Accused Of Being A Child Avatar
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Brenda Connolly
Un United Avatar
Join date: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 25,000
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05-24-2007 08:36
From: bilbo99 Emu Correct me if I'm wrong please .. and I know I'm going slightly off-topic here but it really, really shouldn't come down to this.
I thought we'd discussed at great length elsewhere that roleplaying a child itself is NOT the offending, law-breaking act.
And even a female avi in a red spotted dress, carrying a teddy bear, walking along a nude beach is again, NOT a CS/TOS offence.
Aren't we all getting just a teeny bit paranoid here? Unfortunatey, most paranoia is rooted in an actual fear, that gets magnified disproportionately. from the few anecdotes already mentioned, there are going to be people who irregardless of motivation, will take it upon themselves to "Clean up Second Life". Sooner or later we all will do SOMETHING that some whackjob will find offensive.
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Fiona Branagh
... or her equivalent.
Join date: 1 Feb 2007
Posts: 156
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05-24-2007 08:40
Height is something that, as a RL artist, has bothered me about the SL setup on the whole.
When you create your avatar, as people have mentioned, you have no idea how tall they are. So, you take a wild guess on the slider, then go out and see people, and adjust for what you see around you.
I never felt the avatar I had looked 'right' for a slightly over average height woman, which I was trying to portray. That's because she wasn't average at all - she was 6'3". When I scaled her down to the 5'9" that I wanted, she suddenly looked much better.
One thing to keep in mind is that most people don't really know what good proportions ARE. If you hand a pencil to someone who hasn't studied proportion before, they will always draw people with tiny heads and long legs. There are a lot of reasons for this which we don't need to go into here.
The point is, the normal sized avatars are not necessarily -wrong-. It makes me laugh when people say that they are, because to me, the tall ones are the weirdly shaped avatars.
I also don't agree with the stance that the world must be hugely scaled due to the camera height. While I do understand the need for higher ceilings, oversized objects and furniture are a good idea ONLY if their use is to sit back a fair distance and be gazed upon. If you get close to it, sit on it, use it, then the supposed advantages to scaling upward are not only gone - they make the object look ridiculous.
I've made a Friesian stallion in SL, and I made him the natural 16.2 hh that fits the registered Friesian standard. Luckily, people don't seem to mind that for purchasing purposes though I have heard someone call him a pony.
It seems to me that when height is built into a game/venue/world, it's in order to be a guideline to understand proportional relations between objects; a guideline for consistency. I don't want to be told that I shouldn't follow the ruler, but should just arbitrarily accept something different based upon people's ignorance or desire to be uber.
As for child avatars, a new friend of mine in SL has the most perfect little girl avie. It's adorable, totally non-sexual, and what portraying a child should be about.
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Dakotaflyer Rau
German Rep0rt3r!
Join date: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 89
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05-24-2007 08:41
Persecuting innocent child avies is wrong I think, Also people who are shorter then everyone else because of the scewed height scale in SL.
If I AR a child av it is 1.) because they are an obvious child(based on proportions and are wearing inappropriate attire z.B bdsm gear or other adult attachments 2.) because of what their profile says( I am respectful of adults , or anything like that with a picks area filled with sex stuff or pedo palaces) and 3.) their groups like lil' (insert sex related thing here) or Preeeen S***ts. So they have to be engaged in obivious sexual things while dressed as a child before I would AR them,and I would just ar them and not taunt them or anything childish.
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Marianne McCann
Feted Inner Child
Join date: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 7,145
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05-24-2007 08:44
From: Nessa Yiyuan Today I was exploring SL and a group of people came up to me and accused me of being a child avatar and said they were going to AR me because I was on a nude beach. /me sighs Saw *this* comin' from a mile away. I wrote a bit about the disunion between what SL views as their policy, and what those of us playing kids would like to know about the policy. As Heretic Linden said in another thread, "Is the note card really unclear when it states that "the depiction of sexual activity involving minors" is unacceptable?" This whole thread is all about just how unclear it is. What is "sexual activity?" What is "minors" mean in this world? It all sounds very Clinton-era to have to define these terms, but when you can risk account termination over such things, it becomes very important to have definitions. Misses Yiyuan: you should not face any troubles from these folks, as far as their AR threat is concerned. SL has bigger fish to fry, an alla dat. Nevertheless, your posts brings up a whole lotta troubles with trying to run a world through ill-worded notecards. Mari
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  "There's nothing objectionable nor illegal in having a child-like avatar in itself and we must assume innocence until proof of the contrary." - Lewis PR Linden "If you find children offensive, you're gonna have trouble in this world  " - Prospero Linden
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Shirley Marquez
Ethical SLut
Join date: 28 Oct 2005
Posts: 788
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05-24-2007 08:45
From: Colette Meiji I agree that much of the world is bit oversized.
Most of its oversized for even OVERSIZED avatars.
SL buildings are all unrealistically large. They have to be... if you try to make one with realistic dimensions, you quickly discover that it is impossible to get camera positions that let you see the room and its occupants comfortably. The furniture is also unrealistically large, so it will look right in the huge rooms; as a result, avatars look tiny on the chairs, even if the avatars are huge. Oddly, SL cars are fairly realistic in size, so they always look tiny when you park them next to the houses. Try the experiment yourself if you like. Go to a sandbox and build a 5x5x2.5m room; that would be a largish bedroom in a modern house. (A real room likely wouldn't be quite so square, but I'm trying to keep the numbers easy.) Then walk in and try to look around. You will understand why an SL room, even in a modest house, is likely to be at least twice that size in each dimension. |
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Raudf Fox
(ra-ow-th)
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 5,119
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05-24-2007 08:52
You know, this is what my husband was concerned about too, when he made the test model form so I could see if my designs worked on smaller frames when compare to a taller one. He liked the more "Japanese woman appearance", which would be shorter than my avatar, of course.
So, in bemusement, we compared it to my child model form, the one that I made for a future children's line, but haven't gotten to look right yet. They were the same height :/ So, he's worried that he's gonna get tagged as a child when he goes shopping with me. *shrugs* I can't see how it can be taken as a child, since it has breasts that are proportional to size.
I figure we'll burn that bridge when we cross it, though.
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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05-24-2007 08:53
From: Shirley Marquez SL buildings are all unrealistically large. They have to be... if you try to make one with realistic dimensions, you quickly discover that it is impossible to get camera positions that let you see the room and its occupants comfortably. The furniture is also unrealistically large, so it will look right in the huge rooms; as a result, avatars look tiny on the chairs, even if the avatars are huge. Oddly, SL cars are fairly realistic in size, so they always look tiny when you park them next to the houses.
Try the experiment yourself if you like. Go to a sandbox and build a 5x5x2.5m room; that would be a largish bedroom in a modern house. (A real room likely wouldn't be quite so square, but I'm trying to keep the numbers easy.) Then walk in and try to look around. You will understand why an SL room, even in a modest house, is likely to be at least twice that size in each dimension. yep. I made a realisitc size king sized bed once. While it was the right size for my avatar, it looked like a coffee table compared to my "normal" bed. Your right about the rooms the camera needs the larger scale. But the furnature COULD be normal size, I just think people wouldnt know what to do with all the empty space. |
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Zephyrin Zabelin
Registered User
Join date: 10 May 2007
Posts: 153
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05-24-2007 08:55
Well if it's a camera problem, it would have made more sense to get camera zooms fixed than alter the size of everything. It's hard enough learning to build stuff in the first place without then having to do maths on it all to get it to the right scale. Far easier if we could simply make a 6ft bed 6ft (well 2m anyway)
Mouseview would have been a good way to see the rooms and occupants easily without enlarging the spaces, but unfortunately you can't do all the stuff you need to while in mouse view. In normal movement view, we can zoom in and out, but the avatar's head is always in the way. All that would be needed is for the final level of zoom to place the viewpoint just in front of the av's eyes like mouseview does, but let it still be a normal navigation type viewing so we can build and stuff from that view
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Fiona Branagh
... or her equivalent.
Join date: 1 Feb 2007
Posts: 156
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05-24-2007 08:57
I don't buy the "everything has to be huge" mantra. I don't, because it simply isn't true.
Some of my favorite houses have been little cottages, and I mean little. I didn't have much trouble with the camera because the ceiling was high enough for that.
Even if a house is built large, the textures and furniture do not have to be large as well. I've done just fine with biggish houses with scaled down doors, windows, textures, and furniture. The only thing that people notice about it is "Wow, that place has more room than I thought."
Some of my favorite places in SL, the places that make me feel the most comfortable visually and atmospherically, are scaled quite close to 'normal' size aside from tall ceilings. The only place I've really had trouble with the camera was in the Serenity model, since the ship was made 1:1 and is intentionally cramped.
Though that's still the coolest thing ever.
I tend to feel disconnected and odd in places that are oversized. People sense things better than you'd expect. If I wanted to just take a snapshot, then yes, an oversized place may be fine; but I want to interact with places, not gaze at them from a distance.
If some people are more comfortable in huge environs, that's great. We're all different. But to say it MUST be that way to work out is simply wrong.
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Simon Nolan
I can has ur primz?
Join date: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 157
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05-24-2007 09:10
From: Nessa Yiyuan Today I was exploring SL and a group of people came up to me and accused me of being a child avatar and said they were going to AR me because I was on a nude beach. I do not have an avatar age listed and I never tried to look like a child. The only thing different between me and them was height, my avatar is 5'2" which is my RL height. I didn't think my height would be an issue. I thought is was if you state in your SL profile that your avatar is under 18. I guess my question is what are we using to determine child avatars and can I really be AR'd for this? Sheesh. I feel for you Nessa. I set my avatar to be close to my RL height - 6'1". Of course one friend frequently comments on how short I am, to which I respond, "I'm not short, you are a gigantic mutant freak with a pituitary problem." I say the same thing to anyone else who says anything about my height. I've also noticed that poseballs seem to line up better when you're closer to RL height. Of course, when I hug people, being short does have its advantage as I only come up to the chest of an 8 foot tall avie.  Why are avies so big? I think that the arguments about camera/big rooms/big furniture/big avies has some merit, but I think there's more to giant avatars. I bet there's some psychological component to it, too -- "GRRR... Me big and strong!" Maybe another part of it is because when you're adjusting those sliders, nothing gives you a feel for your size in world. Maybe we need a "Your avie is xxxx meters/yyyy feet tall" indicator in the appearance box. As for the camera/big room problem, I built a house based on some RL plans, and had to enlarge the dimensions to get it to look right because of the camera. Most of my furniture I tried to build to be closer to RL sizes, and looks okay. I wish there was an easy way to move in the default camera offset, which would be nice in close quarters even if it didn't result in more normal-sized builds. |
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Susie Boffin
Certified Nutcase
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 2,151
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05-24-2007 09:37
I am 5'3" tall in Second Life and have been that height for many years. In no way do I look like a child. I have received a few snide comments about my height and I assume the person making them is interested in child sexual abuse so I usually respond with something like, "Sorry I'm not interested in sexual ageplay. You will have to go elsewhere for that." That usually confuses them enough that they stop insulting me.
By the way since when it is ok for a person to go up to another person and criticize them for their looks?
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Virrginia Tombola
Equestrienne
Join date: 10 Nov 2006
Posts: 938
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05-24-2007 09:49
My avatar is 5'6" (when I'm not being a centaur  ). They had one of those avatar height detectors around when I was designing my avatar, so I just went with my RL height. I really don't feel that short, to be honest, except when I go to mainland or something (I spend most of my time in historical sims like Caledon). Occasionally a bit problematic with dances with the taller fellows, but UNLIKE RL, my avi seems capable of dancing in heels. |
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SqueezeOne Pow
World Changer
Join date: 21 Dec 2005
Posts: 1,437
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Don't Post Anything
05-24-2007 10:02
Don't state you're 18 in your profile. Why do you have to explain yourself to anyone?
IF LL even saw an AR about that, they would most likely approach you and get your side of things. Otherwise they might just ignore it for various reasons.
You don't owe anyone an explaination!!
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Semper Fly
-S1. Pow
"Violence is Art by another means"
Visit Squeeze One Plaza in Osteria. Come for the robots, stay for the view!http://slurl.com/secondlife/Osteria/160.331/203.881
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Brenda Connolly
Un United Avatar
Join date: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 25,000
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05-24-2007 10:04
From: SqueezeOne Pow Don't state you're 18 in your profile. Why do you have to explain yourself to anyone?
IF LL even saw an AR about that, they would most likely approach you and get your side of things. Otherwise they might just ignore it for various reasons.
You don't owe anyone an explaination!! You would HOPE LL would investigate a report such as this....otherwise I agree with you 100%.
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Don't you ever try to look behind my eyes. You don't want to know what they have seen.
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Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
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05-24-2007 10:05
From: Simon Nolan Why are avies so big? I think that the arguments about camera/big rooms/big furniture/big avies has some merit, but I think there's more to giant avatars. I bet there's some psychological component to it, too -- "GRRR... Me big and strong!" Maybe another part of it is because when you're adjusting those sliders, nothing gives you a feel for your size in world. Maybe we need a "Your avie is xxxx meters/yyyy feet tall" indicator in the appearance box. I think another part of it might be the fact that avatar height is one of the first sliders people come across in the appearance box, so they set it to get the height they want. Only after that do they find the other sliders that affect height but also proportions (leg length, for example) and then modify them to create the proportions they want, forgetting that they're now beyond their intended height. |
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Maggie McArdle
FIOS hates puppies
Join date: 8 May 2006
Posts: 2,855
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05-24-2007 10:05
From: Nessa Yiyuan Unfortunatly that argument didn't work for me they said I was a "highly sexualized child avie".
But at least i know i'm not gonna get in trouble and I just updated my profile clearly states 24 years old in the RL and SL part. as one poster put it, the witch hunt has truly begun. Nessa? be yourself. don't let anyone tell you how to live your secondlife. i posted in another thread that this very thing was gonna happen, and lo and behold. again peoples, don't get all bent out of shape because someone portrays thier rl hieght in world. not everyone is a child ava. and yes im one of the gigantors(6'1) but i dont assume that every mini i meet is a child, unless they are dressed like one. and even then, it could be as part of a family dynamic. quit being paranoid people and get a grip. yeeesh 
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Najmah Handayani
(aka Toy LaFollette)
Join date: 26 Nov 2006
Posts: 154
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05-24-2007 10:21
BAH!!! just say your not a child, just vertically challenged.
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-24-2007 11:58
From: Zephyrin Zabelin My RL height is 5ft 2ins also and I absolutely refuse to be bulldozed into roleplaying a giant just bacause other people want to roleplay being giants.
Me, too! I'm an short avatar, but I think the boobs are a dead giveaway as to my intended age. coco |
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-24-2007 11:58
From: Nessa Yiyuan Unfortunatly that argument didn't work for me they said I was a "highly sexualized child avie".
But at least i know i'm not gonna get in trouble and I just updated my profile clearly states 24 years old in the RL and SL part. Well that's just plain stupid. coco |
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bilbo99 Emu
Garrett's No.1 fan
Join date: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 3,468
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05-24-2007 12:00
From: Najmah Handayani BAH!!! just say your not a child, just vertically challenged. love your sig Najmah ... brilliant
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-24-2007 12:01
From: Shippo Goodliffe Yeah. I'm a furry, and I always liked being shorter and all, I'm a NWS chibi so they're not meant to be big Avatars, and it's the only avatar I use. Well, since I was so short in game (which chibifoxes are suppose to be), someone reported me and I was suspended until I showed my drivers license and updated my credit card information.. I waited like a whole week to be verified! And the worst part is, no one even bothered to say sorry about the misunderstanding or anything! I think it's ridiculous, people don't even read your profiles or anything and they're just guessing away. So - the answer becomes, everyone be as tall as possible. coco |
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Sonia Nagy
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2007
Posts: 364
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05-24-2007 12:05
From: Cocoanut Koala So - the answer becomes, everyone be as tall as possible.
coco I actually went the other way and became a small otter/siamese kitty/osprey (not at the same time; oh, and I still have human shapes, but lately I've been playing with the other avies ). I suppose someone could accuse me of being an overly hairy child avie for the first two. |
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-24-2007 12:12
From: Zaphod Kotobide What lies at the root of the height "issue" in Second Life is that the world around us is for the most part built for maxed out avatars. Some of the early adopters realized early on that the avatar actually did -not- proportion well at shorter heights.. A couple months ago there was a thread on this subject, and I'm pretty sure it was Chosen Few who explained the intricacies of it in great detail.
The result is, everything is bigger in Second Life - it has sortof a larger than life feel, from buildings, to flowers, to vehicles, whatever. Our avatars simply look too short when we try and achieve realistic dimensions, and it's exaggerated when we put them inside most houses and other builds, because they were scaled for larger avatars (and also scaled upward to accomodate the default camera position)
It's understandable that someone could mistake an "adult" avatar for a "child" avatar.. the shorter ones stand out like a sore thumb. Unfortunate, but that's the way the world evolved.
I'm disappointed that it might need to come to this, but I would recommend some sort of disclaimer in your profile if you think it may be at all questionable. I imagine a profile is one of the first things they will look at when investigating an AR. A clear statement that you are not roleplaying a child will probably afford you the benefit of the doubt. You know, this is funny - nearly all my friends ARE on the shorter (more realistic) side. Sometimes a female customer comes in who is WAY tall and has one of those weird animation overriders that makes her stand in various random awkward poses, and that is what looks weird to me. Cause the friends I hang out with, it occurs to me now, are all of more of normal size (which is actually, in reality, kind of on the tall side). coco |
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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05-24-2007 12:14
They shouldnt even investigate ARs based on height.
Stating something on your profile wont help - if they are so quick to AR you they are going on just height , they wont bother reading your profile.
And after hearing about people actually being suspended for no cuase.
I think someone needs to send the Lindens a copy of "The Crucible".
Hopefully they "get" the moral.
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-24-2007 12:17
From: Fiona Branagh Height is something that, as a RL artist, has bothered me about the SL setup on the whole.
When you create your avatar, as people have mentioned, you have no idea how tall they are. So, you take a wild guess on the slider, then go out and see people, and adjust for what you see around you.
I never felt the avatar I had looked 'right' for a slightly over average height woman, which I was trying to portray. That's because she wasn't average at all - she was 6'3". When I scaled her down to the 5'9" that I wanted, she suddenly looked much better.
One thing to keep in mind is that most people don't really know what good proportions ARE. If you hand a pencil to someone who hasn't studied proportion before, they will always draw people with tiny heads and long legs. There are a lot of reasons for this which we don't need to go into here.
The point is, the normal sized avatars are not necessarily -wrong-. It makes me laugh when people say that they are, because to me, the tall ones are the weirdly shaped avatars.
I also don't agree with the stance that the world must be hugely scaled due to the camera height. While I do understand the need for higher ceilings, oversized objects and furniture are a good idea ONLY if their use is to sit back a fair distance and be gazed upon. If you get close to it, sit on it, use it, then the supposed advantages to scaling upward are not only gone - they make the object look ridiculous.
I've made a Friesian stallion in SL, and I made him the natural 16.2 hh that fits the registered Friesian standard. Luckily, people don't seem to mind that for purchasing purposes though I have heard someone call him a pony.
It seems to me that when height is built into a game/venue/world, it's in order to be a guideline to understand proportional relations between objects; a guideline for consistency. I don't want to be told that I shouldn't follow the ruler, but should just arbitrarily accept something different based upon people's ignorance or desire to be uber.
As for child avatars, a new friend of mine in SL has the most perfect little girl avie. It's adorable, totally non-sexual, and what portraying a child should be about. This is interesting to me, because I learned in art (long ago) that the average person is 8 heads tall. But in fashion drawing, the figures are ten heads tall. That is, normally the head = 1/8th of the body. In fashion drawing, it equals 1/10th of the body. What gets me are these huge muscular men with teeny-tiny heads. Who would want to go with a man with no brain? lol coco |
