Do bodyshapes sell?

I always found shape selling to be somewhat bizarre. It's not like we dont have access to the same frickin' sliders in Appearance.

It always made me think of the folks who buy a high level character to play Warcraft. Sure! You have a high level character capable of destroying all, but did you get the fun, experience & satisfaction of getting him/her there?

I've always wondered about this one myself.

The same could be said for buying a prim object. We all have access to the same prim controls. Some people are better at building than others.

Yes, what Colette said. Why bother to buy a chair, a house, a dress, a furry avatar? Anyone can build anything in SL, right?

Why is it so hard for people to understand that buying a new shape is no different from buying a Victorian chair or a Log Cabin pre-fab? Every time there's a thread about shape selling, more than one person chimes in with snarky comments about designers charging money for something anyone can do.

I love playing with shapes, shopping for skins and trying on different hair styles. But I buy all my furniture, my houses, and my clothing because I don't have enough interest or talent to make something half as good as what I can get for handing over some Lindens.

I can't see myself personally buying a shape because I have way too much fun making them myself, but I can see where other people would want to.

I honestly think that non-caucasian skins is where it's at. It's SO HARD to find decent black skins, or middle eastern skins. I've started seeing some good hispanic ones out there, but black women definitely have a hard time of it. Asian skins, too, are hard to find. I've found a few good skins of all of the above, but it took days to find them, and I cherish them all. We need a better selection of different ethnicities.

Actually shapes do sell good, people had been complainin to me alot in the past about the lack of them, so i myself made some, all completely portioned (pet peave, i dislike that whole male triangle look) but when it comes down to it, correctly portioned doesn't sell as well. men in this game seem to think the muscle slider has to be 100, coin purse 100, which in my opinion makes an avie look, well i cant use the word i want cos the whole pg theme but u get my point. So if you do shapes, be prepared for a risky business, but myself, i rather stick to my normal portioned avies.

I think people think Shapes are easy because -reproducing- them is just a matter of entering numbers in boxes (once you know the numbers). Actually assembling and texturing a group of prims requires a bit of skill in these areas, more than just typing. And reproducing custom textures, as for making clothes and skins, requires both technical and artistic expertise.

What people don't understand about shape creation is that the art is in envisioning the shape and then determining which numbers properly express that vision. It's the creator's vision and their ability to realize it that you pay for when you buy a shape.

I created *my* shape. My alts all got bought shapes cause they are there for biz reasons and only rarely around for any length of time. Honestly, it takes so many many hours to really make a good to great shape, that unless I had to start over or wanted to make my real world me into an avatar, I would always buy shapes from now on.

The big caveat here is that I would not ever buy a no mod shape and if they are mod than anyone can buy yours, copy the numbers and now they have your shape for sale. Of course, that's a lot of numbers to copy, so it would have to be someone who is really desperate to do it.

I know a lot of shape makers have gone to no mod for this reason, but if I can't tweak and play, I won't be happy.

Char

I find it a bit ironic. I long thought one of the big driving forces behind the take off of the shapes business was selling them with Mod permissions.

And now more and more shape designers are going no mod, and increasing prices as well.

I did my own shape when I came to SL and have kept it more or less unchanged since then. I chose the 'girl-next-door' newbie av and just made subtle changes here and there to arrive at my personal shape. The secret for realistic shapes is to only make small changes from the standard avs unless you want to be very fat, very small or look deliberately ridiculous!

I think selling shapes is fair enough although they should be cheaper than skins as they are easier to do but getting a shape right can take a few hours.

I might market my shape but I'd change it slightly, especially facial features, as I wouldn't know what to say to Conifer replicas whenever I bumped into them!

My biggest problem is with the chin/jaw.

One reason it's better to have a modifiable shape, at least for females, is that you can create an additional version to use with skirts and dresses which has slightly narrower hips and reduced butt size to overcome the excessive poofiness of even the tightest fitting skirts! It really does overcome the problem. I keep all my most popular outfits in folders that include all the necessary clothes, jewellery and body shape, so I can drag it on to me to change. It saves lots of time in the long run.

That's another problem area for me. Like the nose I can make it look beautiful from the front OR from the side, but it's hard to make them attractive from both angles at the same time.

I ended up giving preference to the straight-on view, so from the side my nose looks like LaToya Jackson's!

My only real problem for shape buying is that I have a VERY strong preference for maintaining a constant look... so much so that I use alts for anything that is significantly different. And even with them, I like the base shape to be the same with a few mods (slightly longer face, slightly larger eyes, etc.)... so they look different, but if seen together are obviously related. Needless to say, this really limits me appearance-wise.

*slightly* narrower? Most of mine require a *huge* reduction in order to look the same. Must be why I wear pants 98% of the time <G>

I don't wear system skirts! Ever! I refuse to change my shape to suit the clothes!