On Second Thought

As a shopper and a designer as well, I find I spend a lot of time modifying prims to fit various avatar shapes (either mooding others’ stuff to fit my own, or helping a customer adjust my stuff to fit their avatar). One thing that I have learned is that the “ideal” for each person can be widely variable. :)

However, I also have noticed an alarming trend in head size vs. body size, eye size vs. head size, and hip widths. Don’t get me wrong here, I have a “hippy” avatar, and again, everybody’s ideal is different. And that’s wonderful! You can look however you want to in SL™, and that’s a great thing. BUT, there are some things to keep in mind if you don’t want to appear somehow alien. (Um, unless you know, you’re going for alien.)

Now, in my personal opinion, almost everyone in SL™ is way too tall, including me! But, it gets tiresome dancing in midair, and/or having to adjust every kiss pose set you buy so that you suck face, rather than suck forehead or chin. Height is not so bad though, since nearly everyone is so tall, but I submit that despite everyone being 6′-7′ tall, we can still have some reasonable proportions.

Let’s start with faces.

In general your eyes should be halfway down your head. Your head should then be approximately five eyes wide. (Imagine one eye on either side of your actual eyes, and one eye in between.) Your nose should have its bottom halfway between your eyes and your chin. Mouth should then be halfway between bottom of nose and chin. The corners of your mouth should align approximately with the center of your eyes. Ears should align at the top with your eyebrows and at the bottom with the bottom of your nose.

Now I realize that these “rules” of proportion make it sound like you are limited in what you can do with a face. But that’s not at all true. These are just approximate guidelines - they don’t have to be exact, and then you have subtle variations like fullness of lips, width of nose, upturn of nose, the tilt of the eye, etc.

Moving on to the body, etc…

On average, a human being is approximately 6-8 “heads” tall. Shoulders should be nearly wide enough to sit three of your heads on. I know we females like to be a bit on the “leggy” side, and that’s alright - but as a guideline you should be about 4 “heads” from hip to toes, 2 “heads” from chest to navel (and with 1 “head” for your actual head, that puts you right in between 6-8 heads tall :p).

Now, the size of a woman’s chest and hips can vary quite a lot, but I would gently, gently (I said EFFING GENTLY) “encourage” that you not give yourself a wasp’s waist in combination with a hippo’s hind end, but this could be one of those moments where my ideal and your ideal are widely different.

I’m not going to cover hands and feet - not really - but keep in mind in terms of arm length, that with your arms straight out to your sides, from end of middle finger to end of middle finger should be approximately your full height. :) Obviously everyone in SL™ sets their foot size rather small because otherwise we look like doofuses in prim shoes - BUT hand size, well your hands approximate size from wrist to middle fingertip should be about as long as your head is high.

Again, I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t be creative if you are so inclined, but if you want a well-proportioned human shape, these are good guidelines. ;) I’ve seen a lot of fairly famous (and I won’t name names, really, I’m not looking for that particular bit of drama) who have obscenely large heads on obscenely small bodies - and it makes them look eerily alien to me.

A note to other designers: I won’t say that this affects my decisions on what to buy very often, except when it comes to hair. If I suspect for one minute that you’re going to suggest to me that I should choose to have an eerily large head to wear your hair right out of the box, I’m likely to just go somewhere where the designer has a better sense of proportion, whether I can modify it or not. ;) Just sayin’.

I’m also not sayin’ my av is anywhere near perfect - but due to my own personal tastes I have made an effort to make sure she is reasonably within these guidelines, though some tweaking here and there may be in order. :)

In SL™, though, where you can be anything you want to be, I do highly encourage experimentation, and if you want to roam the grid as an alien life form, I’m all for it. (Just don’t be a naked alien life form in PG areas, please?)

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