While the options for female skins are far better than those for male skins, it is still fairly difficult to get a female skin that stands out from the crowd in terms of the apparent ethnicity that it conveys. There is, however, one place that caters specifically to a wide variety of ethnicities with their skins: Skin Within. Each line of skins produced by Ayesha Bisiani features a distinctive face and distinctive skintone intended to convey a particular ethnicity. This gives each skin its own unique character, though it does of course have the drawback that you may fall in love with a certain face but wish that it existed in a different skintone. Still, I am very glad that some skin creators take this approach, as it would be boring if everyone approached skinmaking the same way and went for one face in multiple skintones. You do also have the option of altering the skintone of each skin somewhat, as the skins are modifiable via the sliders.
The Saba skin is one of the most recent skins from Skin Within and it is intended to be a Turkish skin. I had originally almost settled on the Arya skin (which is the Indian skin) for this particular shape, but as soon as I saw the previews of Saba I knew this was the skin for me. It has just the right exotic look, the skintone is gorgeous and the body is toned but still soft. As all Skin Within skins, it is quite obviously a photosourced skin, though I find that the skin texture on the Saba (and the skin released after it, the Anika) is a little smoother and the highlights are more subtle than on some of the previous skins.
The front of this skin has caused me to stay out of too much clothing more than once. I love the way the stomach looks and I am also a fan of the breast shading and the quite dark nipples. One small issue is that the highlighting on the hipbone does come across a little strongly from certain angles, making it look a little like a smear of lighter colour. Another point to note is that what we see here is the natural pubic hair option, which still looks rather trimmed to me. There is also a bare option, but it isn’t actually entirely bare.
As mentioned already, these skins are modifiable. What you see here is a skintone adjusted to be as dark as possible. Because of the warmth of the skintone, I do not feel that this skin is greyed out when doing this. It does, however, affect makeup colours as well as skintone colours, so careful testing is in order when playing with the sliders.
The back features a pair of very nicely shaded shoulder blades, a well-rounded (but realistic-looking) bottom and excellent attention to details—see for example the fine crease at the back of the knee.
What you see here is the no makeup option, which tends to be my first choice for any skin when one is available. However, the makeups that are available for Saba feature some very nice options that are much more in line with what I prefer than the makeups for previous Skin Within skins. Many of the earlier skins feature fairly metallic makeups, but on the Saba most of them are softer, though still quite vibrant in some cases. The lines of fantasy makeups and ethnic makeups feature some particularly stunning looks and I am thinking I will need to add a few of those to my inventory soon.
What I really love, however, is how well this skin handles the face for this shape, which has some fairly strong and unusual features. In particular, it handles her quite prominent nose beautifully.
I am, on the whole, very pleased with Saba, as the skin gives this shape just the right character. As with most photosourced skins, I do not think she will work on every type of shape (though because the shading is softer than on, for example, the Arya, I think it will still work well with quite a range of shapes), but Ayesha does include a modifiable shape (as well as a pair of eyes) with each skin purchase, which could provide a good starting point for creating your very own unique Saba.
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