Dear Skin Designers of Second Life:
I am writing to alert you to a problem that you may not be aware of, since it has likely been a very long time since you were a newbie. I and many other educators are working with faculty and student populations to make them aware of the benefits of Second Life for teaching, learning, and research. Many of these folks have little to no previous experience with gaming or virtual worlds, and find the Second Life learning curve pretty steep. This isn’t a newsflash, I’m sure, but what might be is this:
There are virtually NO fully transferable skins for folks who wish to have an african, latino, asian, or other non-white skin type.
I have looked. I have been to all the freebie barns, stores, islands, OnRez and SLX, and every other source suggested to me.
There are, of course, many such skins for sale, but for educators like myself who are attempting to ease hundreds of new users into Second Life, it would be awfully nice to also be able to offer them some diversity of skin choices in our freebie avatar packages.
What does it say about our community if there are dozens of male and female white avatars that can be given to new users for free, but none for non-white skin types?
I know that many of you DO offer freebies at your stores, and that is very commendable, but that also requires the skill level needed to use search or find landmarks in inventory, teleport around, purchase and unpackage boxes, AND the time it takes to hunt them down. Skills and time are the very thing that many new students and faculty do not have, and for all of us who are doing our best to bring new users in-world, this is something you could help us overcome.
Please consider donating a fully transferable non-white skin to the cause and help make diversity in Second Life an easy choice for new users. If you choose to do so, let me know, I will be all too happy to acknowledge your contribution here and in-world.
Thanks,
Fleep Tuque
PS I am glad to see I am not the only one thinking about these issues, just today Poinky Malaprop writes about Avatars and Prejudice and asks a very relevant question, via Ren Rennolds at Terra Nova: Do virtual worlds liberate us from prejudices, or reinforce dominant stereotypes?
I would argue that virtual worlds enable us to challenge dominant stereotypes, but it’s all in how we choose to use the tool. Perhaps I need to re-think my own avatar choices as a result of this conversation. Thanks Poinky!
PPS Thanks to Celebrity Trollop of Second Style Fashionista for a possible lead on a transferable skin, I’ll follow up and report back!
Avatars and Prejudice…
A few months ago, I got an email from a virtual world training company, that stated that prejudice is eliminated in virtual worlds, since “everybody can choose their own appearance.” Of course, prejudice and bias is as common in virtual wo…
Stephen Lightworker has copy/transfer skins in Asian and African skintones that he created for Evian (the water people.)
Might want to IM him and ask for permission to use them.
I’ve long been thinking about writing on this topic — I vehemently disagree with you, Fleep.
Thanks for giving me a reason to collect my thoughts.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/12/black-not-like.html
I agree strongly with Celebrity here, the free Evian skins are absolutely amazing, a shame that it is so hard to actually FIND them. Yes that is a good road to take.
This will likely be an unpleasant conversation that will wind up being more about class than race.
Re: “What does it say about our community if there are dozens of male and female white avatars that can be given to new users for free, but none for non-white skin types?
What it says is that your “community” — it’s not everybody’s — is above a) shopping — at those very shops run by the people who make black and Latino skins, who tend to be African American and Hispanic in real lifen b) going to the freebie barns where everybody else goes and c) using the library/appearance mode sliders that most people do use in their early days in SL.
[…] you Eloh Eliot! Free Full Perm Skins in Several Shades! Add Recently I posted about the difficulty some students had finding Second Life skins in a range of skin tones and I […]
I think it’s a valid point. However, due to the nature of SL, I think it swings both ways. Yes as far as the realist AV’s are concerned there is a definite bias towards western ideals of beauty, but, with the same token there are creatures of the mind and inner beauty that have never and would never be seen!
As someone who has been a teacher for over 20 years and as someone who does development work in SL who also understands basic marketing, your statement of “There are virtually NO fully transferable skins for folks who wish to have an african, latino, asian, or other non-white skin type” is totally false. You can purchase packs of ethnic skins(both male and female) which will allow you to redistribute them as fully transferable and there are several sources of them even in OnRez and SLX.
I am assuming that you really meant FREE and fully transferable. I have picked up full range, though of little diversity for any ethnic group, of even those in SL over the last 6 months when searching around all the different places. Eloh Eliot(
http://eloheliot.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-psds-let-me-show-u-them.html) has even posted a whole range of high quality skins as PSD files for anyone to use which means you can pay to upload them and make them fully transferable and free.
Further more, if you actually meant free then that is a different issue because there are a lot more that designers have at stores as freebie items that they do make non-transferable so that people have to check out their store to get them. It is easy to setup links to those stores so students can go to them and get those skins for free. If you bother trying to talk to the store owners, some of them might even set it up so you can make them available at some student freebie center that you setup.
Transferable actually can be done two ways in SL. Often, the skin itself might not be transferable but the box it came in can be so you would just have to give a copy of the whole box to someone. Sometimes, you have to search through a lot of freebie boxes since the same skin could be non-transferable in one box and transferable in another box–sometimes at the same place too.
Do a little research on those “white transferable” skins you have. Most of them are old skins that were given away early on by promotions from just a few places or are based off a couple of source files that people could modify.
I’ve made my own ethnic skins from Eloh Eliot’s free PSD files from online which took some basic modifications since all but one is a female skin but it was not hard to do and there are a lot of beginner tutorials online on how to do it as well as put it together in SL. As an FYI, it cost me $L to do that because I had to pay to upload those files. There was some trial and error involved to get things how I wanted so there were repeated uploads which add up for the cost to make my skin just as it is for anyone who makes a skin. If I want to distribute that to the masses, then I would have to pay for a place to do that which would cost more money. Those free places in SL pretty much just have all the stuff that has been floating around for years that the people who run those places pick up in some bulk purchases of site things–ie, they don’t hunt around SL to find them themselves so it takes a long time before those appear. Even if I make something free and transferable as a skin, your open letter is making it clear that you expect me to spend more of my money and/or time to make it placed somewhere that you might find it even though I have no idea where you are looking around SL for what I am willing to give away for free after spending my money to make–your open letter doesn’t say that you are willing to do anything to get those transferable skins for students like helping out those who will make them.
If you go to the Japanese, Korean, etc sim areas, you do find free skins that can often be transfered like you can find in other more ethnic areas too. Most of the other freebie areas don’t search to find things like that so you won’t find them in those big freebie places.
Something important to remember–skin designers as well as all the other designers are regular human beings and most are working on tight budgets. I’ve personally, like a lot of the designers who do free things, have done a lot of camping,etc to make the money to upload files on top of my own work to make them. For a skin to really have the right ethnic look, it takes more than a skin designer because a lot of the look is based on the avatar shape and there are very few who do shapes which is kind of strange in a way since it is one of the few things you can design for free in SL without uploads to pay for but it does take a lot of time to do.
One last problem with your open letter, it alienates anyone who would be willing to help you get those skins. I’ve done some free skins for people and would normally be willing to do some for education but your letter does make it clear that you aren’t will to put in any effort yourself at trying to setup a way to distribute them to students. Even in the real world, you usually have to go to a store to get a “free item” especially since those “free items” are normally a way for someone to advertise a business so they can at least pay the bills to make it available to you.
You know that instead of such an open letter as you wrote, you could have just written a letter asking the skin designers to submit skins for you to distribute through some type of education site and/or links to their free skins in their stores so you could give the links to students so they would know where to pick them up. Even the school where I teach at makes links to web sites/SL stores available to all the students if an instructor wanted to make it available.
Troy
I am currently working on a line of skins for African Americans, Latinas, Middle East, and all the skins that are not normally seen in SL. I think it’s about time we see something for everyone 🙂
I am not pleases with the manner in which you request assistance. But… another resource for you and your students will be flickr photo accounts that show a HUGE diversity of Skins in SL. I might suggest you try a people search on the name listed under a skin photo you like and simply be social with the avatar. Ask where they picked up their skin perhaps.
I do not associate to the following web page but, instantly recognized total diversity within: http://www.flickr.com/groups/443019@N20/
SL for me is a total world of diversity, when you seek less than that of course you will find it. The technition changes the results in any experiment by the nature of the questioin and answer they seek. If one avenue of research fails, try another.
Do not rage agains prejudice, rage for diversity. A totally different mindset. Running toward a goal is far more successful than is running away from the past.
Better tomorrows,
Bliss
this is crap sorry but it is.
I have been in sl going on 3 years and you must just be very bad at looking thats all I can say!
I do not think there is a race I have not seen in sl
My name is Sinsaber Holgado, the name of my store is Santero, I cuurently have a series of ethnic skins, Afro, Afro Cuban, Latino, Panama and spaniard tone skins. I also have made indivisual, full avatar packages that are Latino and afro tone (eyes, shape, shoes and clothes.)
I am trying to specialize in the ethnic Skins, thats my niche.
Sinsaber Holdgao
Santero
look me in world