Designer Review: Sports jacket and Halo sunglasses by Soreal

January 13th, 2008 at 06:36am Daman Tenk

A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting Kwamey Pinion at Booperfunk Island, probably the biggest store in Second Life dealing in dreadlocks, afros and other African ethnic hairstyles. Back then he had released his first hairstyle, a rasta bun, which I sadly didn’t buy. Then, last week a reader contacted us to tell us of an interesting store he found. Heading over there I noticed that the person running the store was the same I met earlier.

Currently, Soreal doesn’t have a huge gamma yet. In fact, they only sell 2 items as of yet: a sports jacket and a pair of sunglasses. His first shoes are under construction and I was already shown a work in progress version of them inworld. Which was enough to convince me to save up some more money for their release.

I’ll start with the jacket. It’s available in about half a dozen styles, and most of these styles have both a male and a female version sold separately. Sculpties are used abundantly, which adds a lot of realism to the design. The collar, sleeve cuffs and bottom are all sculpted. The bottom I like especially. Most prim bottoms or belts are made as a simple circle or egg shape. This bottom actually follows the lines of the Second Life body, as long as your shape is realistically proportioned.

Resizing these sculpties is extremely easy. When you click on one of the parts, it pops up a scripted menu where you can choose to increase or decrease the size by 1, 5 or 10%. Since no system is foolproof, a reset button was also added, which resets the parts to their default size.

The resizing isn’t the only scripted option in the jacket. A HUD is also included. Before you proclaim your hatred for HUDs, you don’t have to wear this one at all times. You only have to wear it when you feel like personalizing your jacket. You can change the color of all the prim parts with an amount of presets, and even make a few parts invisible. The jacket costs 495 L$ for one pack, which for the one I chose included 4 jackets and the customize script.

The other item for sale here are the Halo sunglasses. You have two choices here. Either you buy a single pair for 195 L$, which can’t be customized other than resizing. Or you buy the 495 L$ pair which is scripted and allows you to change the color, the opacity of the glasses etc. Both contain the same resize script as the jacket sculpties.

Since I didn’t have too much money to spend I bought the regular black version, though I’ll definitely return later for the scripted pair. Once again, sculpties are used abundantly. Where other sunglasses are often made of three flat prims smartly textured, these ones are completely made up of sculpted prims.

The glasses of the standard black version are dark enough to look cool, but when you zoom in you’ll notice they’re just transparent enough to still show the eyes vaguely. Personally this is the transparency setting I prefer in most of my shades.

Lastly, you’ll still see the rasta bun I mentioned in the beginning of the post in a corner of the store. It’s still available, but only limited. To buy it you’ll need to contact Kwamey by IM or notecard, and he’ll set you up with one as long as he plans to sell it.

Overall it’s not the cheapest store, but the prices are more than reasonable for what you get. The quality is superb after all. Items are sold no mod/copy/no trans. You can find the store by clicking this SLUrl.

Disclosure: Seen in World: Yes | Review Copy: Some | Friends List: No

Notes: On Daman: "Hunter Espresso" skin by Sezmra Svarog (Nora BodySkins & Fashions). Dreadlocks (custom) by Booperkit Moseley (BooperFunk). "Jared Black" by Elikapeka Tiramisu (ETD Hair). "Smokey Jean" by Dragontat Zagato (Desert Moon Clothiers).

Entry Filed under: Casual, Designer Reviews, Eyewear, Jackets, SOREAL, Sportswear, Urban