At the Altamura store, you can pick up two free group gifts from the panels located at the entrance: free Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible full-body (i.e. head and body) mesh avatars! The Altamura group is currently free to join (normally it costs L$100), so these are completely free.
Here’s what the Movin’ On female avatar looks like, wearing the included skin:
And here’s what the rather handsome Take My Way male avatar looks like, wearing the Bakes on Mesh skin included in the package:
Now, there’s a catch. Both of these avatars do NOT come with a HUD. You cannot remove the hairbases or the lip layers on these avatars, which might pose a problem when using other Bakes on Mesh skins with them (I tried a very pale skin on the male avatar, and the lips looked dreadful). And the Movin’ On female avatar feet (which are Slink compatible) can only wear high-heeled shoes! No flats. (UPDATE Dec. 23rd.: I stand corrected! There is a HUD included with the female body, called the “Hide HUD”, which allows you turn on and off flat feet, mid feet, and high feet.)
Because there is no HUD with alpha sections, you will have to use the alphas that come with the clothing you buy (or repurpose from the SL starter avatar collection, such as these blue Alejandro shorts that the Take My Way male avatar is wearing). If you do need a set of alphas to use with clothing that does not come with them, you can pick up a free set from Little Black Dress at this SLURL (just click on the bag on the floor).
However, if you are not terribly fussy about your avatar, and you like the looks of these two, you simply cannot beat the price—completely free! Remember that these are both limited-time gifts, so don’t wait, hurry down!
I will be adding these avatars to my popular, constantly-updated lists of free and inexpensive mesh heads and bodies for female avatars (here) and male avatars (here). Happy freebie shopping! Here’s your taxi.
Akeruka has been giving away freebie or dollarbie Bento mesh heads (both male and female models) twice a year for the past couple of years. If you had joined the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150 two years ago, you would have picked up no less than nine fully-featured, fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads by now—which works out to less than L$20 per head! A truly outstanding bargain! So join the Akeruka group and watch the notices for the next announcement.
Actually, 150 divided by 9 works out to about 17 Linden dollars per head. Well, today Akeruka announced yet another group gift, a Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible head for male avatars called M02, so that makes it ten heads in total, or L$15 per head!
The M02 vendor panel in the Akeruka store
The old saying goes that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. So I really have no business complaining about an inexpensive mesh head. But I also happen to write a blog giving out advice on the best high-quality freebies in Second Life, so with that in mind, I am going to give a review of the Akeruka M02 head.
I hate it. Why?
Well, to test it out, I paired it with the dollarbie Meshbody Classic male mesh body, which also supports Bakes on Mesh when that it enabled in the included HUD.
But it’s when you scroll in for a closeup that problems in the craftsmanship of this head start to appear. To start, the included eyelashes in the HUD are rather problematic; all four options are too feminine-looking for a male avatar for my personal taste (eyelashes have tended to be a problem area on most of the Akeruka head group gifts).
But that’s not the worst part about this head. Take a good look at the area of the brows where the red arrows are pointing in the following picture:
Here’s another angle to give you a better view of what’s going on:
No, you eyes do not deceive you—the brow area actually covers part of the upper eyelashes! Even worse, I was unable to make any adjustments to the head sliders on this Bento mesh head to correct the problem. You are stuck with the prominent, Neanderthal brow on this male avatar head, which will doubtless interfere with any eyelashes you choose, whether you like it or not! Yes, it’s extremely picky of me, but I am very picky about my freebies!
So I regret that I cannot recommend this particular group gift (although I have certainly enjoyed and appreciated all previous nine heads, and used them successfully on various alts). And, in light of the excellent, free Alain male mesh head group gift from LeLutka that is being offered this Christmas, I certainly can’t recommend you join the Akeruka group for L$150 just for this group gift, and pay a Linden dollar for the M02 head. It’s just not worth the L$151, even though that is significantly cheaper than a regularly-priced Catwa head or its equivalent.
The M02 head is available at the Akeruka store until December 31st, 2020.
Tried it on, to me not the best looking head! looks better only with the face light on and I don’t do face lights. To me [it] looks very manly. Would love to know how you got it looking like you did because I tried and got no way close to that look. Not my cup of tea, sorry!
Actually, while I was playing around with the sliders, I also thought it was a rather odd-shaped female head, very tall and rather thin-faced by default, and I found I had to squash the W08 head a fair bit, then adjust the chin, to get the images I used for that blogpost.
I had to squash the W08 head quite a bit to get this look, and it’s still a somewhat tall, thin face…this is not a head for you if you want a rounder face!
When Akeruka started giving away dollarbie group gifts of male and female Bento heads, about three years ago, they were pretty much the only vendor that was doing it, so at that time, it was well worth spending the L$150 to join the Akeruka group, as I have said up top.
But in 2020, now that brands such as Catwa, Genus Project, LOGO, and now LeLutka have given away beautiful, fully-featured, high-quality free male and female Bento mesh heads, the game has changed somewhat. Akeruka seems to be just a little bit off on the design of their most recent line of heads, both male and female, and I just thought you should know about the problems I encountered, up front, before you spend any money—even if it is only L$151!
UPDATE Dec. 19th, 2020: This morning, a thought got me out of bed to try something: that perhaps I should just turn the eyelashes on the M02 head off completely. I think the HUD was a multi-purpose, unisex one, so perhaps that would do the trick?
Nope. There is no such thing as “default eyelashes'”. So your only possible option, for a head with such a pronounced, protruding brow, is to find some extremely short male eyelashes…and even then, live with the fact that the brow will cover part of them, anyway. And my eyelashless avatar looks like he survived a kitchen fire 😉
And yes, in the harsh light of morning, I do full well realize that this is yet another one of my infamously cranky blogposts. Sorry, Akeruka!
SECOND UPDATE December 19th, 2020, 8:36 p.m.: Well, after a couple of commenters suggested that I make some adjustments to the eyebrow shape, I pulled the eyebrow thickness slider all the way to the narrowest possible eyebrows, and I finally got a somewhat more aesthetically pleasing look (not 100% perfect, but a damn sight better than before).
But frankly, I am still not that crazy about this head. I feel that the completely free LeLutka Alain head is, by far, the far better head of the two male mesh heads that are available as group gifts this holiday season. Sorry, Akeruka!
Akeruka was known for its semi-regular group gifts of both male and female Bento mesh heads. All you had to do was join the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150, and keep your eyes peeled for announcements. In fact, if you had joined the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150 three years ago, you would have picked up no less than ninefully-featured, fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads by now before today’s announcement—which works out to less than L$20 per head! Now that’s what I call a deal!
Well, Akeruka has just announced that there is a new, tenth group gift, a Bento, Bakes on Mesh compatible female head now available for only L$1: the Akeruka Advanced Head W08 (Version 3.0). (I wish they would give them names rather than designations like “W08”; it makes it sound like a brand of motor oil 😉 …)
Here’s the SLURL to take you to the vendor panels in the women’s section of the Akeruka store. Just right-click and pay one of the three panels underneath the large poster which say Server 1, Server 2, or Server 3, pay one Linden dollar, and receive your group gift! Even if you have to join the [AK] Heads News & Support group for the first time to pick up this gift, paying L$151 in total is still a bargain!
Here’s what you get in the package:
The package includes a starter shape and eyebrows shaper, the head itself, with separate teeth, eyes, and neck fixes, plus a main HUD, an animations HUD, a separate HUD to control the teeth, and an Omega HUD. There’s even a face light included!
Please note that, unlike previous Akeruka group gifts, this is intended to be a Bakes on Mesh head, so there are no skins or skin appliers included in this package.
I went and located the Bakes on Mesh skins that came with the Akeruka group gift just previous to this one, the [AK Advanced] Bento Head V2.6 Limited Edition head, and tried those on this new head. This is skin tone 5 of the Limited Edition head skins, on the new W08 head, with zero adjustments to the default body shape and eyebrow shaper included in the package:
The eyebrows do need a bit of adjusting, but overall this is a very pleasing look! You can control the colour of the included mesh eyes using the main HUD (there are also separate left and right unrigged eyes included in the package).
Here’s the complete final look. I paired the W08 head with the Altamura Juliet body (which requires an Omega system kit and a separate Bakes on Mesh applier to be BoM compatible). I used the eyeliner and lipstick settings in the included HUD.
All in all, I am very pleased with this head! If you are already a member of the Akeruka group, spending that extra Linden dollar and picking up this latest group gift is a no-brainer!
Obviously, the Bento head wars in Second Life have changed the situation from when Akeruka first began giving out group gifts three years ago. Since then, we have quite a few releases of free mesh heads, from the likes of Catwa, Genus Project, and now LeLutka! So you could be forgiven for thinking “why spend L$151 on this head, when I have free ones from other big-name brands already?”.
However, I still think this is a beautiful head, and you may want to plunk down your hard-earned Lindens and pick this one up anyways! It’s still a great deal, in my opinion.
IMPORTANT UPDATE, Dec. 11th, 2020: The Alain and Lilly gift heads are NO LONGER AVAILABLE from the LeLutka in-world store! Please go to one of the following locations instead to pick them up:
News flash! LeLutka is offering two free Bento mesh heads, one for males and one for females, but only from December 8th to December 26th, 2020. All you have to do is join the LeLutka group, and pay L$1 for each head (your Linden dollar will be automatically refunded).
According to a notecard sent out via the LeLutka group (which is free to join):
Hello, LeLU’s,
So we ask, what’s better than a price drop, Black Friday sale, and 6 Christmas trees to end this year?
Free heads!!! One for the girls and one for the boys. You read right, we want to spoil you with these two little gifts. This is just another way of showing you how much we love you and to thank you for giving us support this year!
Please help us welcome Lilly and Alain to our Evolution line, and we truly hope you will love them like we do.
These heads will be set to L$1, but you will get refunded. The only reason you will need to pay the vendor is to record your purchase, which will ensure you get all future updates and redelivers. We wanted to be sure our group members felt special; therefore, Lilly and Alain will be available to group members ONLY and set to a regular price (L$3990) on December 26th.
These heads come with all of the features you have come to love. With all addons and skins, we left nothing out. So with that said, enjoy and thank you for being with us yet another year.
May 2021 be an amazing one for us all…
With utmost gratitude, LeLUTKA Team
The Alain and Lilly gift heads from LeLutka (source)
Of course, the LeLutka sim is absolutely jampacked and laggy as hell at the moment, but you’ve got from now until Boxing Day to come in-world and pick these heads up, so you might want to bide your time until the sim is somewhat less crowded. It’s important to note that LeLutka is telling shoppers that they CANNOTcam shop from the neighbouring sims for this special deal; you will therefore have to fight your way into the LeLutka sim to pick these heads up.
Here’s what the vendor panels look like in the LeLutka store. You need to click, not on the poster, but on the red panel directly underneath the poster (please see the green arrows in the picture below):
Click the red panels underneath the Alain and Lilly posters in the LeLutka store
Just pay the panels L$1, et voilà! The Alain or Lilly head that you desire is now yours!
Here’s what in the Lilly head package when you unpack it:
The LeLutka BoM Add-Ons folder contains things such as Bakes on Mesh freckles, blush, eyeshadow, and lipstick, plus a few things you wouldn’t expect: smile lines, mature wrinkles, and even some vampire blood! The LeLutka BoM Hairbases folder contains dozens of Bakes on Mesh hairbases, in just about every shade imaginable.
The base skin is a full-head Bakes on Mesh tattoo layer, which comes in four skin tones. Likewise, the eyebrows are Bakes on Mesh, and come in blonde, red, light brown, and dark brown (and I am not a fan of these particular BoM eyebrows, which to my eye look very unnatural and overly manicured, as seems to be the style nowadays).
Here is what the Lilly head looks like, straight out of the box and using the default head, body, and eyebrows shapes included, with zero adjustments to the sliders. For this picture I chose the lightest of the four included face skins, and the dark brown eyebrows:
This is the first freebie Bento head gift that I can remember that includes several options for aging your appearance. Here’s what the Lilly head looks like when you select Mature instead of Young from the HUD, and add the included mature skin tone and the smile lines from the unpacked BoM Add-Ons folder:
You do get eight different types of eyelashes, with the option to change just the upper lashes, the lower lashes, or both:
The Lilly head does include mesh eyes, and the HUD gives you twelve different colours to choose from, plus quite a few other options:
The HUD includes high-definition (HD) options for eyeshadow, lipstick, and eyebrows (if you choose not to use the Bakes on Mesh eyebrows included in the package).
There is also an extensive animations HUD, with no less than 64 facial animation settings to reflect many different moods! The HUD also includes 64 separate facial expressions for pictures and the like…check out this lovely, bright smile!
Unfortunately, it does appear that, unlike other, previous freebie mesh head group gifts from other vendors, you will have to purchase LeLutka skin appliers in order to match the four included head skins with whatever mesh body you choose to pair with this head.
So I decided to try out a couple of skins designed specifically for LeLutka heads, just to see how they look. Here’s the free group gift of the Mandi skin from Lara Hurley Skin:
And here is what the free group gift from Essences, the Waleria face applier for LeLutka heads, looks like on the Lilly head (more details here):
The Alain male Bento mesh head looks like this, right out of the box:
It comes with a high-definition beard and a HUD to give you one of five facial hair options, in any of five different colours:
Like Lilly, the Alain head comes with four shades of skin tattoos, but in the case of Alain, the tattoos seem to apply to both the head and the Bakes on Mesh-compatible body (in this case, the Meshbody Classic body), which was not the case with the Lilly head when I tested it (unless I screwed up the settings on the Maitreya Lara mesh body I used for the Lilly photos, but I don’t think I did, since the other Bakes on Mesh skins I tried did work with it). Strange!
UPDATE 5:47 p.m.: In frustration, I finally went and upgraded my Maitreya Lara mesh body to version 5.3, turned on Bakes on Mesh for it, and tried it again, and I can now confirm that the skin tattoos that come with both the Lilly and Alain head tattoos include an extended neck fade, but they do NOT extend to the entire body itself! (The reason I had originally thought that the Alain skin tattoos covered the entire body was that I had tested it with a system skin that was close enough in skin tone to match!)
Here is what the Lilly head looks like in the darkest skin tone of the four included, and you can clearly see where the tattoo fades out. At least, I don’t have a visible neck seam this time! Honestly, switching back and forth between skin appliers and Bakes on Mesh can be such a pain in the ass sometimes…anyway, just to make it crystal clear: You will definitely need to purchase skins (either Bakes on Mesh skins, or skin appliers for your preferred mesh body in the LeLutka skin tones) to match the head skin tattoos included with both the Alain and Lilly gift heads.
One interesting thing I noted is that there were no darker or Black skin tones that came with either the Lilly or Alain heads—Caucasian only! Again, you’ll have to purchase those Bakes on Mesh skins or LeLetuka head and body appliers separately.
All in all, these are both really high-quality products, and well worth picking up!
UPDATE Dec. 12th, 2020:Clef de Peau is offering up a free group gift of a male head and body skin called Jamie (the Clef de Peau group is free to join). Here is what Jamie looks like on the Alain head; the package includes a suggested body shape and eyebrow shaper for the Alain head. which I had to tweak slightly in the upper body and neck areas to get this picture. Looking fabulous!
There is also a free gift at the POUT! store, of a shape created specifically for the LeLutka Lilly head. It’s located in the centre of the store, and you don’t need to join any group; just slap the vendor panel and it’s yours!
Thank you to both Linda Haber and Kieran Stephens for the heads up!
