Black Skins

This is a outrage. I went lookin around to different shops today with like 5000G to get a new high detail skin, but everywhere I look all I see is skins of white males. Now I'm gonna have to look like a dumbass noob. The darkest skins I have seen are nothin but slightly tanned. My skin on my avatar is the darkest shade of brown possible, just like in real life, but apparently designers don't want to make skins like that. I've also been coming to the conclusion lately that a lot of people on SL are racist. Some people have been nice but most I have met have been less than friendly. Funny how when I changed my skin to white for a bit things seemed to improve when meeting new poeple. People recieved me better, but I say wtf. I don't like that one too bit, and I don't like the fact that some skin designers have refused to make REAL black skins. Have you ever noticed that you would be hard pressed to find a black man in this game (yet you can find freaking animals or robots or whatever) Does anyone know where I can find the REAL DARK black skins, and none of this tanned crap. I appreciate it

Chip Midnight has a good male black skin. I don't know about any others

The thing I find with black skins which make them difficult to make is that the highlights work differently for a color so dark. It's very easy to make a black skin with some awful highlights that look very fake, too pale, or too orange. Therefore, I think most people are lazy -- not racist

Good luck.

I've seen several black skins, but since I don't follow the skin market, I don't know who makes them... I know they are out there though.

I also think Ryntha Suavage has a darker skin, also try Second Skin and Sezmra Svarog's shop called Nora. I know there really aren't that many skins for men in general so maybe thats why you are having a hard time finding them. Hope this helps.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the SLers are racist - I think that there aren't many black or Native American or Indian skins just because most SLers are anglo and asian, and just work in what they know. I spend most every day working and having a riot with a large group of Somali, Hmong, Muslim, Korean, Native American, etc., folk, but I wouldn't even TRY to make a skin or avatar for any of them! I just don't know any other skin color and attributes as well as I know mine. And even then, making skins is tough work.

There are a ton of good tutorials on making skins as well -- so maybe you can corner an underserviced market and make some bucks at the same time that you make some progress in SL!

yeah they're out there -- i've hung out with people with varying shades of "black" from light to dark. good luck with the hunt!

I found a beautiful dark skin, called "Darkness Elemental"..... I will have to wait till I log in tonight to get the name of the maker.... but it's wonderful, and very reasonable.

Ok... I think I remember.... try Munchflower Zaius...

Strange you would say that, because I have met several very good looking black women in the game with high quality skins.

From what I hear, the creation of a skin takes a lot of hours of hard detailed work, one of the reasons skins are so expensive. Simple laws of supply and demand will tell you that no one is going to spend a lot of hours bringing a product to market where their work will not be rewarded with many sales.

During your shopping trips you might have noticed there are many more skins and clothes available for women that there are for men, why do you think is that? And even within those available for men, most are for the goth look.

Search the forums, you will find numerous complaints from 'fashionable' men about the lack of availability of quality men's clothes. That does not mean clothes designers in SL are prejudice against men, it only means they rather spend their energies designing for women who generate much more sales.

So yes, I agree in that you probably did not find exactly what you were looking for; It also took me a long time to find an acceptable skin, but not due to the reasons you stated.

So in my case, these were my possible solutions:

1. Bring many of my Mexican friends into the game, so that the designers saw the opportunity to make money making Mexican skins.

2. Pay one of the designers to make me a skin made to my specifications. Would it cost more? Of course! Much more, but you get what you pay for.

3. Make my own.

4. Find the closest possible match. Possibly not exactly what i was looking for, but unless I wanted to do one of the three above, it would have to do.

Sorry you have such a bad impression of SL. I am sure if you give it some time, you will find that yes, there are som A*holes out there, but there are A*holes everywhere! You will also find many people that go out of their way to be nice regardless of your race, ethnicity, religion, or planetary origin.

Cheers and hope you stick it out. It is a pretty cool game.

Tito

Like others have said, black skins are incredibly difficult to make and keep looking realistic. The way light behaves on dark skin is much more complex. On a pale skin you can get away with a fairly solid base color. With dark skins the base color needs to be different for various body parts so there has to be much greater color variation across the whole skin for it not to look fake and waxy. My black skins took twice as long to make as my medium or pale skins. There's definitely no racism involved. It's just really really hard to do them

The black women I have seen all have lighter black skins.



If you want to know exactly what shade of brown I'm talking about, set the skin darkness all the way and set the redness to 0. It looks black from far away but up close it is obvious that it is brown.

I think you might want to take a look at the skin I suggested... it's probably very close to what you describe.

Yep, black skins can be difficult when it comes to massive amounts of detail, sometimes.

The darkest I decided to go with(warning avatar NUDITY):

Male
Female



Hope you find something that fits you, Red!

Munchflower Zaius has beautiful dark female skins. I believe she does dark male skins as well, but you'll have to check it out. Her store is in her profile picks.

I don't care so much about detail, I just want a skin that doesn't look like newbie crap. The lips and nipples stand out too much when you have the skin darkness all the way down.

Its not just hard to find black male skins, its hard to find most anything with the word "male" attached to it. SL has a female majority, therefore the major creators lean towards female. Its where the money is. Good luck on your search, again the best black male skin Ive seen is Chip Midnights, but then again I havent been looking. You may also want to try Second Skin Labs and the others mentioned aboved. Dont give up, everything is out there, just for men its harder to find.

Read and listen the the facts and pointsinstead of jumping staright into a forum with all cylinders firing. It is absolutely nija to ahcieve the same detail with darker colours. In essence, the darker you go, the less you have to play with on your palette. Isuggest you buy a fully tintable skin from SecondSkin (Male Advanced), which will start off as a super pale, ultra detailed skin. You will have the ability to darkern it yourself using the sliders on your appearance. Witness the detail you lose as you go, but at least you will achieve the skin tone you are after.

Now put your guns (and attitude) back in the bag.

Must say I have not found a pink (which I belive is the closest to what is referd to as white ) skin I have been very fond of either.
I wanted a hairy chest and back hair, hairy ass and face should look like unshaven a few days. Do not know if SLers are racist againt hairy overweight male, but I would not jump to that conclusion, just because I have not found skins suitable for those.

As people have pointed out, it seems less is available for men in general, and when one want something not part of the majority, its near impossible.

Red, I suggest waiting untill all the 1.6 issues blow over. My skins will not be available to buy again untill the Lindens come up with a proper texture permissions solution. I had entertained the idea of producing a fully subdermal facial skin, and even put one out for the females (able to go from completely white, to totally black on the sliders), but got a very luke warm reception. You can view the thread here:

/invalid_link.html

Red- try making your avie nice & fat just once- or even pudgy- if you want a real attitudinal eye-opener.....

I tried that *once*. Imagine a female avie 5'9 & 200 lbs.
A couple of people who did not even know me were downright hostile to me. I got out of there before I got neg-rated as one of them threatened....

It shows me that opinion & preference can rapidly become prejudice & cruelty when it gets out of hand.

Actually having read your post which is seems no one else did, I will point out that you said people in SL were racist because they treated you differently when you had on a white skin, not because they don't make dark black skins. The majority of people in SL have been nice to me. But I have been called the N word quite a few times in game. Most of the time by people I didn't know. So I won't pretend this game is tolerance land. I had to deal with a lot of crap for a long time for having a black avatar and the worst part of it was only a handful of my friends stood by me while I was being attacked. While they had no problem with me being black, they also had no problem with people attacking me for being black. Those people aren't my friends anymore.

As for the skin thing, I can't help you. A friend made mine after the three hour nipple dilemna. I had dark brown skin and the default nipples on avatars are like peach, it looked freakish. So I went out to buy nipples, the darkest ones I could find were 4 shades lighter than me and so I contacted the person that made them and asked her if she could darken them up for me. Well after MANY tries and the nipples were now named "super extra extremely dark" my friend said screw it and made my skin himself.

My avatar isn't even fat, she is thick and people like to make comments.

I've also noticed that even some Lindens are racist. A couple Lindens see my walking around with a pistol and they tell me not to have weapons in a PG Zone, and yet I see plenty of white guys walking around with fully auto rifles and nothing happens to them, WTF...Not even the website has a single black man. If any other people have been a victim of racism in game, please message me.

What are you going to do? Have a sit in?

This made me laugh so hard.


Red Kongo:

I've seen every sort of race you could imagine in world, sir. I would assert that none is treated with more or less respect than another. I would also assert that being in-world less than a week, you have very little context with which to judge or detect such racism.

Please think before running your mouth destructively.