Male Skins, where to buy?

Just wanted your opinion of the best place to buy male skins.

thnx.

I like Naughty Designs and Dragonfly Designs best myself.

I like "by Max" for male skins. I had looked for months for a really good male skin, found it there. On a related note, Hair styles by Tami McCoy wins hands down to me for both male and female hair.

Pay a visit to FNKY! at Cake Island. Funk Schnook makes some really nice male skins as well. Agreed, Chris, Tami rocks.

Another vote for Max... can't recall what the new name of the shop is, but it's Maximillion Grant. (Hope I spelled it right!) He does beautiful work, just about the best I've seen.

My husband wears an X2 skin, amazing detail!

Maker Cold Heart @ Gentleman in Rock are nice

Cryogen. Fantastic face detail.

Naughty Designs is one of the best. Curious Kitties makes male skins, so does BareRose(cheap as hell too, but they aren't the best detail-wise.) Curious Kitties skins are very femme looking in the face, and low on the details. E's has great drow skins (Search for Eeron Kilian, and go to his main store in his picks section.) En Nomine has decent skins, but sometimes they can be hit or miss. I've bought some I've loved, but I've also bought some where the tattoo on them looked pixelated and rushed.

I've owned X2 skins, and while they do have a lot of detail, I think the faces are trash. So are Max skins, really. When I first started Max skins were horrible, now they're alright, but you'd do better at ND.

There are a ton of other places I've been to, I just can't conjuer up their names from work. I'll post again when I get home and have a chance to check my landmarks. Don't rush into a skin, at least not your first. My first was a By Max skin, and I hated it. I also had an X2 skin shortly after that, which was very expensive and not very nice. Currently I bounce between two Naughty Designs skins and E's drow skins, and I love them. You just have to find the skin that's right for you, as in the end, no matter what anyone says about skins, it's all about how you feel in it.

EDIT; FORM. Search for :FORM: - Fantastic skins. Very expensive, but well worth the price.

.::by Max::. skins are available at Body Politik. Excellent detail - I highly recommend them. (I have some of his female skins, and have been very happy with them.)

I also like the look of the male skins at Tete a Pied. (If you're under 30 days, their newbie pack is a good starter set - but eventually you will want skins w/o underwear...)

There are a bunch of others that are pretty darn good, but those two are the cream of the crop for males IMO.

X2 and Max are my favorites. My in world hubby has Max skin and shape that I picked out for him and hes pretty darn hot LOL! I wear X2 skin and I mod my shape to not look like every other X2 skins out there.

I know that it is a closely guarded secret but I thought to ask anyway (it can't hurt) does anyone know where I can get basic layers (not maps, I have plenty of those) in psd files or where I can find tutorials on the steps to create the layers base, tones, shadows etc...that comprise a decent looking skin, I am not looking to go into business I am looking to create and have direct influence over my skin (like others I am OCD regarding individuality regarding my av, I dont want a skin that has circulated the grid) If you can point me in the right direction I would be forever grateful, please feel free to IM me directly if need be, thank you in advance for your consideration

Regards,
Kepster Cure

I recommend reading the reviews at http://second-man.com for skins, clothing, and other items for men.

Ugh, flashback! Several months ago, my sweetie decided he wanted to update the skin he'd had since fairly early on in his SL, so we wound up tromping all over the grid trying on demos and, in the end, not buying anything. I'm not suggesting that you not look at these places, because choice of skin is such a subjective thing and, in fact, several of the places I'm going to say mean things about have already been recommended by others on this thread, I'm just relaying our experience. Plus, at least a couple of these places have updated their lines since then, so I've no real idea how their new items may have changed.

DFO/Dragonfly: Nice photorealistic front torso and backs of hands, but not much detail elsewhere. Scribbled on brows, visible throat seam, and what appears to be a bad case of nail fungus.

Naughty: He said, "My belly button looks like the south end of a cow going north...and I think I have gills." We both liked the body work on the blonder skin better, but the coloring and utter hairlessness did not suit. Both also looked a little odd around the eyes on him - the darker skin a bit bruised and the blonde one sort of pasty.

Nomine: Didn't suit his facial shape and the body shadowing was distinctly orange.

X2: He says, "Well, I could wear this if I never took my shirt off." The face worked very well on his shape, but the torso, particularly along the ribs, was 'detailed' to the point of freakishness. No one is that defined, even hardcore body builders, and the skin winds up looking striped rather than muscled. It actually reminded me a little of a dessicated corpse I once had in an anatomy lab...just creepy.

Adam N Eve: Excessively cartoonish, almost feminine face and a decent body.

FORM: Didn't suit his shape at all and, even if it had, there were some distinct concerns about the bum shading. It was rather brown and spread about in such a way as to look...well, let's just say a bit gross.

by Max: He says, "Am I wearing lipstick!?" The lips on the skin tones he tried were all a bit too pinkish and there was some odd highlighting on the face, really only apparent when you zoomed in. The edge of the eye sockets along the bridge of the nose looked particularly strange to me and, once you'd seen it, you couldn't unsee it again. Nice body, good skin tones over all, and probably his favorite of the bunch....although not enough to purchase.

Cryogen: Meh. Not horrible, not great...I can't actually remember any specific details about the ones he tried on.

Second Skin Labs: The creator is obviously very talented, but we both feel that super realistic skins look alien in our cartoon world. Personal preference, like most of the rest of this.

If I can pry him away from WoW (maybe throw him across my Dreadsteed's rump and gallop away? lol) long enough, I'd really like him to try the FNKY! demos, and maybe the Attui and new by Max/Body Politik skins. Round 2!

I have been wearing Thomas skins from Skin Flicks for the past year and have been very happy with it

As an all-prim critter, I don't have to worry about skins too much.

I do, however, have several friends with high-end skins (mostly X2) and the popular thinking seems to be that very detailed skins look far, far better at a bit of distanace (+10m) but not so good up close and the less detailed ones look better up close and truly horrible at a distance.

If you're skin shopping, make sure to check it out from a variety of distances and a variety of lighting conditions. These things can make a big different in how the skin looks.

no one has brought up the skin / shape synergy.

some skins don't look that good on a particular shape ... even tho they ARE great skins in themselves.

if you have not completely settled on a shape:

1 > get demos of the skins you are interested in.
2 > try a demo skin and tweak the shape. if nothing gels, move on to the next demo skin.
3 > repeat.

and.. watch for the details.

as an example ... my first skin was by MAX. great looking and i did like it a lot. however the navel was a bit high. when i wore a belly piercing (attached to the stomach) and my avi bent sideways, the navel moved but the piercing didnt. later on, i had the naughty skins. they have lower navels and so did not do that sideways move. these may be little things, but they may aggravate you later on if you miss them.