Thursday, March 13, 2008

Skin Shopping Part 2

Well the other day I did part 1 covering Tuli, Pixel Deep, Panjen, Gala, and EMA skins. Now it's time for the other batch of skins I bought covering Skin Within's skins. Why just Skin Within this time? Because I ended up with several different flavors of their skins... The seem to specialize in ethnic skins, which frankly I love... Feel like being an egyptian princess today? They have the skin... Or maybe a African Goddess for some RP? They have that to. I bought 3 skins: Saba (Egyptian if I remember correctly), Ashaki (African/Nubian), & Ashawi (Native American). Though I bought a pack of makeups for the Ashawi skin.

First up is the Saba skin in Rhapsody Glitter coloring. The coloring is very nicely done here with a skin tone I like, not to dark and yet not to light... It's also not 'tan' which seems to mean 'orange' to allot of skin designers and I generally hate 'tan' skins. The makeup here is fairly simple with just a a red eyeshadow, some minor blush for the cheeks, and some simple red lipstick. The level of detail in the body of the skin is excellent as well, without the issues I have with the Ashawi skin range.

Next up is Ashaki in Bordeaux Smokey coloring. This skin is gorgeous easily the best 'black' skin I've ever seen in SL. While I'm not 'black' myself, I dated a black woman that was pre-med during college for awhile and I can say quite well that this is the best coloring for a modern woman of African descent I've yet come across. The level of detail is amazing with the color even varying over the body as it does in RL. The only reason I don't own more options of this skin is the fact that I wear red or burnt red hair and most of the color options in makeup didn't match my preferred hair colors. The makeup I did chose is mostly eyeshadow ranging from red to gold with a slight 'cat eye' effect added and red lipstick.

I bought three of the Ashawi skins mostly for the specific eye makeups and seeing as it's the same price for the set as for three, I bought the set. I'll show only the three I prefer though. First though let me say I like the coloring on them all and the detail is just lovely for the most part... Except... They seem ta think ya are so skinny your ribs poke out under your breasts... So rather than looking fit, you look starved... ;_; Who wants to look starved...? I don't, but I liked the skins enough to buy them anyways... That and I'm hoping the designer may correct this and issue a second version to those who have bought it which is not so starved looking... Now on to makeup specific things...

The first of the makeups is Drama. Drama has blue to purple eyeshadow with deep purple lipstick. It goes fairly well with my violet eyes, though I think it minimizes their impact...

Next we have Elysian style makeup. Elysian has a gold and red type of eye-makeup in a a type of flame trail pattern that I just love. Added to that is some nice red lipstick. This is the version I would probably wear.

The last makeup is Cirque, which is another pruple-ish makeup. It has fun purple and red eyeshadow with a silvery violet lipstick color. It's not what I'd usually wear, but it's so odd to see makeup that highlights my eyes, I have to pick up those ones I see...

And that is it for my skins I bought, there were some other interesting demos I set aside and I may get around to adding those to a post as well... We shall see, as this Saturday marks the beginning of a week and a half long vacation... ^_^

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Skin shopping Part 1

Yes yes, I'm evil as I've never gotten around to posting any of the stuff I've planned... RL and SL both taking up way to much time... But, I am posting a new review now. This will be a multi-part review of my favorite skins I actually bought at the Skin Fair Expo going on right now in SL.

The first skin is Tuli's Exotic skin in Natural Freckles coloring. It's not full body freckles like my previous skin of choice, but it keeps a nice freckly look to the face. It has high quality details and minimal make-up. In particular I like the collar bone and neck details, that make the neck look less like some cylinder on her shoulders and more like a real neck. And frankly who doesn't like a real looking neck? It's also got nice highlighting of the ever important cleavage and the same thing continues down farther with nice ab details and a good looking ass. All this combined made it my choice to replace my former skin, though I plan to use others at times... I also picked up another version with make-up, but sans freckles. Shadey though looks cute in freckles, so they stay.


Next up is Pixel Deep's Medium skin in Fit Redhead coloring. This is part of the entire 'Medium Fit' pack, which is a good buy with all the variations in here. It's also modifiable to a degree allowing slightly darker or slightly lighter skin tones. The hair color is selectable by skin, so your eyebrows and pubes can even match your hair color. Their are even different skins for different amounts of pubic hair... The detailing is much like the Tuli skin here, though I think the abs are even a step better defined. It's also make-up light, though if I remember right the lips are tintable in a variety of shades.


Now we move on to Panjen's Eternal skin in Wine coloring. Eternal is a full freckle skin with freckles all over, which can be fun... If only I had a cute kitten to play 'count the freckles' with... But getting back to the skin, it's light on make-up though it does have some nice eyeshadow and highlighting, with a very pale lip color and a small amount of blush on the cheeks. It has good detail for most of the body, but the abs aren't as nice as on the previous to skins. It's sadly a bit in shadow in the pic, so it almost looks darker than the skins above though it's actually a shade lighter. The overall effect is very cute.

Now we move to Gala's Luster skin in Monarch coloring. It's a darker skin than the last one, but I don't see this as a bad thing. It is all about the eye make up here, it's vivid yellows and orangish-reds in a sunburst style pattern. When I saw it, I knew I needed a skin with it... Otherwise it is very light on make-up, with not even lipstick. It's level of detail is nice as well and almost on par with the most detailed skins in this post, though it's a much 'softer' skin than most of those. Not so many options with this one either, but still lovely all on it's own.


The final skin in this post is EMA's Autumn skin in Shay coloring... Or vice versa, it's hard to tell without looking at their skin charts. It's actually one step darker than Gala's Luster skin, though the particular tone and coloring makes it look very Latino. Which is not a bad thing at all.
This is another eye makeup skin for me, it was all in the colorful pattern there rather than anything else that sold me on it. In this case the eye makeup was a colorful red and orange with leopard-like spots. As a neko how could I pass up eye makeup with spots? I couldn't of course. The details on this skin are very good and rival most of my other favorite skins in this list. It's also one of the most youthful looking skins I think in my collection.

EMA and Panjen are some of the smallest designers from the show and I'd like to make sure they don't get overlooked as they have very nice skins. That's it for this part of my review, I'll do more tomorrow if I have time.