It's been almost two years since I posted here and so much has happened ... to Lludmila and Annthrasite. I resisted the mesh thing for so long because my internet was so slow and unreliable and then suddenly we were offered a chance at fresh, new fiber optic cable! Our neighborhood went for it and then it seemed that upgrading would be worth the Ls.
I polled all my meshie friends over what they bought and started testing things out. Lludmila was a problem. Fairly early on I discovered a look that I liked. I had given up trying to make me look like myself (fat and middle-aged) and went for just "unusual." Jupiter Vale at Absentia had a skin freebie that I fell in love with. It was a zombie skin. Lludmila was now and forever a zombie. But a nice one. Not one of those modern zombies that transmit their condition and eat brainz. Oh no. She was a well brought up zombie: polite, unslutty, undead. Then one day Jupiter asked her customers for feedback on something they wanted. As much as I loved the green skin, I thought the dark red lipstick was a bit much for daytime wear. No, seriously. And she recreated the skin in three liptones: light, daytime, and evening. And she named it after Lludmila.
That was ten years ago and Lludmila didn't change. I loved her even more. The problem with a new mesh body or head was that this old skin wouldn't work. Having used the color picking on mesh feet, I felt more or less confident that I could tint skin to match and so I tried some mesh bodies to see if that would work. Maitreya was most obliging. It was also a name I was seeing on a lot of clothing ... and a body my friends were using.
Both Lludmila and Annthrasite got their mesh bodies but kept their heads. With Annthrasite it wouldn't matter so much. She could wear any skin. Her whole purpose in SL was to model clothes and so she could look like anything at all. Lludmila had to stay as much her self as I could manage. Was there a head that I could tint to match the Maitreya body? Lludmila tried on a lot of heads.
Yes, there was. The LAQ head. The neck needed a bit of work. but I was pretty good at eyeballing and matching a tint. Hmmm, I would need to work on the shape a bit. Lludmila's face was longer and she had a sort of Sally Kellerman look. But I wanted my old skin. I even got the LAQ development thing and tried to recreate it through Gimp.
Then a miracle happened. BOM came to save the day. Lludmila was able to wear her old skin again, but there were just one or two little problems. Well, one or twenty.
The neck again!
The nails.
Stargazer fixed the nails right away with a tintable tattoo layer. Izzie's eventually provided a neck fix (and on Fifty Linden Friday as well!). For some reason the nail and toenail fixes worked best on non-fleshy tones. They didn't work as well on Annthrasite's peachiness. But she had several more recent skins and it wasn't as much of a problem with her.
Now Lludmila is prettier than ever, yet just the same.
February 2007 photo of Lludmila - I'd finally gone with the white hair.
Somewhere there's another earlier one with light brown hair. Somewhere...
