Pedi? same - Eye shiny thingie... shopping trip

Check the new Gala skins...I lub them. This one has heavier eye makeup than some of the others, but you get the idea:



My 'old standard' is Celestial Studios Vogue and I also like Fleur. Free Speerit also has nice skins...love the lips.

My shape is self-made, so can't help you there.

You might like Damselfly hair. If you didn't attend the just finished Hair Fair though, shame on you!

My AO is a mismash, but I use all Torridwear stands. Most of the so-called 'sexy' walks out there scare me...hip dislocation in the making for sure. I was using a walk from Digital Dragon Designs for a long time, but now I have one from a smallish Japanese place that I can't remember the name of.

Face lights are fine if they're subtle. I like Face FX because you can customize the heck out of it...color, radius, intensity, number of lights used, etc. Try to keep it to one or two light sources with a small radius though, so you aren't killing all of the environmental lighting nearby.

Skins - My fav store is Adora shapes and skins. They have skins, eyes, and lots of other stuff, good quality. Nice packages too, you get a lot for your money. Purchased my alt skin there, I'm yet to collect courage to redo my original ava too...

Hair - I use Cake or Calla, but am ready to go see the other places mentioned here. The hairfair/lagfest was great too. There is one more hair place I use, I have to go back there, can't remember the name of it.

Eyes...I tried the sparkle, but it was way too much! So I got as natural looking eyes I could find, and they are great.

Facelight, I tried it with my alt, and I was a lighthouse. Yikes!

My fav walk is dippywalk, but I can't find it in stores anywhere! I wanted my alt to have it too, but this far no luck. I got that from someone, so there is no lm for it. Sexywalk is ridiculous, business walk is the same with less swing on the butt.

Would you look and tell me the creator's name? Maybe it's in their picks. My alt's walk is absolutly over the top.

I think it's something kind of obvious like Body Language, but I'll check when I get home.

TY

For skins you should try also Celestial Studios, my alt have several hairs from Minnu, Maitryea and House of Heart, she also use eyelashes from Cake and MMS

Unless you are looking for some obscure store, just go on a shopping trip to all those places that you've mentioned. "Best" is purely subjective once you pass a certain level of competence, and all those stores have passed.

For me, no matter how many skins i try on, i stick to my nyte n day skin that i love! it just looks like me...many of the other skins are sooo pale and even the darker skin tones have very little contrast between the lips and skin so i feel like i always look pale.

I love my Detour hair...it is the hair i wear most often in two styles. I really love looking like i have real hair that i just style differently rather than going from one "type" or length of hair to another and back again. Analog Dog also has some great styles, esp the ones mentioned above which are curly. The cool thing is you can get 3 or 4 that look like the same length and color hair in just a diff style - up, pulled back, down, etc.

I am totally into J's shoes with real toes! My second fav is Shoe Fly shoes...nice feminine shapes.

I dont do a lot of face lights etc. but i do love my free ao that i got and can never find sold anywhere called poser. I dont look like im dislocating a hip when i change positions lol.

For clothes...there are many places i love...but the key for me is if the skirts fits on the first try and if it covers my hips which are wider than a pencil...Just found some really cool stuff from Reva for biz wear also.

Perspective is a funny thing...IMO, there aren't enough truly pale-but-not-goth-and-not-too-pink-but-not-too-yellow skins on the grid.

Since you're piling on the extra goodies to purdy yourself up, you'll need one of these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ibVt_vEU0k

Perhaps you can even get one with bling, who knows.

Read the fashion blog :::: Fresh daily updated fashion content.. you'll end up very broke and happy

http://fashionplanet.worldofsl.com

Wow! Great ideas. Thank you, Yosef!

Thanks, Ghosty! ^_^

What a pretty avi! I'll have to check out Gala. ^_^



Oooh! thank you, Ann. I feel a major shopping trip coming on... ^_^