Strawberry Avatars Comparison
September is one of those months that I tend to get restless and often have insomnia. It’s always been the case since it is my birthday month, but since my mom also passed away in September, it just seems to be worse now. This coming week is my birthday week, and the older I get, the more I look forward to it just being over.
So anyways, I currently have insomnia and was up late playing with my Strawberry Singh avatar and shot this closeup of her, which is almost a raw shot btw, I just sharpened and cleaned it up slightly, but that is pretty much what my Second Life looks like. I then decided to do a similar closeup of Strawberry Linden so I can compare the differences I’ve kept between the two side-by-side. I took both of these images while I was lounging in bed with my ASUS ROG laptop btw, which I have listed on my System Specs page.
Although they both wear the same mesh head, they have different shapes and skins. They do look similar, but not enough that you can’t tell them apart. My Singh avatar is still my favorite though. My Linden avatar is often a struggle for me to dress because being an employee, I need to dress her modestly, and that can be a difficult task in Second Life at times. I am constantly on the hunt for more modest clothing (especially pantsuits, please make more pantsuits) as I like to keep her in suits and she often also wears glasses.
It’s funny how even though I am more often logged into my Linden avatar these days, I still feel more of a connection to my Singh avatar. I definitely like her look better. Which avatar’s look do you like better?
I am also still quite obsessed with doing short dance videos and finding the right animation to go with all the songs I love. Here is one of my latest, you can find more on my Instagram and TikTok accounts.
View this post on Instagram
I’ve also been goofing around on the Second Life twitter account a bit. If you haven’t followed us there yet, you really should. This is a Harry Styles joke btw, not sure how many people got it.
our favorite thing about Second Life is that it feels like a second life
— Second Life (@SecondLife) September 7, 2022
Since I have been posting more often on socials, many of you have reached out and said that you miss my fashion posts and all my style credits. I understand and I’m sorry about that. Although I still won’t be able to list the style credits like I used to, please feel free to ask about anything in the comments of any post and I’ll do my best to answer.
It feels nice to pop back on this blog and just ramble about my feelings from time to time. I should do it more often.
How about a good series of HOW TOs?
How to take video of SL actions? (I trust the good/better will come with time)
How to take good/better (FLICKR) pictures in SL? (composition, subject, lighting, abducting alts, etc)
BTW – yes, definately miss your blogs
I love getting to take a peek at the ‘behind the scenes’ with these posts you do sometimes.
I know that there isn’t anything to say to help with the hurt of loosing a parent, but I’m sure your mom would agree that you are doing an amazing job with your work at Linden Labs (and you are killin’ it on Twitter! ) Happy early birthday, Strawberry! You deserve it! ❤️
Love Singh better. Miss your blogs and “how to’s”, as well.
I miss your video with advices too much, they helped me a lot at that time, you were only one person who could help with all new things in SL and create wishes to make different avatars….. It was a nice time! Both your avatars are very beautiful. Happy Birthday!!! It’s your Birthday, time to celebrate!
Do I feel sorry for Strawberry Linden struggling to find clothes good clothes, nope, not a bit! try looking for decent male clothing…… We have a couple of good designers both that seem to no longer be updating there range and lots of designers that are obsessed with teen gear..
I don’t like the lipstick of your Singh avatar, but the eyes are nicer. I like the red top of the Linden avatar and the hair too 🙂
Even though the 2 avis are similar, I feel that the Singh has more of your ethnic sensibility. The Linden feels more like dominant Western culture.
Pyro Nightly made a good point. SL fashion obviously skews toward female and sexy. Male, kids, business casual, etc, are much harder to come by. It’s funny, we live in a world where you can be anything: Human, Hippo, Monster Truck, the planet Saturn, or a Cardboard Boxbot. Yet Human-Female-Sexy is so overwhelming. It’s probably not hard to find a Hippo avi to wear. But try sitting in any of SL’s chairs!
It’s said that when everyone’s shouting, the best way to be heard is to whisper. I feel that way about SL fashion. The sexy stuff is fun. But when it’s so overwhelmingly present it feels sort of pointless to wear.
I get your predicament finding nice pantsuits vs oversexualized outfits. However, even as a lab employee, you’re probably not required to be “White Bread”. I’d encourage you to consider moving Linden, not identical to Singh, but to take on more of Singh’s ethnic quality. Singh is a beautiful avatar! And diversity is also beautiful!
I’ll make you some custom pantsuits in MD send me an email and we’ll talk details
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Both your avis look great! I am the same, sometimes prefer to dress modest and go about my day. I find a place to work in SL when I am working in RL and I don’t want too much attention at these times.
It seems a bit funny to me, maybe, that even LL employees use third party mesh bodies and heads like the rest of us. Is it just accepted now that most people will replace their system avi with something more enhanced? Of course they are better but much more complicated and script heavy as well. So I wondered what LL’s take on that was. Maybe they just accept that the provided avatars are mostly for new starters?
Interesting insights, Olivia! I think some of the Starter Avatars look great! There’s just 2 problems with them:
1. Lots of people wear the same exact avi. If only one person had it, it’d rock. But by being exactly duplicated over and over, the actual quality of the look is lost.
2. There’s no path forward with a starter avi. If starter avis came with Maitreya, or Legacy, or whatever mesh body, or even “LL Official Mesh Body” that was supported by designers, then new users could shop for clothing for that body. Since this isn’t the case, if you stay in SL your sort of have to change everything and buy all new. You don’t actually “have to”, there are many System Avatars on the grid. But it feels like most of them are older avis who’ve chosen not to upgrade rather than new users who adopt the look.
It seems like LeLUTKA has extended their market penetration with their Black Friday free heads. A byproduct of putting so many quality heads in-world is that many designers focus on Skin, Shapes, etc for Kaya, etc. If there were “LL Official Mesh Bodies & Heads” that also had traction, then new users could find clothing, makeup, and so on to adapt and personalize their avatar. Many new users would still choose different Bodies/Heads, but at least they wouldn’t be forced to.
@kate Yes they do look pretty good most of them but like you said you can’t do a lot with them… well you can wear system clothing I suppose, but you have to take off or replace the certain alpha layers and so on and it’s a bit confusing. Mesh clothing is not perfect either of course because it does not layer properly unless the whole set is made by the same designer, or if you get lucky or the items don’t happen to overlap.
You make an interesting point there – I know the principle of SL is that residents create the content rather than LL, but it would perhaps make sense if LL had adopted one of the mesh bodies. And yes now when I meet (not new) people with system heads and bodies they do tend to look very out of date and it gives the impression they don’t care about visual details.
People feel much more alive with mesh heads, as they have emotions and such. I tend to zoom in a lot on people’s faces when I am talking to them but maybe it matters less to people who look at the wider scene?