I’ve got an assortment of skins and hair for you today, all found by my friend Lewis Luminos.
The hair is all from Philotic Energy, one of them I already reviewed in my Hair Fair post but there’s more in store now. They come in masses of colours including a variety of tipped shades, although the Colby style you pay your dollar for each colour pack rather than for the whole range.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Imogen/210/78/251
The skins come from three different places. The first one is by Olila who blogged in March about some skins she’d made herself and was offering free of charge at her permanent yardsale. There are three shades ranging from well-tanned to dark, with nice face detail. Pictured here with the Boyd hairstyle from PE, featuring knitted hat. Be careful in the yardsale – you get spammed asking if you want to update a hud (that you don’t own). I didn’t trust it and you shouldn’t either.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Philereme/244/88/57
The second – well there’s a story behind this one. About a year ago I came across a freebie/reseller store in an Italian sim, and there were some free male skins on offer. When I looked at them, I thought they were pretty good, but they were full-perm and that set off alarm bells for me. Assuming they’d been stolen, I went on a hunt trying to find where they’d come from. A year later I’m still none the wiser, after hearing many suggestions of where they might have been ripped from, and trying on just about every male skin demo on the grid, I’ve found nothing to match, and no-ones stepped up to claim them. So, I figured that there is no issue with these skins, I boxed them up and sent them to Sarah Nerd, who now stocks them at her Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise. There are three tones of skin with 7 facial hair styles in each. Pictured here with the Colby hair. The slurl is to the exact location of the box, because it’s a big place out there.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/NineInchNerds/189/100/21
The last skin is a group gift on offer at the Belleza store. And, omg, this is singly the best freebie skin I heve ever seen, anywhere, bar none. The quality is stunning and a good reflection of the quality you can expect if you buy one of their full price skins. The tone is tanned, the body is hairless, and there’s a little bit of subtle facial hair round the chin. My only complaint about it is the eyebrows (or rather the apparent lack of them). But aside from that triviality, this is a really, REALLY good skin.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Belleza/128/128/27
Total cost: (for the hair) L$3
Finally please welcome Lewis as a regular writer for Free For Men, seeing as he’s been doing such an admirable job rooting out freebies I’ve decided to let him write his own articles instead of making me do it.
October 19, 2008 at 8:19 am
thanks Karl, just wanted to say the colby hair is like that for a reason (hair colour demo’s) so if you are looking for a specific colour, just buy the group rather than flipping thru 104 different colours to find the closest one. YaY for Lewis writing as well!!
October 19, 2008 at 9:29 am
I can definitely see why the Colby one is like that, it’s definitely the best, really good quality. Still worth it though. I picked up just the brown pack, there wouldn’t be colours in any of the others I’d want. And its not necessary, if you get Faris first you should already know which colour you need
No wonder Lewis likes your store so much. 
Now here’s a question, that you as a designer might have a good answer for. If I post about your store and encourage people to just come in and pick up your freebies, does that do you a dis-service? Or do you find that later when they have money, they’ll come back and buy?
October 19, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Very nice blog!!!
Men in SL need blogs like this!
And very nice of you to mention my yardsale and my first drafts of male skins!
I just wanted to point out that in my yardsale I NEVER put out “spam-objects” or stuff like that!
But sometimes neighbours put that kind of things near my borders that affects my plot too…
The “hud-update-thing” must have been something that appeared for a short time while you where there…
So you are right! At my yardsale one shouldn’t trust stuff like that! Because I didn’t put it there!
October 19, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Good question, I don’t think it’s a dis-service as word of mouth is still probably the best way to get people to see things they wouldn’t normally see. I did do the hair basically for the people who don’t want to invest a lot of money in SL to start with but didn’t want to look like a noob in the library avs. Usually they do come back and buy if they want to later on. =]