The first thing any good Second Lifer usually does is create and customize their avatar. Customizations are done in so many different ways, and can often be very costly. Your skin, shape, hair, nails, eyes, clothes, and even your HUD is part of what makes your avatar unique to you. Note: the words in bold are search phrases in Second Life’s “places” search.
To begin, your skin is the base coat to your avatar. It is the one thing that defines more than anything else your general appearance and sets your style point. Skin retailers are abundant in Second Life and the stores have a gigantic variety of price points to step into. RAC is the name of a store that sells top quality skins. They have argueably the most detailed and realistic skins in Second Life, though their price is set at 4000L which translates to about $15.00 USD. This can be too pricey for even the enthusiastic Second Lifer.

If you’re looking for something with little to no impact on your pocketbook, free skins are everywhere in Second Life with an easy search in the places tab for “free skins”. Keep in mind that free skins are quite often very unpleasing to the eye and can be quite ghastly. They are meant to be better than the play-dough like appearance of the standard default skin that comes on your avatar. For the Second Lifer that doesn’t want to spend a single dime on their experience, this may be the only option for you honestly.

For someone with a price point in the 200-500L range, which translates to roughly 2-3 dollars USD, you might want to look at some of of the smaller skin creators. Always purchase a demo first, which is usually free but sometimes can run 1L. Demos allow you to wear the skin with a demo word on the forehead, or a spinning demo sign overhead. This gives you a perfect idea of what the skin will actually look like on your avatar. Go to several places and try them out. Two places I love are Naked Designs, Naughty, and Alady (the male version being Aman).

If you have some money to spend, RAC is first and foremost my recommendation for anyone looking for a good skin.

Your shape is also a big part of your avatar. It is argued that you should have your shape before even considering a skin, so take that for what it’s worth. Shapes are possibly the most unfairly priced thing in Second Life, considering you can make any shape you want yourself with a little patience and a little vision. Shaping is as easy as altering appearance and going through some slide bars to alter qualities like height, cheek bone, neck length, torso length, muscularity, and more.

If you really must buy a shape, Alady and Aman have great deals where you can buy 50 shapes for 500L. You can purchase every shape they have for one very low price, while single shapes usually run 300-700L in price. Redrum is a great place to pick up a very realistic shape at a very low price between 30-300L, not to mention they are fully modifiable to your customization. If you are female, Redrum is my recommendation as your first stop. Naughty Designs has some shapes, though they can be costly and generally don’t work for everyone.

My advice for anyone picking out a shape from the shelf is to go to many places. Search for shape in places search and see what’s out there. Many places don’t allow modifications to their shapes and that should be a big reason not to chose them unless you find that their design is absolutely perfect as is. The general rule of thumb is to reduce your expected purchase price by 1/2 if you can’t modify. If you’re expecting to spend 500L for a good shape, don’t spend any more than 250L on anything you can’t customize. This can be scaled up or down depending on your given budget.

Next article I’m going to go into hair and clothes. If you have any additions or suggestions please feel free to comment below or email me at  matt at mattryan.tv .

Matt Ryan of MattRyan.TV