Livello Alto (which means “High Level”) is a real-life Italian fashion brand (website) which is holding a concert to celebrate the opening of a virtual store in Sansar today, with Katia Portugal and Mimi Carpenter (both of whom are already well known from Second Life) performing on stage before an appreciative audience. Thank you to Alfy for organizing this concert! He always brings such talented musical artists to Sansar.
Here’s a couple of pictures of Mimi Carpenter playing her guitar and singing:
The new virtual store looks great, too! It’s still early days so there isn’t anything for sale just yet. Here’s a link to their world, so you can check it out for yourself.
For a limited time only, Livello Alto is giving away two different men’s T-shirts and a men’s necklace for free:
There is something deeply satisfying about getting dressed in Sansar. I mean, who hasn’t tugged and pulled on their jeans in exactly the same way in real life? (Mind you, your real-life jeans might not be as stretchy!)
Now, this is a custom avatar, which means that you cannot adjust any of the facial features as you can with the new default Avatar 2.0 avatars, or change the eye colour. But Hellen works with any female Avatar 2.0 hairstyles, so I picked the long ponytail, a pair of Debi’s jeggings (which fit perfectly after some gentle tugging for a minute in Lookbook), the default tan Nexus boots, and the lovely blue Infused Nexus Shirt, a free reward you get after completing the first couple of quests in the Nexus.
Here are a few pictures I took in my own experience (I mean, world…you’ll have to forgive me; this recent change in terminology is going to take me some time to get used to!).
(All pictures were taken in my own world, Ryan’s Garden. You are welcome to come visit and explore my green little world anytime!)
Between Daisy Winthorpe’s shapewear, Ravioli’s rigged attachments, and new custom avatars like this one by eunicorn, I am now completely satisfied with my female avatar options in Sansar. All of these, of course, are interim solutions until Linden Lab releases body deformation for Avatar 2.0 avatars, something Landon Linden (a.k.a Landon McDowell, Linden Lab’s Chief Product Officer, and the person most directly in charge of Sansar’s development) told us was coming within the next 4 to 6 months. Based on the amazing flexibility of the new facial deformation features, I am very much looking forward to this!
I can honestly say that this is the first female avatar that I feel truly comfortable exploring Sansar worlds in! Here’s a picture of Vanity Fair at the Nexus, which I think is the best work that Sansar Studios has done yet in terms of world creation:
But, alas, I just can’t seem to muster up any sort of enthusiasm for it. It is firmly, absolutely, resolutely not working for me, and I will resist this foul temptation with every fibre of my being! I want my female avatar to have curves, damn it!Curviness is next to Godliness!!! (Can I get an Amen?)
*cue organ music*
So out of the wilderness came my plaintive cry. And lo and behold, the shapewear makers heard my desperate plea for salvation! Thank you, sweet minty Jesus, for the talented and nimble Sansar content creators! (Who would have ever thought, a week ago, that shapewear would become a necessary category on the Sansar Store? Truly, it is a sign that we are living in the end times.)
Ravioli has created what he calls Thiccmarize shapewear, a rigged body attachment for the default Sansar Avatar 2.0 female avatar body:
Unlike Daisy’s solution (which you wear, drape your clothing over, then remove), Ravioli’s Thiccmarize shapewear is tinted in five colours to match your avatar skintone exactly, and you are intended to be worn underneath and with your outfit (even peeking through at the bust or butt!).
Here’s what Vanity Fair looks like wearing Thiccmarize shapewear, from the front, side, and back, in a Marvelous Designer-created dress plucked at random from my inventory:
Thus concludes my sermon. Go now, and spread the blessed Thiccmarize gospel to the slim and slender women of Sansar! And may God be with you. Amen.
UPDATE: Sorry, but it’s time to ditch the televangelist schtick and discuss a serious subject.
I have been rather sternly taken to task by one reader of my blog, for using the word “emaciated” to describe the new default Sansar female avatar. He shares the following picture of what emaciated really looks like (see right). And he asks me if I would be okay with the opposite trend of fat shaming.
He has a point. So, I will henceforth not use the word “emaciated” to describe these avatars, even though the arms on the default Sansar female avatar distressingly resemble this photo, in my own, purely personal opinion (please see the image at the top of this blogpost for reference). And I do apologize if I have offended anybody. I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized that I am still looking at things from a fat-person perspective and bias, and a First World, North American consumerist viewpoint. We all need to work on complicating our perspectives in order to make this world a better and more accepting place for everybody—thin, fat, “thicc”, and every variation in-between.
One of the things that I have noticed about virtual worlds with an in-world marketplace is that, quite often, market forces will solve a problem that has been created, or address an issue that is causing concern, without the company that made the platform having to do anything to fix it! The customers solve the problem themselves!
This has been demonstrated over and over again in Second Life. Creative content makers have, time and again, stepped up to the plate to fix a perceived problem, and reap some profits from their ingenuity. For example: do you hate the default duck walk on your Second Life avatar? Et voilà! Animation overrides were created, and they sell like hotcakes for literally dozens of animation vendors. (I’m still waiting for them to come to Sansar.)
Dislike the default Second Life system avatar? Crafty creators like Onyx LeShelle (who designed the ever-popular Maitreya Lara body) made a completely mesh body, mesh bodies become the new avatar standard, and Onyx and other mesh body creators take home money by the wheelbarrow! Witness market forces at work.
So, when Sansar released stylized, rather emaciated-looking default human avatars with their Avatar 2.0 rollout, many people (including me) complained. But Daisy Winthorpe, bless her heart, saw a business opportunity!
Daisy has just released new shapewear for the Avatar 2.0 female avatar (top and bottom) that you can add to your avatar before you put on clothes, to give you the Kim Kardashian shape of your dreams! Here’s Sansar Store links to the top and the bottom (they’re only S$25 each!):
How they work is simple but brilliant. You add the shapewear first, and adjust it as you like using the simulate button (they are made using Marvelous Designer so they are completely adjustable like any MD clothing). Then you freeze the simulation for the shapewear, then add the clothing you want to wear over top and simulate just that, then freeze your outfit and remove the shapewear! The curves remain!!!
Here’s a before-and-after demonstration. BEFORE (please click on each individual image to see it in a larger size):
And AFTER (again, just click on the image to see a larger size):
Here’s another comparison shot, before and after:
Not only has the shapewear made for a shapelier, “thicc” body, it’s also made the dress seem fuller and longer overall! (UPDATE: Whoops! I just realized that it’s not the shapewear that makes the dress look bigger; the dress looks bigger because I actually made it bigger using the new Transform Item button on the Worn Items window! You can now resize clothing to fit your personal style! Try doing that in Second Life!)
Yes, I will admit it’s a bit of a matronly look with this particular style of dress I chose, but at least I was able to get rid of that starving, hangry supermodel Barbie look! I absolutely freaking love it! Thank you, Daisy!
Now, if you do find that this is perhaps a little too shapely for your tastes, fear not! Daisy has made less Kardashian-curvy models of shapewear to please just about everybody! Hurray!
