Otherworldly

Pose Fair 2014 is underway and it is time to fill up those pose stands with some fresh new poses. I have to admit that my shopping so far has been rather limited as I feel I have plenty of general modelling poses already. Instead, I look for sets with interesting themes as well as for props. Seeing as most of my posts are fantasy/role-play looks, I am particularly keen on finding poses that suit such photos, but that’s anything but easy. For example, I don’t want my avatar to look like she’s modelling the clothing/accessories, I want it to be more of a portrait look. And while I am at it, I might as well wish for some couple poses depicting combat, like sword-fighting/fencing. ;)

But, I did find some must-have poses on my first visit to the Pose Fair. oOo Studios has several new sets out, including two sets of seated poses, and one of these proved to be just what I needed to shoot a few pieces from Sax Shepherd Designs.

From Sax Shepherd comes the waist cincher and mules for the medium Slink feet in matching polka dot patterns. A HUD is included that allows you a choice between several different colour combinations for the polka dots as well as gives you control over the colour of the trim on the waist cincher and various parts of the shoes, such as the soles and the button.

The pose is one of two I selected for this post from the Belle set by oOo Studios. I love the classic boudoir feel of these sits, but be aware that if you are using them for photos, you will need to be prepared to do some post-processing for the best results. The avatar bottom area is, as we all know, a problem area and it does not behave nicely when seated like this. However, there’s no way around it for pose makers, so if we want nice sits, we have to be prepared to smooth out a few crinkles afterwards.

I suppose wearing a mesh bottom might improve the situation, but none of those atrocities are getting anywhere close to my avatar.

My hair is the latest release from EMO-tions, Leena. It is a sexy, tousled partial updo which mixes unrigged mesh and flexi and I quite like the overall effect of this. The flexi helps soften the mesh but you don’t need as much of it as with a pure flexi hair, so the sinking in is far less problematic.

I love the placement of the hand in this pose—those little details are what makes a really good, expressive pose.

Of course, as everyone knows, finding the right poses from your inventory can be quite a chore sometimes. I used to use Tillie’s excellent pose-stand and HUD quite a bit but somewhere along the way I got lazy about adding in new poses. But with the update to version 5 of these tools (and yes, it is available at the Pose Fair), I decided to start fresh. Since we shoot a lot on various sims where rezzing a pose stand isn’t possible, I mainly use the standalone HUD, so I have slowly but surely started adding in a nice collection of poses into mine. I am also making sure to create sets (you can have up to 24 pre-defined sets, nine of which can be accessed with quick-buttons on the HUD) to keep the collection organised. Once I have enough poses in there, I expect I will find one of the new features of version 5 very handy, namely the Quick Set. It allows you to create an “on the fly” set by telling the HUD to save certain poses to that set. This will be great for those times when I pre-select poses for a shoot since up until now I have relied on just keeping them open, and of course I inevitably crash somewhere along the way…