New skins and body shapes?

What is the difference between new skin and new body shape? Does the shape of the original body effect a new skin or new body? does a new skin just fit over the body? Can an original female shape be changed to a male?

Skin is the textures on the outside (including 3d Shading effects)

Shape is the underlying structure.

The shape affects the skin basically by streching the body underneeth it in various ways.

Yes a Skin fits over the body.

Yes a female shape can be turned into a male one - theres a toggle on the left hand side of the Apearance menu. First Tab in the SHape catagory, I believe.

thanks for the information

If just a new skin is added to you original avatar body shape does this just change the skin texture? Can you still edit the shape of the body?

Yes, the skin and the shape are two different things. A new skin does not change the underlying shape, and changing your shape does not change your skin (although it can change the "appearance" of your skin because a skin will "sit differently" on a different shape). You can edit the body shape using the appearance sliders, regardless of what skin you are wearing.

And this, I am positive, is the source of many happy hours entertainment for the majority of us
Buy a skin yes. A skin is an intricate texture created by an artist, often far superior to the base skin the nooborn have.
Experiment with shape. Bought shapes are merely someone else's collection of slider settings, sometimes non-modify so you can't even make them a little taller/shorter. Adjusting shape can change the characteristics of the face, body weight, muscularity. It's great fun!!

Speaking of skins. Does anyone know where you can get good quality female skins that can be modified?(Color,make up...)

Make ups, like skin tones, are a major part of the artwork. As opposed to the nooborn skin which have all the sliders to modify them, the way the addon skins work as textures, hence disallowing a lot of the adjustments. Instead, you get makeup options or addon packs from the skin vendor. These then get applied from the skin tab in edit appearance, but they are fixed textures. Textures are an industry all of their own.

I edited my old newbie skin and came up with a really nice face. Then I moved up to a better skin,but the face has way too much makeup. I was hoping to find a good skin and get my old face back.I am having identity issues!

Thanks Bilbo.

I had the same issue, really. Don't get too addicted to your edited newbie face skin, because your ability to tweak it like that will go down considerably when you are using a more advanced textured skin.

I use a textured skin now, and while I am still not as happy with the face as I was with my tweaked and edited newbie face skin, the skin overall is much better, and with judicious tweaking of the face shape (as well as quite a long time searching for the closest face skin I could find to what I wanted), I have been able to come up with something I like quite a bit.

Ah, I can appreciate that too. If you have a good body skin but want your old head back, try the skin tab in edit appearance. If it *is* modifyable you should be able to take off the head 'tattoo' and voila!

add: BUT .. you will have a nasty ring round your neck where SL skin meets addon skin

Yes, you can still edit your body shape, it does nto depend on the skin at all.