Adventure awaits!

[miko2]

I logged into Second Life late last night intending to only hang out for a little bit and say hi to julesong or whoever else was on. She wanted to show me the Rom hangout she was building, so I went to check it out.

While there I tried on a Lara Croft outfit that I'd picked up for free somewhere. I had an idea to match it with a skin and shape and turn it into a complete Lara Croft avatar. I don't know why, I've never played any of the Tomb Raider games or watched any of the movies. It just seemed like the thing to do, since I had the outfit already.

The problem was, when I tried the outfit on, I decided that it really, really sucked. Not surprising really, since it was free -- but the top had no texture to it whatsoever and the boots were hideously weird and stupid looking, not like the hiking boots she wears at all:



Right then and there I decided that there must be a better Lara Croft avatar out there, and I decided to find it. Now.

I did a search on Lara Croft / Tomb Raider and came up with a handful of hits. The first place I traveled to was a celebrity / movie avatar store. You could be Dorothy or the Tin Woodsman, you could be Batman or Robin or Nacho Libre, you could be Lucille Ball or Rocky or Fred Flintstone or Wilma or Barney or Velma or Daphne or Shaggy or Lilly Munster... the list went on and on. Most of these avatars were not exceptionally well done but were cheap. I had trouble finding the Lara Croft one though. Eventually julesong found it for me. It was very underwhelming -- not even as good as the free one I already had.

After that I came across a place called "Adventure Outfitters" or something like that, which was everything I was looking for. They had the classic Lara Croft outfit, complete with everything but a skin, for 800 L. They had alternative shirts. You could buy the belt or the "butt kicking boots" seperately. Everything was very well made. In fact, in a note that came with the Lara Croft kit, the builder apologized that the backpack didn't look exactly like the one the game version of Lara usually carries, but this was because the actual one was simple and boring -- he'd made something that was more complex, more realistic, much better-looking, but was still similar in design to the original. As if you should apologize for doing that!

The guy (I certainly assume it's a guy) was Lara-obsessed, and included a notecard on where to find other things to add to your overall Lara Croft look, such as skins, alternative hair, and an animation override, as well as notes on how to mix things up and still keep the general Lara Croft look. I gathered that he/she walks around in Second Life as Lara a lot of the time. However, not to be completely Lara-centric, his store also included a very nicely done Indiana Jones outfit, and had a seperate collection of 10 different colored fedoras modeled on the Indy one.

Anyway, problem one solved: the Adventure Outfitters Lara Croft look was superior to the freebie one I had in every way. I only needed a skin to go with it.

I found an "Angelina Jolie" skin and shape at a store that specialized in celebrity skins and shapes. It was quite expensive -- almost 2500 L. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much on a skin, but it was pretty well done. (And it was cheaper than the Jennifer Lopez skin, for whatever that's worth.) I tried to shop around, but of all the other places I visited, most were stores that contained a vendor with the same celebrity skins as the first store. One place had a really crappy Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie skin, and one place only had an Angelina Jolie shape. I'm always wary of people that sell shapes in SL for more than a couple of hundred Linden, since a shape is just someone pushing the in-game sliders around to get the look they want. In theory, anyone can do it. That doesn't mean that it's not nice to get a ready-made shape off the rack, just that it seems criminal to me to spend hundreds of Lindens on one when the skill involved seems far less (to me) than that involved in designing a skin (for example), which requires a very good knowledge of photoshop and some very good painting/shopping skills, at the very least.

So... in the end, I decided to buy the expensive Angelina Jolie celebrity skin and shape. At least it was well done, and having the shape as well was nice since the shape that came with the Lara Croft outfit was decidedly on the unrealistic/only in animation/Jessica Rabbit side of things.

After picking up some casual hair reccomended for the skin, and the AO that was reccomended for the Lara outfit, I was set. Still not sure why I felt like doing this, but my new Lara does look much, much better than the freebie version:





Last picture is from an Escher build that julesong told me I should check out. ^_^

The bad news is... I stayed up until Midnight working on this stupid thing. I need to go to bed early tonight.

I have to say, I would so spend hard earned cash on a game that would let me dress as Lara Croft or a Loligoth Lemur (or anything else I want to be, ala Second Life) and would also let me fight enemies using a combat system as dynamic as City of Heroes....