My shape (current) | My shape (downturned corners/previously) | Frowny Mouth example | Smiley Mouth example
Have you ever looked back at your older shapes and thought, why did I think that looked good!?
I’ve had a couple of those moments throughout the years in SL, but my most recent shape disaster moment came when I realized I didn’t really like the downturned corners on my mouth anymore. I fixed it right away, but I was careful not to make it smiley mouth! I guess I like a neutral expression more than something that looked unhappy or psychotic.
Did you have any shape disasters in SL? What was something that you use to like, but now you don’t?
I really, really abhor the super frowny lips or the smiley lips. I usually tend to go for a neutral expression or a very, very slightly downturned mouth…and not too huge lips. Same goes for the super squinty eyes, the skinny legs with hips so wide you could drive a truck through those legs. And if it all comes together you got the newest ‘fashionista’-look. I am so glad you never jumped on that badwagon.
My biggest fails? My arms were too short. My eyes too big and the brows shapes so she was perpetually frowning. D= And way back in the days I thought itty bitty tiny feet were really cool.
Oh hell yes, i had so many of them that is embarrassing name them all, but lets try…
first: anime eyes.. I used to have ginourmous eyes
second: tiny hands… yeah… horrible too
third: joker smile
Once I realised how fuggly I were i changed my shape totally, and times to times I still tweak it
My very first shape as a newbie was awful. Huge hands and a gap. But, I fixed all that within a month.
I laughed a lot, especially your description of smiling faces. I also go for slightly down turned in my shapes because I’m so against smiles, unless its the emote type. I checked out my older shape, and she had a slight smile, too. I much prefer my current look!
I remember when my fat slider was turned down to 0.
Dark times.
I’ve learned the wonders of a really great down turned nose. Many shapes look the same because people give them the same Michael Jackson distorted nose. Once I learned how much I can changes a shape by giving my nose volume, playing with the upturn/downturn slider as well as bridge and bulbous sliders I find I can make some beautiful looks. And the skin isn’t distorted so much.
My current shape has somewhat down-turned lips, and I like them :). They’re not crazy down turned, though they used to be. lol.
The perma-grin scares me more than the frown, honestly. Your example above is tame compared to some I’ve seen. : I cringe a bit when I see that. Ditto for t-rex arms and little tiny hands.
I used to love having a BIG butt and squinty far set eyes, I’m pretty happy with my shape at the moment though. It’s not easy to take a small shape and make it look realistic.
There’s a blogger now that has what looks like a joker smile. She does a freebie blog and someone should really tell her with that smile like that and her red hair, she looks like joker and Ronald McDonald’s love child. lol
LAYNE! She posts on iheart.com, I have literally STOPPED reading that feed because I HATE seeing her ugly upturned, pig nose and her 100% slider bar smile! I avoid the site because of HER! LMAO. I’m so glad someone else feels my disdain!
I’ve been calling this blogger my private nemesis for years now. It’s offensive to me how her shape completely distorts the skins she wears until they are nigh unrecognizable. Plus she blogs freebies that are often terrible. Not just ugly to my tastes (though often that) but literally TERRIBLY made items. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because you can… doesn’t mean you should!
My mouth is kind of smiley these days. Very slight upturn… I tend to smile a lot irl so I was tired of having a frown in SL.
Buffy, I almost spat my noodles all over my computer screen while reading your reply! Very funny and true points!
I checked her page and I MUST post what she said:
“The shape I made myself and I adjust it if neccesary, when I get a new skin. If you want the settings, send me a note in SL and I will give them to you.” …. crickets …. okay anyway, I just want to let you know I agree with you 100% on everything. Its GREAT to be different it really is. Hell, we all know who each other is talking about, so she’s doing *something* right, I suppose, but … I just know if I created a skin and saw it on that shape, I’d be very offended. That is all!
It’s not just her shape and stuff. She has a nasty personality too. I read a lot of forums and stuff and saw where she called a well know designer out over the designer’s group chat. Then tried to throw the whole do what i say or i wont blog you anymore. If i was the designer, i would of been doing cartwheels. Please dont blog my stuff. lol
On a side note, it’s hard to not know who she is. She makes you cringe with her posts. They say bad pr is the same as good pr but do you really want to be known as Joker McDonald who sucks at blogging?
I wanna see this person’s face! I’ve no idea who your talking about and I wanna see SL face-fail!
Party foul! It’s one thing to point out shape disasters on yourself, and to speak in the general about what you don’t like — but doesn’t this seem a little meanspirited to single someone in specific out?
Someone would think us SL fashion chicks were all gossipy b— well, you get the idea.
I have to say I know this person through a friend, and I’m a little shocked at how unbelievably mean and hideous these comments are. Yes her style and fashion may be not your flavor, but what gives you the right to attack her? And while re-reading Gogo’s post, it asked what YOUR shape disaster was, not hey let’s point out every one’s we personally don’t agree with…. Have you spoken to this person, gotten to know her? Do you know anything about her other than you dislike her smile and shape and the fact you find her to be a joke? Anyhoo, that’s my two cents.
Haha, what the… I thought about her directly when I read the title of Gogo’s post!
I have no idea about her personality etc, and I don’t care — I just know that I think all skins look bad, bad, bad on her 🙁
I looked back at some of my old shapes recetly and they had no shoulders, HUGE boobs and tiny, gangly bodies. @_@;
Whatever your style is that is what u should go for.even god is not such a protectionist. It is sad when photoshop and the slider keys enable us to be so judgmental. I love my shape! I am a bigger avi. Find alot of the downturned mouths are expressing the designers image and clothing styles. I love unique..and who is to say what is perfect!
I too, have recently discovered that the fat slider is a GOOD thing. I don’t think my avi was exactly skeletal, I was not happy with how thin her legs looked. I’m much happier with her now that she’s more fleshy. Her features are slightly exaggerated, but I’m very happy with her.
Hi,
My name is Smaragda Christodoulou. I am a postgraduate student at the Cyprus University of Technology. In order for me to complete the course of “Social Networks”. I want to make a research for Second Life. Here is a small questionnaire which is related to various behaviours in Second Life.and will take under 8 minutes to complete. Thank you in advance for your participation. Have fun!
Click to the link below to answer the questionnaire
Questionnaire link: http://kwiksurveys.com/?u=SecondLife
Have you ever logged in to SL at all?
The impressively generic nature of those questions suggests that you didn’t.
A little bit of smile can be good if you want to give off a cheerful, friendly aura, but going overboard can be just plain unsettling. Thinner lips, in particular, tend to get warped unattractively the more you mess with them. (Thank you, ancient low-poly avatar mesh!)
In the same vein, down-turned lip corners can give a bit of pout or attitude, but overdoing it looks silly — and can make someone look particularly angry or snotty, causing others to see them as rude and unapproachable. At least, that’s my experience.
As far as my biggest shape disaster? On my first avatar, I tried to make a shape that looked like me: skinny but chubby-faced, slightly tall, etc. I also turned up the mouth corners to compensate for the fact that I look like a scowly bish IRL.
After wearing it forever, I got used to the look and never gave it any more thought, until I spent some time as a little child avi and then came back… And realized I had been a frightening mega-tall smiley noodle person.
Moral of this story: Ask others for honest constructive criticism on your shape. When you spend a long time working on a shape and walking around in it, you get used to it and won’t be able to see the flaws as easily.
My first male shape had a duffel bag setting of 100, tiny head, huge shoulders and a tight waist. I looked like an inverted carrot with a mutated knobbly bit in the middle. I only got people to talk to me by complimenting them on their shoes and blingy jewellery.
PS Smaragada, some of the questions in your poll are a bit odd. I’m not sure that “teleportation” and “walking” count as SL activities & Q11 is also a bit limited. Because of these anomalies, I have a sense of disquiet about what you are trying to find out with the questionnaire, to be honest.
my avatar had ape arms for a good while till one day i actually stood up and measured my own hand position to my body and was horrified to discover i was a knuckle dragger online.
one thing i also notice, i made my head look like a human head when i’m bald. why is it when i try on shapes for fun most heads are shaped like aliens? like HUGE craniums and the faces are all in the lower third of the head. yikes! (looks good with hair i guess).
I had man shoulders! i did! lool they were bad :/
Yesterday I was looking back on my blog posts and I thought exactly that. How the hell did I ever think that was good looking? lol I still have the same shape I created when I first joined SL, but I changed it a lot, specially the body. 😀 And I also tend to have a ‘neutral’ mouth, although sometimes I do change the mouth shape a little depending on the skin I’m wearing.
I used to have super skinny chicken legs *twitch* couldn’t figure out how to make them better! though I do keep a ‘mona lisa smile’ oh my face, nothing to crazy, just a little upturn.
I lmao @ all these posts in a good way 😀 great reading ^^
I’ve always been pretty satisfied with my *body* shape on Vianne, though I did hear recently one guy wondered if I was ‘pregnant’ coz she had a belly (it wasn’t a preggo belly, it just wasn’t FLAT! jerk!)
But I recently put on my old shape and the eyes!!! No lashes, big wide round ‘disney’ things! Yikes!
We are definitely slowly entering the post-frown age, as we cannot see these pissed ‘i want to punch you in the face even on my wedding pic’ look. SL very much like RL follows general trends. The smiley face is deeply rooted in the 2007s and some bloggers are stuck there FOREVER it seems.
Right now i see a trend to more realistic thinner lips and wider mouths, away from the botox and barbie lips. Soon the pouty look will be as ridiculous as the smiley and frowny is now.
A ridiculous gangly body with a full, slightly downturned mouth and snake eyes. It was literally an “Avatar” sans the blue hue.
Funny! I have never had a big smile… and never really liked the sad mouth. But my biggest shape disaster was related to hands. I think I wore hands size 30 for a few months and I have always been petite/short, even back in 2006/2007 when everybody was amazonian LOL!
So picture the disaster… eek! luckily someone was nice enough to mention it without hurting my feelings and I fixed it LOL!
Great post!
I used to have huge boobs, watermelon butt [“TRYING” to be like JLo] and tiny hands *shudder* WTH was I thinking!? hahaha
Aw I really like your lips with a little down turn! Ive had tons of shape disasters and tbh, probably I still do, in other peoples eyes, ha! I change shapes so often that I can’t care tho =) To me they fit the skin & look they were made for, and if I don’t like it on the next, I tweak until I do. It took me a very long while to realize the sliders, how to actually get a look I wanted but less extreme then as if I just picked one slider and turned it all the way up or all the way down haha.<3 But yes Ive def had my share of WTF moments when digging through my shape folders. Its always funny, just like RL looking at old pics..
Where to begin?
Short arms: Mega Boobies: Smiley Mouth: No Hips: Big Butt: No Neck: etc etc etc. Although I have been on a bit of a slider diet lately to fit into some of the new meshy goodness. To each their own shape wise (but yeah I know who Ronald McBlogger is)
I can’t stand “bitchface” (as Evie named it) which consists of squinty, wide-set eyes and a frowny mouth. I also despise the exaggerated thick-lipped frowns that make it look like the avatar is melting or just exceedingly awful to be around. But, to each her own. I know being short, curvy, and freckled with a neutral expression isn’t for everyone.
My old shape is horrifying. Due to lots of poking and prodding from friends, some of whom “guided” me through making my shape while in appearance edit mode, I was one of those newbies who were nearly 7′ tall with enormous boobs and a tiny waist. I did my time as SL Barbie, just with black hair. That is, until they told me black hair was “too harsh” and I switched to brown for a while. Thankfully I had brown hair packs because I practically lived on the Goldie Locks sim, stalking her lucky chairs, because “OMG FREE FATPACKS!” …Yeah.
I eventually bought a “professionally made” shape that was modeled after a celebrity, but again my friends urged me to make it taller, thinner, and more buxom. I ended up right back where I started, except with someone else’s name listed as the creator of the shape.
I’ve overhauled my shape more than once, especially since those friends are long gone from SL and what they’d think of my avatar’s shape matters to me far less than what I think (finally.) I put the old one(s) on once in a while for a laugh, but sometimes it’s just horrifying.
I used to like having huge boobs in SL, but I’ve come to loathe it. I have huge boobs IRL and I can’t stand them. I deal with them enough in RL; I don’t want them in my Second Life!
My older shapes had LONG LONG legs…unrealistically long, like 2-3x the length of my torso.
lol what was I thinking?
i kinda think the slit eyed big lipped ‘bitchfaces’ are kinda pretty sometimes. maybe with a bumpit hairstyle and baggy jeans. i don’t wear it myself but they are kinda cute. /shrug
I Agree with Is on the ” Bitchfaces”.. they’re horrible.. specially combined with no-shoulders and huge alien heads. I mean, really? lol
Back in lets say, 2006-07 I just loved my shape. she was shapely but not too big or too small. I always got compliments on it. Now I put it on from years ago and I think…what the hell was i thinking . I didn’t feel she was proportioned right and she had a huge butt and wide hips. I constantly tweak my shapes though since i blog but i really like my most recent shapes now which look half the size of my old one.
When I began SL, I immediately tweaked the default shape I started with until I found something I thought was nice. It was years later when I realized that my eyes were huge and that my chin could open aluminum cans. So I eventually completely changed my face but believe it or not, I’ve left my body pretty much unchanged, and have often gotten compliments on it. I’ve just made it a bit shorter now so I don’t tower over people “quite” as much, especially since I’m almost always in stilettos or tiptoe feet. : )