Avatar Island is a new sim being built by Virginia-based Cranial Tap, on behalf of CyberExtruder, a 3D imaging studio with interesting plans for residents. Utilizing their proprietary software, CyberExtruder will take a resident's photograph and turn it into a wearable skin for their avatar.

It's not clear whether this will be a free or paid service. CyberExtruder is also planning on offering free space on their island to graphics artists who are willing to partner with CE to offer residents a wide range of avatar customization services, including animation. I've tried to make an avatar that looks like the RL me, but got too frustrated with the puzzling texture mapping required for customization. I imagine I'll make use of this service when it launches.

(Thanks, Jack!)

This is the fourth in our 'Adjusting to a New World' series of articles for beginners - although some intermediate and advanced Second Lifers are also finding little tidbits that they didn't know in them. In the last two columns we talked about communication. This time, we're going to talk about clothing as we move towards avatar appearance settings.

Clothing actually covers a bit more territory than just clothes. There's skin and hair there too. Subtleties, you might say. Let's take a look.

Okay, so the avatar represents you in the virtual world, but do you identify with it? Some people identify more easily with a bland avatar, or an avatar that they rarely or never see, while others identify with a third-person view more readily -- they can see the figure move and respond to their commands. For the same reasons many people do not identify very strongly with their face in the mirror or in photographs, whereas they have a stronger personal attachment to their hands and feet.

Since your avatar represents you in the virtual world, how closely do you identify with it? How closely do you think others do? When you do something to someone's avatar, are you doing it to the person on the other side, emotionally speaking? If someone shoves or shoots you, do you take that personally -- as the bad behavior directed towards you, the person?

"Their genetic structure, based on the quadruple-striated octo-helix, is so chronically unstable, that far from passing their basic shape onto their children, they will quite frequently evolve several times over lunch. But they do this with such reckless abandon that if, sitting at table, they are unable to reach a coffee spoon, they are liable without a moments consideration to mutate into something with far longer arms - but which is probably quite incapable of drinking the coffee." -- Douglas Adams, 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (Fit the Sixth)

In the time I've spent in Second Life, I've known people who have had the same avatar since the moment I met them. They're always the same. Some -- free of the dictates of laundry -- retain the same clothes, week after week, month after month. Some (like myself) though they have a definitive look, will switch avatars when entering Furry, Sci-Fi, Victorian or Gorean areas, and often take a few minutes to rummage through their clothing when they are heading to an event or to a meeting or a date.

Some I have met, switch avatars with their moods -- sometimes a dozen or more times during a conversation. How often do you change or modify your avatar? Does it disconcert or confuse you when others do?

This post's title might have different meanings for some of you, but I'm using it to refer to the practice of some modern applications' granting the user the ability to assign key commands, or even a specific Function key to an action. For example, we all know that pressing F1 will bring up SL Help, but what I'd love to see implemented is a way to map an avatar to a key.

Instead of the tedious hunting through folders for the shape you want to wear, wouldn't it be great to just hit F5, for example, and have your desired avatar attach itself? No frustrating hunting through your gigantic Inventory, or trying to drag it onto yourself when in a crowded room, just a simple button push and you're there!

Even a simple reassignment of your most frequently-used commands to whatever you think the combination should be would make a huge difference in your day-to-day interaction with SL. Avatar-to-key-assignment is where my head's at nowadays, though, as I frequently shift between modes to better express how I'm feeling at the moment, or to display with pride my favorite avs. I want this yesterday! Unless LL is busy working on getting rid of the Lag Beast, in which case I can meekly sit in my corner and wait.

When I first joined SL, I thought the default typing animation was kinda cute. Over the months it's really grown on me. Now I regard it as a completely annoying thing that takes me right out of the suspension of disbelief.

Consider: the animation is meant to indicate that the avatar is typing a response. That's all fine and well, but if the overarching metaphor is of residents talking to each other, then typing ruins the illusion. Granted, instead of hearing a voice, we get text floating in a bubble above the avatar's head, but in your mind, when you read text, you supply a voice anyway, so the concept of text-to-voice is a smooth, unobtrusive convention.

I think the metaphor would be better served by having the avatar adopt a thoughtful pose, perhaps something like *chin cupped in one hand, elbow of the same arm cupped in other hand*, showing contemplation. Or anything that makes it look as though the avatar is considering its words. Plus, it's faintly ridiculous to have the avatar 'typing' on thin air, when the whole purpose of having your virtual world is to provide virtual analogues of real world objects. There are some fun keyboard objects that appear when you type that help bridge this divide, but they're not the default. If someone has already made something like the above-outlined typing replacement, I'd appreciate your contacting me in-world; I've got some money for you.

So, you want to check out Second Life. You've created your name and you're ready to begin designing your avatar. What happens next?

Well, the first step has already sort of been offered to you: the 'Select an Avatar' page offers 12 choices for a default, startup look, 6 per gender. Once you've chosen your default, and filled out the rest of the necessary fields, you're ready to jump into SL. Incidentally, this step is relatively new; back in The Day (something you'll hear me say a lot, just 'cause it's vague enough to mean anything), you weren't offered the 'Select an Avatar' screen. You jumped in head first, and bit the bullet by the horns. Wait... did I just mix a metaphor?

Anyway, unless you've chosen the Furry avatar, you'll get a bewildering array of options for changing your shape and appearance. My heartfelt advice to you is: Don't. Don't change your appearance right away. Spend some time looking around and mastering walking and flying. Talk to some other people. After a day or so, you'll start to see the wide variety of looks available to you, only some of which depend on your using the Appearance interface. If you really need to change something right away, go ask for help from someone that you think looks good; you'll get much more practical advice that way.

Next Tip: Where Should I Go? (coming soon)