How do I make my avatar not look like a trucker...

I started off with a male avatar.. I try to create a female avatar, and no matter what I do, I end up looking like a trucker bitch. UG-LEEEEEE

Any pointers on how to turn the avatar into something not resembling Barb Buckwheat?

Are all avatars the same, or do you get thrown a random one when you start off on orientation island?

Is there some where you can purchase different avatar models?

I bought this thing from one place for $75L, (I could have sworn it said female model), and it just renders on screen as a block. I guess thats an issue between the designer and I though.

Anyways... Last night was my first run around, it was fun.. Even if chatting to a couple of other people resulted in a group of characters all standing around bashing imaginary keyboards. I guess I'll get used to it

Uhm... I would assume they're all the same. I don't know how to help with your makeover since I didn't have any problem figuring out how to turn the default Barbie-doll avatar into a Japanese woman. It just took a lot of tinkering and experimenting. Just remember that most of the parameters you can change will affect each other in some way. It's kind of like straightening out a Rubik's cube.



Lots of places. None of which I recall the names of. Be prepared to spend $L1000-$L2000 on one.



It's a "boxed item" probably. Find a sim where there isn't a box with a "no" symbol over it at the top of your screen, drag the box onto the ground. Right-click. There will probably be a "More >>" button -- click it. Select the "Content" tab and drag what you find there back into your inventory.

I only know this because Kex Somebody-or-Other was handing out notecards at the WA telehub. I don't think I could have figured it out otherwise



Welcome to SL.

This may sound dumb, but did you check the "female" radiobutton in the avatar preferences?

That said, go to your inventory, go to the library, then to clothing... There are several default female avatars provided, most of whom are (I suppose) reasonably attractive.

You can't actually buy a new mesh... That's fixed. It can be altered to hell and back with the sliders and radio buttons, but it's always the same basic model. You can add things to it, called attachments... These can be anything from a backpack or a hat up to a full costume like a robot or a giant talking animal. But hidden underneath that is always your basic model in some incarnation.

Thank you both of you.

Yes I clicked the "Female" button... I guess it just takes a lot of effort to come up with a female that looks feminine rather than sooorely masculine when you have originally been working on a male avatar.

Thanks for the tip on the boxed product. I was highly confused.. "I can't wear THAT! It's a frakkin box"

Getting hair right is the biggest PITA though!

Hey Sean! Welcome to SL... not sure what you meant by "trucker bitch" but I do know about customization... learning more every day.

Let's see:

The finest avatar crafters in SL, if they don't make their own appearances from the prims up (pretty much), will take pre-existing parts and customize them heavily. A very FINE example of this are those who take already-nice furry avatars and then change their colors and add kewl attachments and maybe even a particle staff for that extra magic touch. You can add all sorts of variations to a theme.

Easy way to figure out some stuff: if you see someone who has an av you like, make conversation, get to know them, tell them how cool they look -- hey it's true! -- and ask 'em where they got their skin and clothes and stuff.

NEW SKIN WILL MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE. I can name so many great names, my own (Torley Prime's) is made by Mistress Midnight. My bunnyform (Torlop) is made by Ryntha Suavage. And I have so many awesome friends here who make great stuff.

Another tip: base hair can be a REAL prob to get "purty", so look into PRIM HAIR made by Lost Thereian, Launa Fauna, Zaige Lumiere, Lash Xevious, Zyrra Falcone, more more more.

If you don't have them already, IM KEX GODEL or seek her out. GET HER HELP GUIDES. ULTIMATELY USEFUL.

Have fun!

Oh yar... I once did a "What I'm wearing today" blog entry... in case u r curious:

http://torley.blog-city.com/read/1039129.htm

I list the stuff I'm wearing.

Torley Jr. is like...



Not ALWAYS like that, but hey, that's the beauty of SL: modify, customize, and transmogrify s'more!!!

I combined two Washu hair spike thingies into some awesome looking spiky bangs
I wore that one on a human AV for months, and now i've switched to furry

OMG KEWL. You have pics? I can't forget WASHU (of the rainbows!) Which other great prim hair makers am I leaving out here? Gee we need a comprehensive directory:

PRIM HAIR MAKERS A-Z OF SL

1st, Change out of those John Deere suspenders and baseball cap.

J/k. Welcome to SL!!

DNA

You get a really funky looking woman if you just swap radio buttons. Look in the library folder in you inventory and there should be some female shapes in there. Much easier to mod a shape already females than to try to make male proportions work for a female.

I am willing to bet money that this is a case of newbie box on the head. We've all done it once. Some people more than once. The actual item was in the box. Drag it from your inventory onto the ground. Go into edit mode and click the box. The item(s) will be under contents. Drag them into your inventory ignoring all warning messages. Then drag them from your inventory onto your avatar. Then wolla, breasts.

i haven't seen any green truckers running around the real world lately.

You must have missed me then!

If you were one of my figure drawing students who came to me with this complaint, I'd give a sight-unseen diagnosis of a probable proportion problem.
Check out a library, used bookstore, or eBay for a basic artists anatomy book -- most will have a page or two of proportion guidelines. My personal favorites for beginners are "Drawing the Head and Figure" by Jack Hamm, and anything by George Bridgeman, but for our purposes in SL just about any artist anatomy book would do.

A previous response to your question recommended beginning with one of the stock female avs in your inventory library. Depending on how realistic you wish to get her, you might find the following information useful.

From the way you describe your current av, I'd begin by looking especially at head size, shoulder width, and hips -- Playboy magazine notwithstanding, these are where you'll find the greatest visual distinctions between male and female construction.
Just to get you started, an "average" adult female figure will roughly conform to these proportions:

The Head and the Full Figure--

The height of the head, from crown to chin, is normally used as a unit of measure when proportioning a figure:
The full figure is 6 1/2 to 7 heads high. Regardless of actual measured height, a small head will make your figure look bulky and overweight. A large a head will make your figure look small. A common mistake in SL avs is attempting a petite look by cutting away at the hips instead of enlarging the head. If too large, the figure will appear to be a child.

Counting down from the top of the erect figure, the first head-height is the head itself.
One head-height down from the chin is the nipple line.
One more head-length down is the line of the navel and waist.
The forth head down is equal to the crotch.
One and one-half heads down from the crotch is the center of the knee.
One and one-half heads down from there is the ground.

For a figure which looks less "average", and more like a fashion model, place the crotch at the center of the figure, which will give her proportionally longer legs. In this case, the knees would be two head-lengths down from the crotch, yielding an 8 head high figure.

The Crotch as a Landmark on the Full Figure--

The widest point of the hips are even with the crotch.

Standing erect, the wristbone should be even with the crotch, and thus also with the widest point of the hips.
This is difficult to get correctly in SL -- arms are way too short even when the slider is pushed to it's longest length. Arms too short will make your figure look cartoony. In practice, getting the arms proportionally long enough requires playing with hip length after sliding the arms to as long as they can be made.

Shoulders and Hips--

Shoulders on a female should be about as wide as the width of the hips -- Contrast this to a guy who, on average, the *ribcage* is about equal to hip width, thus yielding his distinctly male triangular shape. I suspect your "truckdriver" look comes from this.
The distance from waist to crotch is equal to the height of the head. Many female avs in SL are constructed with hips half as high as the average, and consequently look like Barbie Dolls instead of women.

Hands, Elbows, Feet --

Standing erect, elbows are aligned with the waist (demonstrated by a common female stance in RL of using the waist as an arm rest).

There is a universal tendency in figure classes (and SL) to make hands and feet too small.
Hand size is equal to the distance from the chin to the hairline.
The length of the foot from heel to toe is equal to one-half the distance from the floor to the knee.

Breasts--

Divide the area from the pit of the neck to the navel into imaginary equal thirds -- The breasts emerge from the body in the center third. Larger breasts will be affected by gravity, and fall lower than that middle area. The three most common mistakes in beginning drawing classes (and in SL) are to place the breasts too high, to not allow for any gravity (which contributes again to the Barbie Doll look), and to make them too large. Whatever size you're inclined to make the breasts, you should probably cut that in half.

Keep in mind that the above descriptions are "average" proportions -- Something like taking the measurements of everyone and dividing by the population of the world -- they apply to just about everyone, and just about nobody simultaneously. All people are individuals.

Attempting to proportion a truly realistic figure in SL with the current sliders is impossible, though you can get pretty close if you're prepared to endure considerable tweaking.
I normally begin by setting the arms as long as possible, then establishing the crotch line, leg length, shoulder line, and head size in that order.
In general, work from large proportions to smaller ones, from general to specific. Don't worry about whether the figure is initially 16 feet tall -- get her proportioned well, then as a last step scale down the entire figure to desired height using the Body/Height slider under the Shape tab.

Hope this helps, if not you than anyone who may be interested.

Wow thanks for that.. Although I was talking more about the head of the avatar..

However, having said that, you have answered my (unasked) questions on proportions of female form, which is going to help a lot too!

Some basic head proportions:

The classic artist's anatomy conception of the head is as an egg shaped sphere, although I find it useful to take that conception and work from a head somewhat blockier; with a distinct front, sides, and rear to avoid the look of a Christmas decoration with a face painted on it.

In profile, the hole in the ear is dead center between the front plane of the face and the rear of the skull. Watch for a tendency to not give enough bulk to the skull in profile -- we tend to think of faces as the important thing about heads, and consequently make the remainder too small.


Mapping The Face--

In front view, the vertical distance from the chin to the hairline can be divided into imaginary equal thirds:
The center third is occupied by the nose. The top third is the forehead. The bottom third is the mouth and chin

1/3 to 1/2 the distance between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin is the opening of the mouth.

In front view, the height of the ears also occupy that center third, ie the top of the ear is on the same imaginary line as the top of the nose; the bottom of the ear aligned with the bottom of the nose.


Eyes in Front View --

The eyeline rests halfway between the top of the head ("bald head" -- hair adds thickness) and the chin. This is the most difficult proportion to achieve in an SL head, since there's no eyeline slider -- it requires tweaking the top of the head and chin.

The distance between the eyes is equal to one eye-width.

In front view, the distance between the outside corners of the eyes and the right/leftmost sides of the face is one eye-width or somewhat less.
Thus in front view, the distance across the face is roughly 5 eye widths. There's a tendency among most to make eyes too horizontally wide.

Mouth and Nostrals in Relation to the Eyes, Front View --

The corners of the mouth are directly below the center of each eye.
The nostrals at their widest point are equal to one eyewidth, lying directly below the inside corners of the eyes.

Cautions--

Note again, these are "average" proportions. If we all had the same proportions, we would all look alike. We are all individuals.
Also be aware that few faces are symmetrical -- a perfectly symmetrical face will usually look artificial. A bit of skewing can add a great deal of life to an otherwise cartoony head.

Watch for a tendency to ignore definition in the chin and the cheeks -- much of the "painted egg" look in avs derive from this. Likewise, the mouth area should have a discernable, if subtle, "muzzle" for the same reason.

Unlike the body, heads tend to not have great gender distinctions in structure. Distinctly feminine characteristics in contemporary tastes tend to deviate from the averages above with rather larger eyes, smaller mouth but larger lips, smaller nose, and unemphatic chin -- all set within a head shape more oval or heart shaped than square or round.
Much of the artificial look we see in some female SL heads comes from trying to over-achieve supposed ideal traits with feature sliders -- as opposed to subtle feature emphasis of more typical women supplemented with makeup and skin.

To avoid a look of caricature, I'd encourage you to not throw the sliders to extremes. I normally begin with an "average" as described above, then nudge the sliders away from that average to achieve likenesses and such.

I don't know if any of this will help you, but again if not, perhaps someone else. Enjoy Second Life.

-- Limner

The best way to look cute is to be a furry