
My Avatar in Second Life is still pretty bland. He has a grey long sleeve shirt, white undershirt, grey pants, and no shoes. He has a couple of objects attached to him. For example a backpack along the spine, a cigarette in his right ear, and a cigarette in his hand. He is slightly tanned from the same skin he came with, and has brown hair. So far I haven't modified much to my character when it comes to physical features except for clothes and different items attached to him.
When I first saw the avatar I didn't like the shirt with the stripe that you start out with so I just switched that clothing I found with some free stuff from the freebies store which I have forgotten the name. When it comes to facial features and other physical features I didn't mind what 2nd life started you out with but the clothes had to go.
I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be changing my characters appearance constantly. With as many clothing and object options to put on your character I think it would be crazy not to switch it up every now and then.
The motivation behind changing my appearance was that I didn't want to look the same as every other male when you get on that first island. I would say in general the avatar looks like me in real life. I have brown hair and it's very possible to see me wearing grey clothes so yes I would say I based it off of my real appearance. I did not ask others what they thought about my avatar's appearance.
So far I have spent cero dinero a.k.a. linden $ on my avatar's appearance. I just went to the links that Dr. Carter gave us about freebies and they had some awesome stuff there. I'm really fine with whatever my character looks like in 2nd life just as long as I get to make it up. There is one thing that I would like to buy but can't because of my lack of linden $. I would like to buy the rasta dreadlocks for my character but they cost like 75 linden $ or something around that figure.
I haven't messed with many of the sounds or gestures yet, I'm still amased at the amount of objects you can carry around. I've been having some real fun with 2nd life. The program is great, and it's really accessible. I would describe it as a better version of the Sims computer game.
-Kyle Hughley