hair and skin mix

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.

Mascienwerk

First of all I apologise for not having posted much lately, mostly due to illness, and also being in the middle of moving house. I’m likely to be quiet a little while longer but hopefully back top posting regularly again after next week. Now, on to today’s loot.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Buffett%20Island/187/247/22

This is a store which has an assortment of freebies, mostly made by the owner. There are mostly shapes and clothes, the clothes mostly menswear and mostly casual. All the clothes are unique to Maschienwerk. In addition there are also some tattoos, skins, glasses and shades, and prefab buildings.

There was far too much for me to pick up everything but I gathered an assortment to show here.  There are two freebie male skins on offer, both based on Eloh Eliot’s “Another Skin” and both rather androgynous with a pale tone and eye-makeup. There is a third skin, also Eliot-based, in a much darker tone, which is available by camping for 30 minutes (which I couldn’t be bothered to do, for an item I didn’t really want to keep, but if you want a cute Latino look it would be worth it).  I’m only showing one of the skins here, believe it or not this is the least girly of the two but even the classic style tattoos couldn’t make me look manly.  Wearing Truth’s freebie “Kensei” hair in all pics.

Oh and I am loving the new Release Client version 1.21.2.  Snapshots are now saved to disk in .png format instead of .bmp, which means I don’t have to convert them before uploading them here. As always, clicky on the picky for a closer look.

All the shirts come in either untucked (jacket layer) or tucked (shirt + underpants layer), and the jeans, if they have a print on them, also come in an unprinted version. So if you really don’t want to walk round with Mickey Mouse on your pants you don’t have to. (This is a big clue that the clothing here is genuine and not a BIAB or copybot production). Also considering the fact that everything this guy makes is given away free and not sold, the quality is excellent. Although I have to admit that I got really tired of looking like a girl so I switched back to my favourite “Cody” skin at the end.

Total cost: L$0

Nora’s to close

Not freebies this time, but still a definite bargain. I reported a little while ago about Nora’s Bodyskins – well, the owner has announced that she is closing shop and all her skins are now being sold at an amazlng L$100 each. For men there are two different styles (one Caucasian, one slightly more Asian). Each style comes in 5 skin tones, and 12 facial options including facial hair options, mature avs and eyeliner. AND every L$100 gets you TWO skins; one bald and one with buzzcut hair.  Be careful though, if you’re going for the eyeliner ones: a couple of them are still mistakenly set at the original price of L$1000 instead of L$100. (And that is not intentional as you can get the same ones as part of a 3-skin fatpack for L$300).

According to Sezmra’s blog, the store will close for good on August 18th so you only have a couple of days left to snag these bargains. And they are REALLY good skins.  My evil (and more wealthy) twin bought a few and models a couple of them here.

The first one is Hunter Cinnamon with stubble, and the second is Hunter Champagne with Van Dyck beard.

Of course there are plenty of choices for the girls too.

Total cost (for skins shown) L$200

And finally, a plea for help.  I’m running out of ideas/paces to find freebies. All the ones I know about, I’ve blogged already (or someone else has done so) and I can’t find any more. If this blog is to continue I need YOUR help. Find any good freebies in a store anywhere, PLEASE let me know.

Going Goth at Wilted Rose

Wilted Rose has a “freebie” room, which is actually a dollarble room because everything costs L$1, containing a mix of their own stuff along with a few regular freebies that can be found at most other freebie places. Here I’m reviewing some of their own stuff, which isn’t generally available elsewhere.

Wilted Rose have three male goth skins of which I picked up two (the one I skipped is the same except with the addition of bloody tears running down one cheek). I teamed these with the “Shane” hair that I picked up from MIA Body Basics a while back.

On to the clothes. The tanktops come in a pack of two, red or black, and they’re displayed with the womens’ wear, which goes to prove that it’s always worth checking. The ripped jeans are in black and blue.  In the second pic this is the “Metal club” outfit worn with a pair of claws that came from Wilted Rose’s free gift raffle ball that I won while I was hanging about there. I also won a flower for my hair but I dropped that in the trash.  The suit in the third pic is called “A Little Gothic” and the top in pic 4 is again from the womens section and is one of a pair of printed long-sleeved black tops.

Incidentally WR has a Lucky Tree in the room, so if you’re less than 30 days old you might just be able to finance your shopping here by picking from the tree.

Total cost: L$7

Free Skin at Nora’s

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Glenn/148/37/28

There is a very nice free skin available for men (and one for women as well) at Nora’s. This one is distributed by the creator itself, so is one of the rare few genuinely free and not actually stolen free skins.  It has a semi-transparent texture and is modifiable, so it’s actually possible to alter the skin tone quite a bit with the sliders and still look good

The store next door, Little Bird, also does skins and they have free ones too but those are for residents under 30 days only. As I’m far too old for that I wasn’t able to pick one up to show you.  But this one is the one from Nora.

Total cost: L$0

Fab Free

After visiting the Block I also paid a visit to Fab Free, a small freebie store with a few things that I’ve never seen before.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Talisman/231/190/24

Admittedly there isn’t a lot for men here, just a couple of shirts, some accessories – but there are a couple of very interesting things here. First is a men’s skin pack (look for a box with a guy wearing shocking pink hair). Second is a box of sample hair by Bewitched.

The skins are by Eloh Eliot, and come with a user license agreement, which goes some way to reassure that they’re not ripped off. There are three skins in the box, all pale caucasian. Rio has pink eyebrows and goes with some funky pink hair that is included in the box. Guinness is an Irish skin, complete with freckles and a shamrock painted on the cheek. Cute, but probably not for everyday wear unless you’re actually Irish. All three skins look very “pretty” and young, and somewhat feminine. This might not be to everyone’s taste but if that’s the look you’re going for then they ARE very nice skins.

There are 2 male hairs in the Bewitched box, Brad which has a fluffy sort of texture I’ve never seen in hair elsewhere, and Dylan which is a longish, non-flexi style in pale blond. Have I mentioned how much I dislike blond hair? I have a pack of hair textures that I have previously picked up from the Freebie Dungeon, so I re-textured the Dylan hair in brown and it looks much better. Those textures are L$2 a pack, and there are 3 packs, but if you can possibly afford it, it’s worth it just to improve on freebie hair that might not come in your favourite colours.

Total cost (not including hair textures) L$0.

MIA and Body Basics

http://slurl.com/secondlife/MIA%202/166/31/34

MIA (Men In Action) has a freebie item available on Mondays only. There is a new item each week, and the day after its available as a freebie, it’s put up for sale, so this is a one-day-only offer for each item.

Today it’s a blue towelling bathrobe which comes in different lengths (medium shown).

Whilst there I noticed there was a “treasure hunt” of freebie bags which are scattered around the sim. There’s 30 altogether, I didn’t find them all but I did pick up a half dozen or so. All of these contain MIA-made clothing. During the hunt I noticed another store on the boardwalk, called Body Basics.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/MIA%202/166/31/34

Body Basics, by the same person that runs MIA, provides free skins and shapes, hair and eyes. All of them are made by Ayla Holt herself, so there’s no concern about stolen items here. There are a number of complete avatars as well as seperate skins, hair and eyes. A few of the skins run way too dark for my taste but they’re not bad.

So here’s the range of skins and shapes, some shown with a few of the freebie clothes I found in the treasure hunt. (I think the shapes are all the same, or at least they’re extremely similar, though I’ve not looked at the numbers yet. They’re all modifiable).

While I was sitting there, I got bitten by a vampire. A woman approached me asking if I was interested in joining a combat RPG, I said no. She asked if she could animate me for something so I let her, and she bit me in the neck. So I now have a free “bite mark” too, and a lm to the game in case I change my mind.

Total cost: L$0 and 0.25 pints of blood.

Velvet Freebies

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zugspitze/228/204/75

This freebie store floats in the sky above Velvet Manor strip club, but don’t let that put you off. I picked up a ton of clothes here, plus a skin and two hair. Again as with the GQ Start store, a lot of the freebies here are ones that were on sale for L$5 at Freebie Dungeon.

The first hair is a shaggy blond one, teamed with the Redford skin from the previous post. Second up is a hairstyle called, amusingly, “Sex on Legs”. Its very similar to the flexi biker stile from F D, except with a shinier texture, which makes it great for adding tints to. UPDATE 27th June:  This hair is actually the Shun hair from Hyate’s Hair Labs and is loose on the Freebie and Business-in-a-Box circuit without the permission of the creator, Hyate Ewing. (Please note – I am not implying here that Velvet Manor are responsible for stealing the hair – this would have been done at some earlier stage most likely by someone with a Copybot.  The copied hair then gets re-sold with full perms, and that is how it ends up being distributed without the creator’s knowledge or permission).

Also shown here is the Travis skin. It claims to be moddable but in fact only the face is an alpha texture, so if you move the sliders at all, the face tone no longer matches the rest of the body. But if left alone it looks pretty good.

As for the clothes, I picked up a lot here so I’ll just post the thumbnails and let you browse.  My favourites are the jeans from pic #4 and the Che Guevara t-shirt from pic #7.  The football shirt in pic #8 is one of a range of European footy shirts also including Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Oddly though, they’re made on the undershirt layer.

Incidentally the location for this photoshoot was the Bay City Docklands. Well worth a visit.

G Q Start

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zugspitze/228/204/75

Remember I said to be careful in Freebie Dungeon, that some items are L$5 or more? Well here I found a place giving some of those L$5 items away for free, so it often pays to wait. GQ Start is a place that offers not just freebies but information and classes for new residents, although unlike NCI it was empty when I paid it a visit.

Before I get on to the clothes I would like to mention two of the skins on offer here. One of them is Cody, which I already picked up from Sarah Nerd’s. The other is called Redford, and is very similar but with a slightly lighter tone. The facial hair on this skin is a really nice six-o’clock shadow, and there’s also a shaved-head shadow on the head too. Here shown both without prim hair, and with the Flexi from Freebie Dungeon. This one’s definitely a keeper.

Next up, these awesome grungy combat boots with rusty steel toecaps and a bloodstained knife tucked into one of them. I also picked up a pack of camo pants in assorted colours, here showing them with the Urban ones. I had to shorten the length in order to show off the boots properly, but they’re all full perm so no worries there.

On to the clothes.  Quite a few of the selection here are available in other places so I have just noted the outfits I didn’t pick up elsewhere. First with the athletic look; a grey vest and low-rise blue sweat-pants. Third, and my favourite of the three, a pair of jeans and a zipped grey and white casual jacket. And finally something a bit more dressy, a black suit with unbuttoned silky pink (but moddable) shirt.

Overall, limited choice but everything is genuinely free. Total cost L$0.

Freebie Dungeon

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ecaz/3/201/54

Freebie Dungeon is a big warehouse of freebies, some in boxes and some as singles in wall panels. You can pick up some pretty nice stuff here but a word of caution – not everything is free or even dollarbie. Some items are L$3, L$5 or L$10, so if you’re watching the cost, be very careful before accepting a purchase. I have deliberately ignored anything that costs more than L$1 for the purposes of this review.

The first thing that caught my eye was a display of baseball hats with matching shoes, for L$1 each set. I went for the Burberry print but there’s a dozen others to choose from. Discovered the benefits of having the Cody skin with hair built-in because the hat would not fit over prim hair. The pants are Southpole. The grey and black tee is Kami (I really like this one) and the tee on the left is Gucci.

Next up, three new hairstyles and two outfits. First, the “Red Ruffles” hair which goes well with this skin because it’s just the spiky top of the hair, you really need to have a skin with the buzzcut included in order to make it work. Also wearing the “Lederjacket Braun” which I picked up because I have one just like this in RL. The outfit in the next two pics is “Street”, comprising a very nice suede-effect jacket and smart black pants. Two more harstyles, one with a flexy ponytail, and a shaggy biker-look one. The shaggy one came in a box with “Anime Hair” which is a big blue thing with massive spikes. This other one was hiding in the box but there’s no picture of it on the wall. All three hairstyles were free.

I picked up several skins but only one of them, by Rays Designs, is worth a mention. This is the skin by RayDesigns (no name other than that), a tanned skin with chest hair and a neat goatee beard. It comes with a shape but I kept my own shape here for the illustration. There were also a number of free tattoos, including this asymmetrical tribal style one.

In summary, you can pick up some decent stuff here but do be careful because it’s not all free. Total cost for items shown here: L$1 (for the burberry boots & hat set).