LAQ Glow Carina

LAQ released a new Glow skin a little while ago, and her name is Carina 🙂  Carina is actually one of the faces from the original Portrait collection, but given the “Glow” treatment — updated body, skin and facial features that are enhanced with a healthy “glow”, and sharpened details.  The result?  A skin that has a natural look and fresh feel to it.

Carina is available in three skintones, with eight makeups for each.  Each makeup has a bald version, and a hairbase version for wearing with certain “hairbase” hairstyles from LAQ.

Visit LAQ to try out the Carina skin demos!

Other credits…
>> in the fair tone:
hair – LAQ Imani
outfit – Last Call Femme Fatale
heels – Maitreya Gold Salience
Shot at Mont Saint Michel sim.

>> in the peach tone:
hair – Argrace Baseball Cap relaxed ponytail
lingerie – insolence clara
shoes – UBU Drunks
jacket – COCO bomber jacket
tank – fri.day cream basic cami
Shot at the Harold sim.

>> in the nougat tone:
hair – Truth Belinda
lingerie – Blowpop Jolene
Shot at private location.

Return of a classic favorite: LAQ Glow Lacie

Well, I meant to blog about the re-release of the Lacie skins at LAQ as Glow skins a while ago now, but life has been rather hectic over the past week.  (Just thinking about how crazy things were is making me tired again!)  Better late than never, though, right?  🙂

The Lacie skins are available in four skintones, and each skintone comes with eight makeups.  You get two versions of each makeup:  bald, and hairbase for wearing with certain hairstyles.  There’s a lot of pretty details on Lacie, but the part I love about this particular skin most are her eyes:  she has deep set eyes that are framed by nicely done brows that aren’t too thick or too thin, but just right.

Anyway, enough talk… let’s just get on to the pics 😀

You can click on the images above to see (much) larger versions of them on my flickr stream. Visit the Laqroki sim (Laqroki 154, 67, 23) to try demos of the skins.

On a side note, I never thought I’d see the day where I’d drop over 1k on a single pair of shoes in SL. Ever. But omg, I did! I splurged on a pair of Maitreya Gold shoes and I am 100% free of buyer’s remorse. These shoes boast prim toes/feet and the designers included skin presets/notes so that you can match them to most major designer skins. They’re fabulous so I *had* to show them in one of my pics 😀 ❤

Other credits… >> in the milky tone image
Hair – LAQ Claudia
Top – fri.day basic cami
Shorts – fri.day denim shorts

>> in the fair tone image:
Hair – Exile Voodoo
Dress – LeeZu freebie
Shoes – Maitreya Gold Salience

>> in the peach tone image:
Hair – 69 Q.B.
Jacket – Aoharu Black short jean jacket
Bikini – Last Call Yelena gold bikini
Tattoo – Aitui Fuse
Jeans – Gearshift Maverick jeans

>> in the nougat tone image:
Hair – LAQ Imani
Top – Last Call Tatienne lacy shirt
Bag – =E.M.A.=

LAQ Glow Jessica skins

Mallory Cowen of LAQ (a.k.a. Laqroki) has released her latest installment in the Glow Skins series. Say hello to the beautiful Jessica 🙂 Glow Jessica skins come in four different skintones. For each skintone, you get a pack of eight makeups. For each makeup, you get two brow color options, blonde and brown.

And now, on to the pics! I’ll refrain from writing too much, and will just let the pics do the talking. Larger versions of these images are on my flickrstream, and there will be NSFW pics after the cut:

I’ll admit, the most important thing for me in a skin is the face and so that’s almost always what I focus on, but the skins in the Glow line deserve a look from head to toe.  NSFW pics to follow after the cut…

loreena and michael

My friend Brianna recently released a new skin named Loreena at her store, Le Pinceau. I think this time around, my favorite makeup is #03, with it’s bright pink lipstick and silvery, slightly smoky eyes. I thought the makeup on #00 was interesting; well, I suppose “makeup” is the wrong word since it’s a mostly nude look but she has sort of a flesh-toned lipliner on.

Clicking on the image will take you to a larger version on my flickr:

Their 75% off sale is still going on, too, so if you’ve been curious about their new store now’s the time to take a look!

While I’m on the subject of skins, L’oring or Lazolli skins (or both? I am a little confused as to what the official name of the brand is, honestly) has a Michael Jackson skin that is probably the best one I’ve seen on the grid thus far. I never really paid much attention to the skin other than to think “wow good likeness” in passing.

Last night, though, while cruising around I saw the avatar name MichaelJackson —— pop up on my Mysti radar. Out of curiosity, I sought him out and said hi, and admired the likeness he’d achieved thus far. (I’m usually really shy about approaching people, but I guess the faux celebrity thing was too interesting for me to just pass by ^_^)  I recalled the L’oring (or Lazolli! lol) skin, so I asked him if he wanted to check it out. We headed to L’oring/Lazolli and this is how it looked on his av:

😀 He tried on the shape demo that was offered at the store, but we both agreed his shape was a lot better. Then we did the Thriller dance, haha. A friend of mine recently gave me an attachment that plays a Thriller soundbyte while animating your avatar with the dance from the Thriller music video… it’s fun. If you want a copy of it to share with your friends, let me know and I’ll toss one to you! Just IM me, my name is Melanie774 Kidd. Here’s a quick vid of the attachment at work:

P.s.  RIP, Michael Jackson.

Other credits…
In my pic with MJ (sorry, I don’t know where he got his stuff):
My hair – Exile Rayne
My skin – Laqroki Claudia
Tube top – Tres blah (this is pretty old, not sure if it’s still available)
Shorts – Aoharu

In my video:
Tank Top – Mon Amie group freebie
Shorts – Maitreya (also pretty old and not sure if it’s available)
Socks – Lulu
Roller Skates – Pixel Mode

bare rose’s silent heart

I haven’t been to Bare Rose in a long time because, frankly, my old laptop did NOT like that sim.  I’m happy to report that’s changed 😀

I went there to go pick up some cargo pants I saw on a friend, by my attention was quickly diverted by all the playful cyberpunk, goth, and fantasy outfits.  You know, as much as I love the great textures on mainstream clothes that we can find in SL, sometimes it gets boring and I want to play with looks I’d not wear in RL.  I forgot just how MUCH Bare Rose offers, and in so many colors, for so little L$!  I’m not sure that there’s any outfits there that costs more than L$200, so it’s easy to get carried away in there if you’re not careful.

I picked up an outfit called Silent Heart and I looooooove it, I don’t want to take it off:

There are a lot of prims and it’s all No Copy, so be sure to hop on a posestand and take your time with editing them to fit. Here’s what’s under the flowing prim skirt:

The outfit actually does not come with the fishnet parts and nipple tape.  The nipple tape is from some old store that has been closed for a long time, now, but I believe that Dark Eden has some, as well as Juicy.  The fishnet comes from an outfit called Belted that I got from Winter Moon quite a while back, too, so I’m not sure if that’s still available.  I wore the outfit without those items in the last pic; be prepared to have at least some of your nipples bared if you choose to wear the outfit without anything underneath.

I think the mouth covering mask is one of my favorite parts, hehe.  The sculpted part around the collar also emphasizes your avi’s neck; it looked great paired up with my new Grazia hair in the night color from Truth.

Silent Heart was less than L$200, and for your money you get the outfit in black, red, and pink.  ^_^

Credits:
Hair – Stringer Mausoleum
Skin & Boots – Laqroki
Eyes – The Body Politik
Piercings – Mela’s (my store :p )

Penelope at Le Pinceau

One of my friends Brianna Stenvaag and her partner Mogan Bezner are the designers behind the store Le Pinceau, and they recently released a new skin named Penelope. Prior to this Brianna has released an asian skin called Mei Mei that’s really cute, as well as another skin named Frida, but I think Penelope is my favorite from her so far!

Here is Penelope in Light Tan; this skin comes with seven fresh looking makeups.  Maybe it was because I was in a bit of a retro mood after picking up one of the new high-waisted hawaiian print bikinis from Artilleri, but my favorite Penelope makeup of the moment is 5, with it’s bright red bombshell lipstick and light dusting of pale blue eyeshadow.  You can click the images to view larger versions on my flickr page:

Brianna and Mogan also offer some very beautiful eyes; I always admire them on Brianna whenever I see her.  They’ve got a whole bunch of colors and so I’ve decided to show just my favorites here, but there’s a lot more you can choose from when you visit the shop.

You can check out La Pinceau on the Lost Sailor sim:  Lost 20Sailor 156, 102, 29

Credits for skin image:
Hair – Laqroki Fallen
Hair flower – G-field hibiscus

Laqroki knee high boots

Note:  All images are straight out of SL, except for cropping.  I loooooooove Windlight!!!!!

Winter DiPrima of Laqroki recently released some new knee-high boots, and I’m loving the look of them!  I’ve had them for a few days and I’m already getting some pretty good mileage out of them.

I realize the picture above isn’t the greatest for showing off the boots, but I couldn’t not show this because the beige ones go really nicely with the Last Call Dominica outfit and it’s signature Last Call decolletage. Yay for equestrienne sexiness!

But okay, here are some pics that are more close-up, and as always, you can click the images for larger versions on my flickr page:

These boots are a little different from most other boots I’ve seen in SL, because the boot itself is in one piece (not one prim! lol sorry), so you don’t have that odd joint issue at the ankle, which I think may have been necessary given the placement of the buckle and strap on this design. As far as texturing and shape goes, I think these pictures speak for themselves; they look beautiful and realistic.

The boots are sold with Copy/Mod permissions, which is really awesome for getting a good perfect fit. I did a little bit of editing to fit the boots to my shape, and I think it took me maybe 2 or three minutes to do both sides. I actually forgot to show one more color in the shot above; in addition to silver, black, red, white, and beige, the boots also come in brown.

These boots are located in Laqroki’s Apparel department.

Credits:

Skin – Yabusaka metallic skin (old freebie)
Glasses – PrimOptic
Outfit – Bare Rose
Guns – C-Tech Redemption

subtle facial expressions

(Note:  you can click on all of the images for this post to bring up larger versions on my flickr page.)

About 99.9% of the time, I run my avatar around with a neutral expression on her face. When I’m taking snapshots, I’ll sometimes hit the Emote function in my MystiTool to get her to crack a big smile or some other fun facial animation:

You can take the whole facial animation thing a step further with London Spengler’s Pandora FACE 2.0, which basically allows you to play two SL facial expressions at the same time, making for all sorts of possible combinations.

As much as I adore the facial animations that are available in SL, sometimes they’re a tad cartoonish for my purposes.  Just the other day, as I was setting up a picture of my av at a beach sim (Mori Pwani sim, my Plurk friend Lissa Pinion has now got me hooked on playing on the waves there) I realized I wanted my avatar to have a subtle, Mona Lisa-ish smile to go along with the looking-over-her-shoulder-at-the-camera pose.  To accomplish that, I decided to create variations on my avatar’s face shape and these are some of the results I got:

While working on editing my shape, I recalled talking with an SL photographer about a year ago on the subject of getting more facial expressions beyond the ones already built into SL.  Perhaps editing my face shape seemed like an obvious answer to me because I work with shapes a lot for my store, but it was something that had not occurred to him to try.

So, I figured I’d write about it on my blog, and share what sliders I edited to create my subtle facial expressions.  ^_^

To create my avatar’s melancholy expression, these are the sliders I edited:

Shape…
Eyes > Eye Opening:  slightly wider
Eyes > Outer Eye Corner: slightly more down
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  corner down

Your eyebrows are also an important part of creating a facial expression.   (To edit your eyebrow shape, you must go into Edit Appearance > Hair > Eyebrows.)   These are the slider adjustments I made for my melancholy emote:

System Hair…
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Height:  slightly higher
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Points:  smoother

For my avatar’s stern expression, these are the slider edits I made:

Shape…
Eyes >   Eye Opening:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Ratio:  slightly more lower lip
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  slightly more corner down

System Hair…
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Height:  lower (i.e., I went from 77 to 92)
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Arc:  slightly less arced

For my avatar’s subtle grin, I made these slider adjustments:

Shape…
Eyes > Eye Opening:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  slightly more corner up
Mouth > Lip Ratio:  slightly more lower lip
Chin > Jaw Jut:  very slightly more underbite

System Hair…
no changes

Those are only three examples, but that should give you a pretty good idea of what sliders you’d want to touch when editing your own shape for creating more subtle expressions.  (As a side note, it is for reasons like this that I stopped selling No Modify shapes in my shop.  Modify shapes ftw!)

While I was working on my shape edits, I was conversing with Gogo.  I asked her, “If you could order up new facial animations from Linden Lab, what would you ask for?”  A couple of the things that ended up on our list of emotes we’d like to see were a slight parting of the lips, and a pout.  I learned from our discussion that one way to accomplish the slight parting of lips effect is to enable Slow Motion animations in the Advanced menu, then hit the smile emote and try to catch your avatar in a snapshot right as the animation starts.  This can end up involving a lot of repeat attempts as you try to capture the right moment of the animation.

The SL client now has a lip sync function built in for Voice users, so this gives us even more options now.  ^_^  Using Voice, lip sync, and my edited expression shapes, here are some of the results I came up with:

My favorites are the pouts with the slightly parted lips, hehe.  My friend Vivi told me that lip sync should be on by default for people using the 1.23 official viewer.  If you’re using an older viewer, you will need to go into your Advanced menu to turn that function on:

Okay, so how exactly did I use Voice/lip sync to get those shots? Simple:  after enabling the lip sync function and wearing my newly edited expression shapes/brows, I put Weezer on my WinAmp player and parked the microphone next to the speaker, lol.   The music over the mic caused my avatar’s speech animations to start up, and I was able to capture quite a few interesting results.  That’s pretty much it!  Perhaps one day some clever scripter will be able to come up with a HUD that takes advantage of all the possible mouth animations that lip sync utilizes, making this even more easy to accomplish…

P.s.  On an entirely unrelated note, I am really digging this new Anna hair that I’ve bought from LeLutka.  It kind of reminds me of the way your hair will look after you’ve spent the day at the beach ❤

Credits:
Skin – Laqroki Kira
Hair – LeLutka Anna
Eyes – Exodi Twilight Anger
Hair flower – G-Field Hibiscus crystal pink

my latest celebrity morphs?!

What the hell?  Heather Locklear was on the list, too, but I’d chosen a template that only allowed five images.  o.o  I don’t think my avi looks like any of thoses celebs!!  So I tried again lol.

Okay I don’t think my avi looks like any of these celebs either (and apparently the angle at which your head is tilted affects your results) but whatev — Beyonce’s sooooo pretty, she looks good even without makeup on <333

Celebrity Morph

Gogo wrote about this a while ago. I finally got around to playing with it and got Aishwarya Rai, Kristen Davis, and Rachel Leigh Cook. ^^

Erm, okay I guess wordpress doesn’t like dealing with shockwave and stuff. o.o Static version instead: