Eden, seen here in the Sesame skin tone (which is intended as the Mulatto tone), is a product of many months of tweaking by Ryker Beck, and it does show. For a first skin, this is an excellent effort, and even if one does not take that into account I think Eden holds up very well. Ryker has done a great job on eradicating seams, and I also think she has achieved a nice texture to the skin. It is softer and smoother than some of the more photoreal skins, but it doesn’t look too smooth. There are also some adorable moles here and there on the body, which I really like.

Looking at individual details, I am quite pleased with the nipples (not too small, and reasonably dark) and the breast shading looks quite natural (I tend to prefer breasts with a bit of gravity, and that works well with this skin). The butt is also quite nice, again with a nice, natural shading. When I saw the first pictures of the skin, I was uncertain about the stomach shading, but now that I am seeing it again I think it works quite well. Its possible that it is a tiny bit too regular and that this is creating too distinct a drop shape between the ribs, but overall it looks good. The elbows are well-done, but possibly a touch too realistic and defined when looking at the surrounding arm, and the feet could have been a little prettier. As it is, they look a little mottled, but until we get a better foot mesh I won’t be stressing out over minor flaws on the skin of the feet.

This skin tone, Sesame, has a lovely, bronzey hue. I am no expert on what is natural in terms of skin tones (and I switch so often in SL that I am constantly confused about just how light or dark a particular skin is), but visually I find it very appealing. It looks rich without being at all too saturated. Each skin, including the darker tones like Sesame, comes with and without freckles, but I wasn’t quite enamored with the freckled look myself. However, I tend to prefer freckles on lighter base tones, so that may be it. If freckles are important to you, you will definitely want to demo them in the tone of your choice. Another common with and without option is pubic hair. In the case of Eden, she comes without a garden (pardon the pun ;), but there will be pubic hair options available on clothing layers, such as the landing strip I am wearing here.

Of course, what’s a skin review without a closer look at the face and some of the makeups? I may be very interested in the body, down to all the little bits, but I know that for many the face and the makeups are the main selling points. And certainly, if the face doesn’t fit, then its no go for me either.

Eden definitely fits. She’s quite lovely, in fact, and after looking at her on a few of my shapes I would say that she (like many predominantly hand-painted skins) is quite versatile too. This includes the lovely lip shape, which seems to play nice with a lot of different lip settings. Eden also has very pretty brows and a nicely done nose, and she also makes my cheekbones look pretty darn nice, I think.

The makeups here are Bare, Saturday and Chocolate Orange, and they were instant hits with me all of them. In fact, I am quite impressed with the makeups I’ve seen so far, and I think they do a fabulous job of complementing the Sesame tone.

Three more makeups, including the particularly eye-catching Irish Eyes in the middle and also Reluctant to the left and Rockstar to the right. I picked Irish Eyes especially to go with the lovely jewellery, also by Genesis. It is the Santa Fe set, which features some astonishingly tiny and well-crafted prims. As the name would suggest, it has a bit of a South-Western inspired look (or so says my resident American), and I love the shape and the colours.

As I may have mentioned before, I love metals, especially copper and bronze, and here I get these lovely hues both on the jewellery and in the makeup. In fact, there’s a hint of it in the eyes too, I think. Which is why I just had to use one of the pair of eyes included with the skins instead of my own, and I must say I am very pleased with them.