Changing Appearances

I've noticed a lot of people in SL seem to keep their look static.
Which I don't understand at all. I mean, I suppose it's all personal
opinion and so on and so forth, but I think changing how I look fairly
often is just fun. My other concern is that people might be afraid
that if they change how they look they'll mess something up. You can
insure this won't happen fairly easily, creating an outfit out of
everything you're wearing makes it possible to always go back. My last
concern is that maybe people just don't know how to change their
appearance, aren't comfortable with it. So I've set up a quick little
guide to it. Hope it makes sense!

Appearance:
-One main thing to remember is that your avatar can be whatever you
want it to be -- it's a representation of you! So have fun with it!
-To change your appearance you can either right click your avatar and
select "Appearance" from the choice wheel, or go to edit at the top of
the screen then down to appearance. Your avatar will stand up and spin
around and the menu to change your appearance will appear.
-The menu has side headings such as: Shape, Skin, Hair, Eyes, Shirt,
Pants, Shoes, Socks, Jacket, Gloves, Undershirt, Underpants, Skirt.
The first three of these have their own subheadings that will appear
to the right of them but still to the left hand side of the window.
-In each section you are given a wide variety of changes you can make.
For example, if you go into Shape, then Eyes, you can change your eye
size, the size of the eye opening, your eye spacing, you can make the
outer and inner corners of your eye go up or down, you can change the
depth of your eye, the creasing and bagging of your eye, you can make
your eyelids puffy or not, change the length of your eyelashes and
make one eye 'pop'.


-Also, you can randomize your appearance from any of the body part
selections-- which rarely ends well but who knows, you might get
lucky. Also you can change yourself from male to female with the click
of a button in your shape selection.
-When you leave your appearance you will be given the chance to either
cancel all changes or save them -- if you like the changes you made,
save them, if you have some issue with it, cancel it and start over.
-The huge number of things you can change -- and how you can change
them -- is fairly overwhelming at first, but you'll get the hang of it
pretty quickly.
-And don't worry about changing your avatar more then once -- part of
the fun of SL is constantly editing how other people see you.

Clothes:
-You can also edit your clothes in the appearance menu, make them
longer, shorter, looser, tighter -- as long as the clothes you are
wearing are modifiable. If they have (no mod) by name in your
inventory then you can't do anything with them.
-If the item is modifiable, in addition to changing how it hangs or
its length you can tint it.
-Also, you can make your own clothes. They'll probably be less complex
then some of the one you can buy, but you can give them texture and
color and shape, just like you would in editing your bought clothes.
-You can also make your own clothes in PhotoShop, though this can be
tricky at first and each item costs 10$L to upload.

Prims:
-In addition to clothing items, you might find yourself with a prim
attached at some point or another.
-Prim stands for primitive and these are items that you attach to your
person, they may have the appearance of hair, a skirt, shoes, jewelry
or any number of things. Prims allow more details and texture to be
added to an item.
-As long as your prim isn't (no mod) you can change its color, or the
color of just parts of it. You do this by right clicking the prim in
question, choosing edit from the wheel menu then choosing "More"
From there go to "Texture" If you want to change the color of the
entire object leave the whole thing selected, if you'd rather just
change sections go back to the top above "Less" now, and check "Edit
Linked Parts" Once you do that you can separately select parts of the
prim and edit their color.


As for that 'making of outfit' thing I mentioned earlier, here's a bit
about that: If you have found a combination you particularly like you
should go to edit appearance while wearing it and click 'make outfit'.
From there you can choose what pieces you want to be an outfit. You
will also be able to name the outfit, and there's an option for
renaming all of the items in the outfit after the name of the outfit.
This is not suggested since it can make it harder to look for things.


There. I hope that all makes sense. And really people, don't be afraid
of change, it's good for you!