Otherworldly

Skin Fair 2015 is only a few days away (March 13th) and it brings with it a welcome return to the world of Second Life skins: a new release by Tuli. Her skins have been among my favourites for a very long time and I still wear some of the previous releases now and then and would do so with regularity if they only had Physique appliers. As tends to be the case with my skin posts, I prefer to go light on clothing to show the body as well as the face, but I could not resist some accessories by aisling, Sax Shepherd Designs and ieQED. I am also giving a look at a skybox from Dysfunctional Designs that I soon hope to show more of.

The new face from Tuli is called Neve and she is perhaps a little more tricky to get just the right shape settings for than some of Tuli’s older skins, at least when it comes to her mouth. I definitely recommend that you fiddle a bit with your mouth settings when you try her out, because it is a really lovely face and the cheek shading seemed to work for a variety of face shapes. I am particularly fond of the way the nose is done and I think that the eyes and the brows are beautiful.

The skin comes with four base skins with different brow colours and the makeups are all on tattoo layers; ten lipsticks and five eyeshadows. You also get two teeth options as tattoo layers as well as two cleavage variants.

With this new face comes a new body as well and one that comes with appliers for Slink’s and Maitreya’s mesh bodies. These do not, alas, include the cleavage options that you can get as tattoo layers, though admittedly you do not really need push-up cleavage options on a mesh body. A dehanced shading, on the other hand, can be nice to have.

That is a minor quibble, however, about a body that is very nicely done. The breast shading feels as if it would work nicely across a range of sizes and the belly is soft and feminine. The nipples do perhaps look a touch “pokey”, at least on the Physique mesh body.

The backside is also nicely done, with a softly shaded bottom that again works well at different sizes. The back of the knees are nicely detailed and overall the level of grain/structure to the skin is at a good level, looking neither too smooth, nor too busy.

Neve comes in a total of eight skin tones, ranging from very pale to very dark. They tend towards slightly under-saturated rather than too saturated, which suits me just fine. For these pictures, I am wearing tone 4, which I found to be a very appealing mid-range tone.

The “bra” is from the Shynila gacha from aisling and the belt is a limited edition addition to the Fairy Rings gacha from Sax Shepherd Designs, both available at the Fantasy Gacha Carnival. I am also wearing a different set of rings on each hand, namely the Jessi and Laura ring sets from ieQED. These are great mix and match sets with tons of options for how to wear them (you can combine together your own favourite rings or just wear the whole set) and they come preset for various mesh hands but are also easy to edit.

The shots are taken in the pool that one could call the centrepiece of the Khan’s Keep skybox from Dysfunctional Designs, available at a discount at this month’s round of We Love Role-Play. Its a roomy fantasy keep surrounded by a lovely garden, perfect as a private retreat or even as a small role-playing area.