Sunday, August 7, 2011

Making a male skin - Part 2, Plan C

Hi everyone!

I know I left you hanging on the last post and I'm sorry it's been so long.  I promise that it is not sloth that has bright this on.... your correspondent has been working on the male starlight skin and has started over several times, gaining experience that she hopes will benefit you.

I won't take you through all the fits and starts.  Instead I think I'll show you end end product... or at least, the where the skin is the present time.  I seem to ding with these things over time so no project is never 'done' in the strictest sense of the word.  But this one has reached a point where it's ready to be shared publicly and I expect only small changes in the future.

Oh, before I show you I should post a sign.... *nails up a sign.... thwack!.... thwack! .... thwack! .... and steps back to view her work*   "PENIS WARNING!".

I know, I know... but its possible that some will be offended by male frontal nudity.... so If you're among them please consider before you proceed.

So.... here it is.  My work on a Starlight Male skin so far.  Let me point out a few changes...

First notice the body shape.  The 'boy next door' shape from SL was just too boyish for me, so I buffed him up a bit.  You can see that his shoulders are broader and his pects are more pronounced.  I also shortened his legs a little - many of the SL shapes in the library have freakishly long legs, I have no idea why but I have images of the Lindens all wandering from cubical to cubical wearing those clown suits that conceal stilts.  He is also more muscular than the 'boy next door', that's in the pects, arms and legs.  The hair is a freebie I found somewhere as is his penis.

Now let's pay attention to the skin.  It's not easy to tell here, but it's darker.  Not a lot, but it is a significant change.  Another thing that you can't see well in this picture is the detail of the skin texture, it's not so baby-bottom smooth, there's a little texture to it.

From the skin point of view, the male pects are an obvious change and the highlighting on the skin supports the underlying shape.  Less obvious, but equally important is the shadow under the pects.  If you compare this side by side with the normal female Starlight skin, you'll see several other less obvious changes too.  The abs are the first thing that you will probably notice, the female version does not have the mild six-pack that our male version has.  This was done by changing the highlighting.  And the same approach was taken with other highlights in the lower thigh and the biceps.

Finally, I have the added body hair.  To get an idea of what to do here I did a google image search on "male body hair".  Some of the pictures are truly scary but many are useful.  I'll explain the tecnique I used to create the hair later, it was easier than I thought it would be.

I will explain how to make this skin in the following posts, but I must warn you of one thing before we proceed.  ......

This is will not be a purely 'mechanical' exercise, there will be some creativity, some 'art' involved.  As I mentioned at the start, it's taken me many iterations to create this so you should also expect toss away what you've done several times and start over.  I think I've done so at least four times myself and that's not counting all the little back-tracking I've done when something didn't quite work out as I wished.

Also it's certain that your result will look different from mine - creativity is like that.  Different doesn't mean better or worse, just different.  If you persevere and learn, you will eventually end up with something that you like.

robin

4 comments:

  1. Are the final PSD files available for download ?
    ( Restless.Swords@gmail.com )

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  2. If the PSD files were available, LL has made sure that they have been removed. Apparently they are now operating under the assumption of if they remove free contest, it will "scare" people into staying in second life, instead of allowing people to exercise their freedom in moving to other worlds. What LL needs to realize is that a lot of content was brought in by users and those users should be allowed to distribute their stuff as they see fit. LL has decided that freedom is a bad word and no you can no longer use your right to download software or use copyright free material for your own use. They have even gone so far as to infiltrate source forge and remove open source images from the database. I know as I downloaded some "pictures" from there that now only contain text.

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  3. read the above "contest" as content

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  4. Well for LL taking all free skins template, no big deal, if anyone want to share some that they make, i man psd, there is tons of sites where they can upload it LL can not control internet, only marketplace...

    ReplyDelete