Men's Second Style

Hmm.. I’m short. I’m skinny. I’ve got red hair. And I’m wearing a long coat. I’m Ryan!

In fact, it was Ryan who pointed me this plain black frock-coat from Gaslights Emporium. The outfit, sans hat, is available near the entrance to the store, along with both a free male and female skin. The ensemble, like most sets from the Gaslights Emporium, is very flexible, with the top part separated into a shirt, vest, and coat on the undershirt, shirt, and jacket layers. The ribbon tie is a prim accessory and the bottom of the coat is a prim skirt. The textures are somewhat dark (it is a black coat after all), but they’re not flat black. My only complaint is that the bottom of the jacket feels rather short. I had picked up one of the skins and originally planned to wear it, but decided against it after wearing the coat and seeing how short it was. Since the piece consists of multiple prims, its a bit harder to scale to size so I decided to go for a smaller shaped avatar.

I decided to go with the chimp avatar from about. I originally picked this up at the spring sale, but its a year-round freebie. There really isn’t much to say about the package other that its contents: eyes, a shape, a skin, and some hair. I usually do without the chimp hair because I think the avatar looks more fun with other hairstyles. Despite being free, the skin is amazingly detailed. Quite a bit of work was put into the wrinkles and flecks of white fuzz on the face. Perhaps I’m easily amused, but I can’t help but laugh when the shape is paired with AO walks since the large hands and long arms just exaggerate the already macho swagger of most walks.

Unfortunately, a large number of people don’t think the “monkey” is cute, even in his Victorian get up. After asking around, I found that the biggest turn off were the eyes. A lot of people seem to find chimp eyes creepy.

To rectify the situation, I dug out a pair of tortoise shell glasses from Arcadia Asylum that I’d picked up from NCI. I didn’t like the fit of the glasses so I thickened the frame and tinted it darker. I also made the lenses slightly larger to accommodate the larger chimp eyes. Most of people who were previously creeped out now found the face “oddly charming”.

The red hair actually didn’t start its life very red at all. The hair is the new “Nick” style from Aoharu, which recently opened a hair section. To celebrate the opening, the “Nick” and “Ann” styles were dropped on the group in Night White and Milky Montblanc, respectively. The Night White color is a bluish white that reminds me of those cold, distant ice-powered anime characters. And of Sephiroth in Advent Children. But, the color does tint extremely well, and I was able to tint it just about every hair color on the spectrum with ease, though the yellows/blonds don’t look very good because the bluish base ends up looking a bit green (think of what happens to blond hair after a few hours in a chlorinated swimming pool). I decided to stick with the “Ryan red” tint because let’s face it — how many redheaded chimps have you ever met before? Also worth mentioning that Aoharu is having a 50% off grand opening sale for a week (until April 2nd) so you can pick up the new Nick or Steven styles in any color there for only 60L.