Base skin problem.. moral issue..

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Kudos to you Allison for being so ethical.

My major beef (as a relative newbie) is trying to find someone who does male skins that don't look like a Pornstar, or a Muscleboy, or a Werecritter. No offense intended to those who wish to look like that - it's your SL - Enjoy! But I want (Gasp!) a skin that looks like a normal male human being - with one caveat - I want a beard.

And lets not talk about the horrors of trying to find decent prim hair for men. The one thing I am least happy about with my Av is the hair. Get close, and it looks like a lump of half-melted cheese is on top of my head.

Oh yeah, and I am poor .

Sorry guys, I can't afford to buy Lindens (I just dropped $2,400 on repairing my RL car).
So Allison, if you want to take pity on this poor newb, or at least if SOMEBODY could point me to someone who sells what need, I'll figure out a way to raise some lindens eventually.

I can't speak for other skinners but I'll give you my perspective. Skins are probably one area of SL where you'll find the least amount of people using copied or stolen source material. I'm sure there are some that adapt skins made for Poser, but probably not many. The UV mapping on poser avs and SL avs is very different so anyone looking for an "easy" way to make skins for SL will soon discover that there isn't an easy way. Most skinners paint from scratch, use photographic source, or some combination thereof. For my own skins I use mainly photo sourcing. The photos are licensed for a fee and are being used within the limits of the license agreement. I imagine many other skinners do the same thing, quite likely from the same source (as there's only one or two photographers out there who specialize in doing photos specifically for use by 3d texture artists).

As for a lot of skins being no-transfer, that's usually because the skinner sells add-on products for use with the skin like makeups or tattoos. These are usually sold as seperate skins but aren't charged at full price so that people don't have to buy multiple full priced skins. If they were transferable someone could buy a low priced makeup and end up with an extra full skin to give away. No-transfer in that case is actually better for the skin buyer since they're not forced to pay the full skin price to get a makeup or other add-on. Most skins are no-mod since skins made with opaque tattoos can't be modified in appearance. The sliders would have no effect even if the modify permission was enabled.

Lots of great points so far. I have only a few more...

1. There IS a decent skin on slboutique that sells for L$200. It's not stellar like Chip's or Nam's, but it's decent enough. It's in the top 100 sellers on SLB and has been there a while. So, people buy it--yet the skin market is still going.

2. And that brings up another point. How will you distribute them? You have to have land or pay rent to have an in-world vendor. You might find places willing to give you free space. And listing in SLB/SLX will help. Listing/Putting the vendor down is relatively easy, but then you want to find ways to advertise it is there. Word of mouth will do some 'advertising' once it's been there a while. But to really help any newbies that 'need' a skin, you'd have to do some campaigning to let everyone know it was available, etc. The point being, all this requires time and some cost to you.

3. I keep thinking back to Chip's point of getting something for yourself out of the game. It's really nice to have income to pay for things YOU want in game. Most people use their skills for that. Most other people are HAPPY to compensate you for your skills!!! So charge a reasonable amount for us consumers and enjoy your SL!!!

4. If you still really want to provide a help for newbies, give skins out at strategic places. Of course you can give them out personally, but you'll only get a tiny amount of newbies. You could put a freebie/cheap bag of a basic skin at the shelter. Or, better yet, let your skin be one of the prizes in their game shows! OR... go straight to the place of employment and give free skins to club owners to give to newbies who will be dancing, etc--just make sure they are marked with your name. There are many other possiblities.

But the bottom line here is this--have fun. It's great that you are willing to share your skins. But my advice is to find a way to 'painlessly' distribute (and service) them to strategic areas that fit your agenda, and charge the rest of us a reasonable price!!

Win-win-win. Newbies will be happy for a leg up, Veterans will be happy for the opportunity to purchase a nice skin, and YOU"ll be happy because SL will give back to you!

Hey there,
Congratulations! Mostly everything to say in this thread has been said but I wanted to add my 2 lindens...

1. You should price what you think is fair and for the market you are trying to satisfy. Period.

2. I have a male alt avvie that I just bought a cheap skin for - a great skin, for 300L from a skin shop where the prices range into the thousands but there are 2 options in 2 skin tones, priced and marketed to newbies. This is great for not only newbies but also people who are just never going to drop that many lindens on a skin.

So, the cheap, high skin quality option does exist, is not hurting the market, and provides a great service to the SL community. What you are saying you want to do would likely not have a negative impact on the other sellers. And like people say, many do associate price with quality, and will opt for the higher priced options if they can.

So have fun!

I agree with chip, (as another skinner) there is no "easy" way to make a good skin short cuts just dont work as chip said the UV's are different.



no transfer for me at least is so i can give support and modify an extra skin to the actual buyer (skin makers can recognize their own work) and usually at no charge depending on the request. As chip said Mod is pointless, it only allows you to change nail color (unless the skin is transparent), but if you are wearing a custom skin default nails won't place right anyways. Impossible to make No Mod No Copy and No transfer at the same time. Permissions don't work like that.

I don't think anyone can give their humble opinion about the skin making process if they never even tried to make a skin. They will find it is one of the hardest things to make in SL and make seamless. Nor can they say what other people buy and don't buy. That's my humble opinion.

I'm trying to imagine if it was furniture (as thats what I sell), but its rather different..

You could sell it for an average market price but have a sign up saying "Under 1 month? Get it free!" or something..

If thats too much trouble, I'd sell it for what you want to..

Just a note to say that you can make No Mod/No Copy/No Transfer by having No Copy on the texture, and No Mod/No Transfer on the skin itself.

To the end user, that's all permissions denied.

For the record, I'm with all of those who say that skinning isn't easy, and the high price of many skins simply reflects the work that goes into one.

(This is especially true if you consider that a lot of the work done is custom, one-of-a-kind, work. I get $30/hour in RL for custom art work. That means I'd have to charge L$8100 for something that took only an hour to do, at today's exchange rate, if I was getting RL prices for it.

When you think of it that way, all skins are pretty cheap!)

the tripple no's must be new, i don't recall my skins ever being no for all of them. and my skins upload i dont change the perms and my alt wears them as just copiable.. hmm but i dont mine copiable because people can make copies and put them in serveral folders for fast drop folders.

and yes skins are cheap if you convert them to RL dollars value!, average skin is 1k ish that is less then 4 US dollars for days to months of hard work from the designers Pay phone calls an hour have more $$ value then what a skin maker gets back an hour. lol

Hi there

Trying to help the new members is always a good and noble quest - so way to go.

My thoughts:

1. As a few posters have mentioned - try the money tree idea. Make skins at the low price available only for members younger than 30 or 45 (or whatever) days. This can be scripted, and I believe someone in the forum has already offered to help with that.

2. At the same time sell the same skins at a higher price for all other (older) members. State clearly somewhere that the lower/discounted price is to help noobs. This should keep the value of your work realistic, while looking like the nice person you are. Lets face it, time spend on creating an excellent skin (often 20 - 30 hours or more) is time that could have been spend hopping around in SL , so it's always work. Maybe fun work - but still work. Also, like Chip said - you may not want to make money right now, but you could in future. Nothing wrong with starting a little nest egg just in case.

3. Don't sell too many things in one box. In the end it is just confusing for noobs. I went to Yadni's (spelling?) and bought boxes and boxes of stuff when I joined. Most of it I haven't looked at, cause when you put on shirt 49 of 200 in a box you get tired. I probably have many nice things in my inventory that I will never know about. Also if you put a few skins out separately, the buyer have the joy of choosing the one that suits them the best and end up feeling more special.

4. I tried to find the post - but couldn't just now, but why not give some of your skins to LL to put in their noob start-up pack. I saw a post not too long ago where one of the Linden's requested some "good quality work" like skins, clothes etc. to put in a start-up pack to help our new members. This way you will be sure it ends up with the people you really want to help, without bothering any other designer.

Okay, enough from me.

Have a great day all!!

Well, you have been given some good advice here.

But that's all it is. When it comes down to it, it is nobody's business what you charge for skins except yours. You are entitled to charge what you like. It is your skin, your price, and no one else is entitled to any input in the process.

Good luck.

Here's an updaye of what's been going on sence i made this post i have been getting a ton of IMs about it and how thoughful I am and all of that, I'm happy that people actualy took the time to read my delima and help out with advice and tips, I've done alot to my skins and i think i should have some male ones out soon, I dont know exactly what I'm going to charge for them and after putting enought drawing time to make my hand imobalized, i dont know that i will be able to rightfully sell my work for such a low price, but i am going to include some goodies with each skin, but all and all the price will be at the very least 700, and I'm seriusly considering after nearly kripling my drawing hand, to atleast go up to 1000, thought I still have that pesky robin hood desease. I always feel like i should help the little guys, but after the latest storm of newbie IMS that were spawned from this post i dont know that i will be able to give them away to a newbie without a wave of his or her friends hounding me at all hours. Let me just say one thing to all my IMers that may be thinking "did I make him mad?!" no, you didn't, some did, but not all, alot of the IM's I got I was happy to recieve, some people complemented me on my thoughtfulness, the ones that did get me mad however, and there was only three to my count, where the ones insisting that I give them money and items for free because I stated here that i like to help people. now items i can do, but untile I get my shop set up I canot hand out free money.. seriusly, I sit in camp chairs to have money to upload, so I'm not some rich yahoo that can sling money at you just because you need it.. I would love to help but i cant, and calling me a lier and insulting me will NOT get you anything out of me... forgive me for the hostility, the people that IMed me know who they are, the rest of you ignore that part.

lol, there are few things that will make you cynical faster than trying to be an altruist in SL

lol and the madness begins, and it only gets crazier. good luck

I think that's a wonderful idea.

Remember, you don't need to "rush" this. You don't have to make a "permanent" decision right away. You can start conservatively by helping out people you meet whom you like and you determine are not trying to take advantage of your kindness. If later you find more opportunity to give, then do so. Meanwhile, you can just ease into it and take things on a case-by-case basis.

Someone else mentioned that even the most expensive skins ($4000L) are only $16, and if someone is already paying $10 a month (or probably more, if they own land), then they can splurge at least once on something as important as skin if they really need it.

It seems to me to be more like the kids who don't have real income and are using Basic accounts who would be in most need of your kindness... although now that I say that, I'm wondering if you really want to help establish them as commodities in the virtual striptease world! (eek)

In any case, if adults presumably with jobs cannot pony up $16 US (and less, in most cases) for one good skin to establish their entertainment business, especially considering what they will take in quickly enough based on how this all seems to work, then they're not even serious about it in the first place and don't deserve help.

As far as innovation and business competition goes, I think "features" are all where it is at, at least in FL and so probably SL as well. First a product is established and profits because it is the only one of its type. Then competitors come into the picture, making the battle a bit fiercer. To survive, either the main product is innovated to be better, or additional features are added to create more value in the product ahead of the competition.

Competition will destroy some businesses -- those that can't keep up for whatever reason. But it also tends to make the product better. (Well, idealistically... I'm sure we can all dredge up examples to the contrary .)

The idea of releasing different packages (a basic set for people without much money, and then the full set for those who want and can afford the whole thing) is a good one as well.

Anyway, I would not fret it, I think it's wonderful that you want to help and are willing to place the good experience of other SL'ers ahead of your own profit.

Whatever your choice is in the end, if you are a professional texture artist, I would like to see your work. Their are a lot of amatures out there and I"m curious to see what you'll have to offer. Let us know where we can see your work perhaps. Thanks!

Pixel Spa sells great skins for L$ 250 each. I doubt that Neph crashed the skin market and neither will you.

so after five pages, the solution was:

Sell them at the 'low'-market going price? (1000)

Oh well, guess us poor people will just stay looking like shapeless barbie/ken dolls

Just because someone makes a well worded post doesn't mean that collusive price fixing is good.

Indeed, in the US, if you are caught doing that and haven't bought enough congress-critters off, you can go to jail. As they note:Note the bit about Pixel Spa above and then do whatever you want.

Don't give us n00bs, a bad name. L$1000 is less than five bucks! For five bucks you can buy a nice skin and still blow a couple hundred on slots.

I think your Robin Hood sickness, would be fallen in the viral state, if you had decided to go through with it... Many noobs are like gryphons. gimme..gimme..gimme..gimme..gimme.. and no gratitude in return.. I agree a lot with some of Chips posts. They gotta work for their reward. Im still pretty new to the game, and I dont want anything handed to me to easy. What is the point of having a perfect AV after 2-3 days of play. Nothing to aim for? Then whats next? Free penthuses, free Islands? oooh those pooor pooor noobs...

Actually I ended up getting one (not hers). I just find it eerily convenient that she went from $100 to at LEAST $1000, and thru her INITIAL altruism, got hundreds of people to look at this thread.

Brilliant marketing.

The best thing that came out of this thread was the plug for Pixel Spa.

he he speaking of witch ............ Allison I really would like to see that famours skin of yours. If its even worth the attention. he he.

Don't forget this thread is about top quality skins... you can still get less detailed (but still fantastic) skins at my place for a lot less than $1000.... some of them start at $1. I'm not the only person selling cheaper skins either. You just have to hunt about.

Cheap plug indeed, a thousand apologies.

THats doin the good work man, POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Thats why its called SECOND life, this isn't america, this is a VIDEO GAME, so go ahead and get yer panties in a twist and see how far it gets ya.
peace out......