First thing’s first—the Sylvan skins are quite amazing, and Munchflower Zaius is practically an institution, talented, prolific, and with a unique style all her own. That said, when the new Sylvan skins were released, I was disappointed to find that none of my shapes really suited the face. The price—just L$500 a skin—was incredibly low given the quality and the usual pricing of men’s skins, but I’m afraid that at the time it just wasn’t something I could see getting. That changed recently, thanks to a mobvend which cut the price further and I’m now the happy owner of a pack of 8 of the Sylvan skins in the plain mocha edition. There’s quite a wide range of tones, from gothic pale to black as pitch.

As you can see, the body is very nicely detailed, and I have to say I am very fond of the torso in particular, with its terrific abs, rib shading, and a good back and shoulder blades. The only fault there is that the seam at the waist can be glimpsed a little, mostly due to the trail of hair from the pubis (the pubic hair is shaped quite like an arrow; you’ll understand what I mean when you try it!) The back of the feet, as you might glimpse, do lose some significant amount of detail when compared to the rest of the body; however, they’re quite a difficult area to texture, so no great surprise. Otherwise, the skin seems quite free of seams.

The skins come with a bodyhair option that adds hair to the chest, arms, and legs; hair on the head, pubic hair, and the “happy trail” is always present in both versions, however.

Nomine’s known for the wide variety of skins she produces, with a lot of skins aimed at gothic or horror roleplay and things of that sort—cut-up, bruised, and so on. This plain set, however, has none of that. Instead, it features the eight facial hair variants of which four can be seen below. The sideburns option is very unusual, but I’ve seen some residents use it to good effect to make quite striking avatars using these Nomine skins. I would have liked a full beard option in the pack—the last image is called a beard, but it lacks any hair on the cheeks—but otherwise there’s a lot of variety here, including a mustache, 5 o’clock shadow, and various other facial hair configurations.

The face is, of course, well-done. But it’s there where I tended to run into difficulty with my shapes, primarily because of the mouth. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but I find that the lips have a peculiar style of shading compared to all the rest; perhaps it’s a lack of saturation that gets me, or maybe a sense that the lower lip seems more three-dimensional than the upper? I can’t quite say. What I can say is that I’ve seen some avatars who pull it off very well indeed, and even with some hasty fiddling with one of my shapes for this picture, I thought I was able to improve the appearance more towards my liking. Someone with more time would doubtless find something even better suited to them.