Can Haz Noo Clothez!

Hiya folks, 

Ailuros here again.  Betcha been wondering what I’ve been up to.  Well, even if you haven’t I’m gonna tell you.  First thing is I started perusing XStreetSL looking for some new duds to get outta these noobie ones. Now, don’t get me wrong.  For freebie stuff it’s pretty good; but, I have a certain look in mind and  this isn’t quite it. 

XStreet showed me some cool possibilities, but there’s one big problem.  When I Search with “neko male” most of what I get is baggy musclehead stuff.  Is there some reason neko males have to be Mr. Universe/Conan reject types?  Why does urban have to equal grungy, back-alley, or feral?  Whatever happened to the sleek agile house-cat?  I’m not necessarily talking androgynous bishounen here, either.  Something in between.  I did find one full avatar that was almost exactly what I wanted, the Max Black Cat Neko Male Avatar by Atea Avatars (SLURL). However, the L$2500 price tag was a little too steep for this thrifty-cat.  Besides, not only would that have made for a really short and boring blog post, but then I’d be just another Max Cat on the grid.  I figured I could do better, at least in price. 

At least now I had something to shoot for.  My plan was to go about it piecemeal.  Taking the list from the Max Cat advert as a guide I set out.  I already had a shape, skin and hair I could live with, and thanks to Sanura Snowpaw I had my ears and tail.  Next on the list, then, had to be eyes.  Another search of XStreet netted me a very cool set for a very small bit of scratch, L$1 to be precise. 

eyes and ears and whiskers on my nose

I also made a quick trip to Ephemeral for some whiskers.  A cat’s gotta have whiskers, right? Right. 

Now we come to the clothes.  Mr Onyx clued me in on a place to find some good threads cheap, PixelDolls.  I strolled through the menswear section and managed to put together a pretty nifty outfit.  It even worked well with the boots I was wearing at the time. 

Here’s where I finally turned to an expert, the Virtual Neko herself, Stacia Villata.  Right at the top of her blog is a link to her “How to be a Neko” page.  Super!  I read through it to see what I might be missing.  Ears and tail? Check.  Hair? Check.  Clothes? Check.  Accessories?  Aha!  I could tell this would be one of those continuous hunts.  Accessories are to nekos what hats are to Jägerkin.  I had to start somewhere, though. 

TPD_steampunk_armband

Once again Mr. Onyx gave me a nudge.  He remembered an uber-stylish armband being one of the prizes from the recent STEAM hunt.  The hunt was over, but maybe the prize hadn’t been snatched away yet.  Haha!  I got lucky.  Not only was the STEAM gear still in place, but I also found a nifty set of boots. 

G06 Leather boots

There was just one more thing I needed to finish off my look. Sticking with the fae-neko idea I wanted a better set of wings. The mage wings I had on were nice for unscripted noob wings, but I wanted moarr! So, I hopped over to Material Squirrel (SLURL, blog), widely recognized as THE place for wings.  It took a while, perusing the walls, posing in the demo rezzer, but I finally found a set that suited me; the Dark Flight set.  They’re not super huge, and the best part, they match my tail really well. 

Night Flight

OK, so now I feel I’m well on the way to my own nekoness. How did my little shopping spree compare to the package deal? Let’s add it up. 

The full ensemble.

Shape: 0L
Skin:    0L
Hair:   0L
Eyes:   1L
Ears & Tail: 200L
Whiskers: 149L
Outfit:
 – pants 50L
 – shirt  50L
 – jacket 50L
 – gloves 100L (part of another outfit)
Boots: 300L
Wings: 299L
armband: 0L
——————–
Total: L$1199  Not to bad for a thrifty-cat.

For those interested,  here are the full details of this ensemble:

ears and tail:  Sanura Snowpaw *Dreams* – Purrfectly Plain in Black Night 
hair:  freebie Men’s Long Hair from Faery Crossing noob avatar set 
clothing:
Pixeldolls
– (Laundry) Button Shirt                 
– (Laundry) Slacks, Black Wrinkled    
– (Laundry) Motorcycle Jacket         
– Magician, Black gloves                 
Trashed
– TPD_Leather G01 (male version)    
accessories: TPD Steampunk armband 
wings: Material Squirrel – Night Flight Black Wings – 4.2.1  
eyes: Eyes Neko pack -=Kota Kirax=-xstsl   
whiskers: Ephemeral Natural Neko Whiskers – Nikki 
skin: photorealistic skin from Faery Crossing Male noob avatar set