Kami-no-aisuru

There’s been a little discussion on a thread on SLU about how to make an Asian avatar effectively. Some people seem to be of the thought that it depends more on shape than skin, I am in the camp that thinks shape is important but without the right skin it won’t work.  Quite a few of the people posting in that thread are RL Asian’s creating Asian avatars, so I really value their tips when it comes to face shape and skin choice. I’m not Asian in real life, but I’ve tried to create an Asian avatar (specifically Japanese) in Second Life ™ because I was interested in Japanese culture and language and I thought it would be fun and allow me to wear fashions I can’t wear IRL.

The post on SLU had some very interesting tips on shape, specifically face shape and I decided that a bit of tweaking might be in order on myself. I can see a marked improvement!

On the front view, it doesn’t look much different, but you can see the chin is more rounded, less pointy, higher up and the nose is straighter.

But in the profile view you can see quite a change, mostly in the nose area. I really hate noses on the avatar mesh, there’s such weird angles that can occur and stuff. I’d rather it wasn’t quite so upturned but downturning it results in weird angles around the nose. meh. I adjusted the bridge quite a bit and made it smaller but the tip is still pretty bulbous. Overall I’m happy with it! I think the appearance is more accurately Asian now and still pretty cute ^_^  but my shape has evolved quite a bit and I’m open to tweaking a little thing here and there.

However, I wonder sometimes if people who see my avatar even realize that she’s supposed to be Asian? It’s an interesting question to me. I’ve had a really difficult time finding skins I was happy with, someday I’d like to do a big post or set of posts exploring the skins available out there that are supposedly Asian.