Shapes, photography and fashion reviews by Ran Garrigus and Freyja Nemeth. This blog has been replaced by the Otherworldly blog.
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After a good while closed for renovation and expansion, LeLutka is on the verge of reopening with a Spring ‘09 collection of new male and female clothes and skins. To whet our appetites, LeLutka’s sent gift bags full of goodies to their group. I’m going to examine the male skin found therein, part of what I assume to be Absolute line of new male skins. As usual, Thora Charron has dealt with all the seams and those other, little details that you tend to look out for from designers, so I’m not going to focus on that.
Style Notes & Slurls
Skin: Absolute Pale (Face B_1) by LeLutka Beaute
Hair: Justin CP I by MADesigns
Underwear: Red Stripe Boxers from Adam n Eve
This pale tone of the Absolute skin is quite a generous gift. In the package, there’s a bald version (worn here) and a version with hair painted onto the skull. Comparing this to the Madrid and Stockholm lines of skins, I’d say that the basics of the skin are largely the same, but the contrast has been greatly heightend. Details which I thought were a bit too lacking in contrast in the Madrid skins that I tried now seem to pop out with fresh detail. One interesting example of this is the abdomen, where the ridges are a bit asymmetrical in a way which suggests a kind of realism that you don’t often see in male skins. Comparing to the Madrid, that asymmetry is clear there when switching back and forth, but the contrast was so low that you didn’t really notice. For that matter, there seems to be a small scar on the back of the left calf muscle which is not the case of the right; again, the sort of asymmetry which suggests an approach to greater realism.
The lips and general shading of the face have achieved a similar treatment, with the lips have had more definition done along their edges which suggests more depth. I’m assuming the B_1 face is the basic, shaved face, and if so, it’s a happy improvement over the Generation 0 male skin where I felt Thora made the mistake of removing almost all hint of pores from the face; the later skins, such as Madrid, did correct this, but I was always saddened that Gen 0 had gone the wrong way. If I have any quibble, I admit the particular eyebrow shape that Thora seems to prefer is a little quirky, a sort of gull-wing shape. I would not mind seeing more variations on this, in particular.
I will say that some of the choices, in terms of color palette and contrast levels, remind me just a bit of Redgrave’s line of male skins. I am not a fan of those, finding them too strongly photoreal (and with too many prominent veins) for my tastes. These new Absolute skins? I could certainly see myself purchasing an example or two if I end up with a shape that needs a change of pace from what I’m currently wearing.
The gift bag also included a full outfit—polo shirt, shorts with sculpted leg attachments, and a rather nice pair of blue sandals—but I have to say that the real prize is the skin. I’ll be interested to see what other skintone options exist, and whether LeLutka will follow up with more face and skintone variations as they did with their previous range of “international” skins. I also hope to see some hair color variations—a brown or auburn eyebrow and bodyhair option would be nice, as would something for the blondes out there in SL. All in all, LeLutka’s done a fine job keeping up with the joneses, and perhaps surpassing them in certain aspects. In the end, choosing a skin that’s right for you can be an incredibly subjective experience, but I don’t think anyone will consider it wasted time if they tried one of these on and considered whether it suited them.
