Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group yet? I will be posting EVEN MORE news and tips on finding fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than I post here on the blog! More information on this brand new SL group here.
Over the past year, I have received tips from various people about a free female mesh body called Minou, by a store called Little Devil, which was advertised as compatible with apparel and footwear designed for the nearly-ubiquitous Maitreya Lara mesh body.
There are two ways that you can pick up this female mesh body for free. The first way is to come early enough in the day to slap the Midnight Madness board located to the right of the entrance to the Little Devil store on the Villa Delacroix sim (here’s the exact SLURL; please note that Villa Delacroix is an adult-rated sim which hosts a BDSM club, although the area around the store seems pretty safe). The Midnight Madness board locks at 30, so get there early!
The second way is to invite a few friends and/or alts to try your luck at the Lucky Fortunes game, located immediately to the right of the Midnight Mania board outside the Little Devil store. If you and a second avatar are judged to be 100% compatible, both of you win a free Minou mesh body!
It was using this second method that I finally won a Minou mesh body! Here is what she looks like right out of the box, with the included shape and skin, with a system (non-mesh) head, and not changing any of the default head or body sliders:
Looking good! As advertised, clothing and footwear designed for Maitreya Lara bodies seem to fit this body fairly well. The black minidress I used in this picture is called Celin, from Seniha, which I bought using their free store credit offer not too long ago, and the Wales pumps were a group gift from the Essenz shoe store. The Lio hair was a free hunt prize from Analog Dog, and so my total cost for this particular avatar look is ZERO LINDEN DOLLARS (because I joined the Essenz group when they had a free group join period in the past).
The body comes in components, with the hands and feet as separate attachments. The detail on the hands is quite lovely, but these hands are not Bento, and you cannot change the colour or shape of the fingernails:
The detail on the feet is also quite good, but there is a slight ankle seam where the feet attach to the body. Also, the feet only come in one foot height, to fit Maitreya-Lara-compatible high-heeled shoes. You will not be able to wear flats on this body!
The package also includes the following complete outfit, a thoughtful added touch. (There’s also some free mesh hair included, but I did not use it for this picture.)
Below, I paired the Minou body with the recent free group gift of the LeLutka Lilly head, using one of the full-head skin tattoos in the Lilly package that matched the skin tone of the Minou body the closest, and hiding the resulting neck seam with a simple black choker (a past free group gift from West End):
This is actually an attractive mesh body for a price that can’t be beat: free! (In fact, this particular avatar look also cost me zero Linden dollars. That’s right, zip. Zilch. Nada.)
However, there are a few caveats. First, this body only comes in one skin tone as shown, and it does not support skin appliers or Bakes on Mesh skins. Second, there is no included HUD with alpha sections to erase any body parts which might poke through clothing, which means that you will have to be extremely careful what you choose to wear on the Minou body.
For example, these skintight Maitreya-Lara-compatible leggings from ViSion (a gift at the recent Winter Shop and Hop event) are unwearable, because there is no way to alpha out your legs underneath them:
You’ll probably have better luck with skimpy minidresses and other skin-baring outfits, however. The skin detail on the Minou body is excellent for a free body (although I haven’t included a picture of them here, I think that the breasts on this body are also very well done). I can see this body proving quite popular among the working girls of Second Life, the escorts and strippers toiling away for tips in the adult sims, who perhaps cannot afford a full-blown Maitreya Lara mesh body!
So, if you are absolutely, completely flat broke, but you still want a good-looking mesh avatar body that can wear some (but not all) Maitreya apparel and footwear, you might want to consider this as an option. I will add the Minou mesh body by Little Devil to my ever-expanding list of free and inexpensive mesh heads and bodies for female avatars.
Happy freebie shopping!