Otherworldly

Have you been to Cinema yet? It is busy still, but the smart layout makes it easy to navigate even with a low draw-distance, so give it a try as soon as there’s room.

This hair from Alice Project, Willow, called for a wind-swept vista. So, I ended up on the Alchemy Immortalis sims, which always seems to inspire me towards fantasy. I also wanted to some way to show off those gorgeous mesh hands from Slink again, and what better way than to show how well they work with holding items and with action poses?

These days, I rarely blog unedited photos. Not because I spent a lot of time editing away flaws on the items I am reviewing, but because I want to make pretty pictures. So, I tweak areas where the SL avatar goes a little lumpy and bumpy and I edited out the two crossed lines through the image that you always get with shadows. I also tend to apply some mild filters and effects.

For this post, I’ve left off the filters and effects and I have also done much less editing than I usually need to do on the avatar. You see, I didn’t have to edit those very lumpy and bumpy things that SL calls hands. They’re better than the feet, of course, but that isn’t saying much.

And why didn’t I have to edit them? Because now I have mesh hands, courtesy of Slink. So now you can have pretty hands to go with your pretty feet. And you can have 15 different hand positions if you get the fatpack!

Cinema is almost here now, but I thought I’d squeeze in one last preview before the doors open to the hordes. For this post, MudHoney’s Cinema exclusive tells the tale of girl whose dreams of stardom have turned more than a little seedy.

Also featured from Cinema are Volstead and lassitude & ennui, whereas Maxi Gossamers handcuff jewellery is from Collabor88. And if you look at my hands, you will see the fabulous new mesh hands from Slink. More about these soon.

A dangerous city, two daring rouges and a stolen medallion with reputed sorcerous powers. The stage is set for high adventure!

And the credits go to lassitude & ennui, whose Cinema exclusives include these fabulous Embroidered mesh boots—for men and women!—and the lovely Queen’s gambit necklace.

Cinema by the Hottie Cooterati Experience, opens on the 13th of October. In a fabulous mesh build which really takes you to the cinema you will experience themed items from six genres;  romance, action/adventure, scifi, horror, fantasy/musical, film noir and XXX. Clothing, poses, furniture, you can find it all there, plus much more. The build is amazing and the layout of each theme easily browsed.

I hope to do quite a few Cinema-focused posts and I am kicking it off with a dark little story that leads a romance down the film noir path, featuring a corrupt man of the law and a femme fatale making a serious mistake.

The new Collabor88 round is open and after deliberating a touch Ran and I decided that we just had to have the Dreamy Genie Bottle Skybox from Trompe Loeil. It may not be something one gets to use all that often, but for L$388 the adult version with a total of 69 animated poses is a pretty darn good deal (there’s also a PG version for L$188). That’s a lot of poses to play with and the skybox actually seats up to 12 avatars at the same time.

If you click through to the full review, you can get a sense of what one can do with it. But do note, it is anything but SFW.

Its October again and LostAngel have started releasing new props and poses for their Halloween line. To dress up for the occasion, Ran and I dug into our vast SilentSparrow folders and pulled out some of hyasynth’s gorgeous creations. We also slipped into the male and female Nephilim skins from Nomine and while I am wearing an Alice Project hair, Ran is wearing a new release from Amacci called Seth. It comes with the option of a streak that you recolour using a HUD.

PixelDolls may have closed its doors, but the amazing, profligate talents of designer Nephiliane Protagonist have turned to an entirely new direction: clothing and other stuff inspired by the Roaring 20’s. She now runs Volstead Clothing. It offers everything from lacy nighties to period-appropriate shoes to (of course) gowns, but now also includes the first item for men (and women, actually): The Law, a suit inspired by police uniforms of the 1920s.

Bilo has just released three sets of dance-inspired poses which go perfectly with the Chandramukhi Sari. For a bit of a fantasy spin on things, I wore part of the sari and headed off to the gorgeous Kingdom of Sands sims.

The Starlust Beach Party is going on throughout October and there are assorted monstrous offerings to be had, such as the Slightly monstrous horns from lassitude & ennui. They inspired me to go for a prance about in the woods.

At noon today, another cycle of Zodiac opens. This time, the sign is Libra. and for that Faery Sola of Studio Sidhe has created one of her striking props. She takes her inspiration from the Tarot card for Libra, Libra as Justice.

Following on their Baroque gowns, Boudoir has released another outfit with a French twist, the dashing Miss Bonaparte costume. When we started looking for a place to shoot this look, we began by searching for an Egyptian build. This led us to Museum Island which turned out to be full of pretty cool replicas of various famous monuments. So, Miss Bonaparte got to go on a little tour around the world.

Never one to let an opportunity for an interesting image go to waste, the fact that this excellent mesh statue of Michelangelo’s David was in the vicinity of the temple build I used for my previous photos reminded me that I do have something else new from Aeros that I should be reviewing…

Outside of a couple of hair creators, I haven’t really found much mesh hair that really suits my interests. I tend to go for longer hair styles, those that perhaps have a slightly fantasy or historical flair, and those are hard to come by at good quality (Wasabi Pills is a notable exception). But I see Secrets Hair has been working hard to change that, as you can see with one of their newest hairs, Rohan.

Boudoir has five gorgeous new Baroque-style gowns out, beautifully textured and with amazing details. I am wearing the Crimson Beauty version but if you’re anything like me, you will have a hard time picking a favourite from these five. Whether for roleplay, for a costume party or just for dressing up for fun, these gowns are going to make an impact.