Fabulous Finds 03.19.23 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is 250L to Join @ Aleutia

Fabulous Finds 10.10.22 Edition

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! 🦃🍁

Free Group Gift/Group is 250L to Join @ OMY

Fabulous Finds 08.19.22 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is 100L to Join @ Fetch

Fabulous Finds 07.23.22 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is 100L to Join @ Fetch

Fabulous Finds 07.14.22 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is Free to Join @ Veechi

Fabulous Finds 06.30.22 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is 300L to Join @ Palette

Fabulous Finds 06.03.22 Edition

Free Gift @ Pride at Home/No Group Join Required by Belle Epoque

Fabulous Finds 05.27.22 Edition

Free Group Gift/Group is 20L to Join @ Elise

Fabulous Finds 02.10.22 Edition

Free Gift @ Unik Event/No Group Join Required by Kalhene

New Year a New You or It’s MakeOver Monday!

Hey there Fab Free. Did y’all know that back in November of last year 55,000 people were actively playing Second Life at one time? 55,000! Each time I log on, I see anywhere from 40 to 50,000 people on the Grid. That’s a LOT of people. I couldn’t find any hard numbers as to how many of that might be new accounts but at least some are to be certain. And I wondered… how hard is it to get started now days. Back in 2009 it wasn’t really hard to get started but it wasn’t terribly intuitive either. Happily, I had a couple of good friends who also played and they helped me out tremendously. In fact, they brought me to “this great place with a ton of freebies called FabFree”!

Then right on the heels of all this musing of time past, another dear friend started modifying a new Alt avatar for himself and asked for a bit of input since he was designing a female avatar. Plus he, hadn’t really ever gotten into the mesh bodies or head before. As we worked he suggested a cool idea: what if Fab Free had a couple of posts about starting totally new in Second Life from the ground up. Sort of a No0b to Knock out in a few easy steps and for FREE. 

So where are you going with all this, Juli? You may ask yourself. I’m glad you asked! I will be writing a series of posts taking us right from the beginning of starting an avatar and how you can start to fill your inventory and take the avatar from free beginning Linden Labs starter kit to a personalized maxed out Second Life Star.

So hang on… here we go!

FabFree meet Kerydwyn. I went ahead and started with a female avatar first simply because I am so much more familiar with female goods on the Grid. But I am also going to gender bend a bit here. So also meet Alistar.  Just… wow. Second Life… why do you hurt me when I love you so much?

You can see there is a huge difference between the starter male and female. At least the female avi isn’t… embarrassing.  It’s clear that way more effort has been put into the female side of things. Even the AO included with the starter girl was better. And yes, I hear you guys out there saying, “As usual.” Frustratingly, that trend has played out the entire time I was running around trying to find freebie starter items for poor Alistar.

So lets start with Kerydwyn. And bodies first. I knew I wanted a mesh body because of the bento rigging. Bento rigging basically adds more joints to the basic skeleton of the avatar so it can move more realistically. If you want to go dancing in SL… you want a bento rig. Some bodies are older and don’t have it so be careful to read the description of what you’re getting and try a demo if possible. But at 0L you can collect a bunch, try them out and pick your favorite.

I went with the Ruth body. It’s extremely basic in as far as mesh bodies go. The feet aren’t changeable so the body comes with three styles of detachable feet. But it’s a good starter mesh body. I also picked up the eBody curvy completely free on the Marketplace. It’s not Omega ready and it doesn’t have Bento rigged hands. But again, for free it’s not bad at all. The eBody full version is Omega ready and has all the bells and whistles… like finger nails… Since the body is not Omega ready, I couldn’t wear my skins that came with the starter avatar. But I found a skin color included that sorta matches. And though I searched… I couldn’t find an Omega System kit for the eBody. Even though it’s listed on the Omega website. 

On a personal note, I found the eBody Curvy to still be too bubble butt for my taste. Even though I used the slider controls to make it as small as possible. I also didn’t like the way the vaginal area was sculpted. But that would change with the skin worn or other appliers added. So you’re mileage may vary. 

Ruth Body on the left – eBody on the right – both with the “Leah” head from Kalhene.

I had already picked up the free Lelutka heads before Christmas, but I thought that might be kind of cheating. So I grabbed the lovely free head from Kalhene – “Leah”. I was also able to pick up a few free group[p gifts for later. And I will point you over to the list of Mesh bodies and heads right here on FabFree. 

I really like this head even though it’s rather basic. It does come with a small HUD for eyelash length, 24 colors for the lips, a glossiness meter, a blink switch and a switch to hide the eyelashes. It also has a switch to “hide” the lips but all it did was take off any color I had put on.

The other “bad” thing… I couldn’t just use the Leah shape for the head. It’s a full body shape. And no amount of sliders could make that booty look smaller. So I ended up wearing the full body shape that came with the eBody. But the original face shape that comes with Leah is so much prettier.  I may mess around with it more and see if I can slider it back.

Okay… so that’s it for today.  Next Monday we’ll take a look at this same process for poor suffering Alistar. And we’ll talk about AOs plus hair!

I hope someone out there reads this and says “Just what I needed!” If you have any questions, comments, corrections or raspberries, feel free to holler at me here on the blog!