Not that I have anything big to say, but these days, I'm little. Really, I'm not usually that big; while I have a couple avatars that run up against the SL height limit, and I do have a Na'vi-style avi that uses a deformer HUD to get REALLY gangly, mostly my shapes tend to be more in the normal-to-short range. With one, designed to be as close as possible to my RL dimensions, I always have to wear a beard or people accuse me of having a child avi. My main "Creag" avi is a fae, and though I've let people talk me into making him taller on occasion, he's usually one of the shortest avatars in any given group. I find the SL addiction to being gigantically tall and blandly beautiful to be a bit grotesque and more than a bit sad. No one's ever accused me of making ugly avis, but I make all my own shapes and every one of my looks is a distinct individual.
Until now.
Really, it's not entirely by choice that Creag is now running around in what's almost a generic skin and shape. Well, yes, it's a choice, but not for the sake of some bland-vanilla standard of beauty. I'm doing it because I get to be REALLY LITTLE.
About a month ago I made what's become something like a quarterly sweep through Fallen Gods. I used to shop there for skins quite a bit, because they have some very distinctive fantasy looks for fair prices. Ultimately, though, I decided they weren't quite "real" enough for me, and I moved on. But I always looked back, to see what new things they had and to see if maybe the extra depth and realism I'm now used to in other skins had made it into theirs. It hasn't. But something new HAS wandered onto their sales floor, and it caught me: Petite avatars!
It seems a while back, a maker named Yabusaka Loon came up with some mesh-based avatars that are about 1/3 the size of a normal one. If you're in SL much, you've probably seen some. They're about one meter tall in a world where the average height is more than twice that, and with delicate, graceful proportions. Very elfin. Very fairy-like. The version that Alia Baroque's Fallen Gods store was selling was only a slight variation, but with a skin that's a dead ringer for some of their normal-sized elf skins and recolorable too boot. The male "Crystals" version just completely grabbed me. I had to have it. I had to be that small!
I bought one, the biggest SL purchase I've made in quite some time, and got the accessory outfit for it. Then I got some mesh hair from Wasabi Pills, matching some I bought a while back for "Biggie Creag". I'm not wild about it, but it's long and flowing and was THERE, and I sure as heck didn't want to be bald. I got all done up, and started to wander... and I found out I'd fallen into one of the biggest little things to ever hit SL. Little mesh avatars, and things for them, are EVERYWHERE!
I did a quick search in SL, and found a shopping mall dedicated to petites. Sorry, I forget the name, but really how can it matter when you can hardly go ANYWHERE without finding things for them. Clothes for them. Vehicles for them. Houses for them. Full sets of musical instuments, amps, mics and show lights for them. I mean!
While there, I made friends with a fellow who seemed to know his way around. He told me a few other places to find things, and gave me some tips, and a script that, in most copy/mod items, will let you resize them to petite size. (And sometimes well beyond. I tried it in a sailboat that ended up so small I couldn't find it!) A little playing about showed me that my regular wings were already able to resize to the right proportion, and the script let me make a teeny copy of my usual hair. (Yay!)
Now I'm all done up with little prim things. Just about all of it but the jewelry modded right down to petite size. I grabbed a free camera adjuster HUD off the Marketplace that someone mentioned to me in passing, so I'm not always peering over the top of my own head as I walk. I've got a green skin, my usual color for the past few years, and I bought a couple little outfits, and I've spent a lot of the last week wandering the annual Fantasy Faire in my tiny guise. I'm set. I'm finally in an avi where I don't have to explain to people WHAT I am. Folks boggle a little at a muscular, human-sized fae with horns and a green skin. Make me teeny, and they get it right away. Now to make it ALL me, I just need to fix this genreic-elf-looking face... and I've got a bid in at the Fantasy Faire auction on a custom mesh head.
*Rubs his hands together in anticipation and giggles...*
As Steve Martin once said, "LET'S GET SMALL!"
