It escaped my attention - until now ;) - that Miss Eloh Eliot made 3 new skins psd files available to the public: Cf1, an astonishing male skin, and two ‘ladies’ skins Rfº and SFº. I’ve added both to the list of previous skin releases by Eloh Eliot, as that is where people will be most likely to find them.

Skin repository for fashionistas

For all those interested in how a skin gets created, Eloh Eliot also made her repository and it’s contents available to the public. This means you can follow Eloh’s work on the ‘g generation’ skins, and take a peek into an SL skin genius’ mind (and in her .ai files too! ;)). For those that go there now, it also offers a more ‘clean base’ skin to work it, which might be interesting if you want to customise Miss Eloh’s skins more personal. As usual with Miss Eliot latest releases & works: ‘You are free to use these files to create items for any grid. You are free to _alter_ these files to create new items for resale. You are _not_ encouraged to resell these files or skins as is. Credit would be nice!‘

Feel free to take, but share alike!

Although Eloh continues working on the ‘g generation’ of skins, she is disappointed about how few people in turn release Eloh Eliot based skins as Open Source. Miss Eliot mentions this in Share alike!: ‘… this is what open source is about: it’s perfectly fine to take, it’s great to redistribute, and it’s still perfectly fine to make a profit off of it, but at the end of the day, it’s still better to give back.‘ One of the people who did share alike, is Mystical Serenity, check out her ‘Carnival’ skin here.

BIAB & ‘instant business, just add water

At least the above mentioned creators, even if they don’t share open source, added something of their own to the skins, and even possible have put lots of effort in those additions. Unlike the BIAB - business in a box - and ‘instant business, just add water’ schemes Eloh describes: ‘The problem isn’t more businesses–it’s the “instant…just add water” aspect of it–namely BIABs and freebie-sellers–these businesses are, in essence, the same as the zombies in camping chairs: they don’t really add anything of value back to the grid.‘ I second that. Some say it’s good to have those dubious businesses around, as else ‘newbs’ probably would never find the skin, but they for the ease of argument probably, forget to mention that this way n00bs - and even seasoned residents - pay (and charge others) for content that is supposed to be available to them for free.

Possible BIAB countermeasures

Any advise to offer to Miss Eloh Eliot to stop her skins being used for Business in a Box and plain reselling practises? Here’s my list:

• Make the free versions of your skins as ‘findable’ as possible for new residents. Make them in-world copy no transfers, but set up a vendor system for 0LS which people may rezz at their property (and is copy no trans too). That way Orientation Places, clubs, … can easily offer your skins for free. The vendor also distributes a notecard explaining your ideas about open source skins and a link to your website, telling them to look there if they wish starting to create their own skins. Make sure people can obtain the vendor from both onrez, slexchange & some inworld location. (For best easy, the vendor should be have an update system, supplying the owners of the vendor automatically with the latest edition… .
• Maintain a list/directory (comments or some way of contacting you enabled) where people can add a link to a blogpost, … where they make their own PSD’s or a .tga file of their version of the skin available. I’m sure most SLbloggers will happily help with ‘linkloving’ it so it is gets seen by many. That way the contributors will hopefully get something in return too: extra traffic. And people looking for free skins have a great starting point. Of course, you can also ‘outsource’ the maintenance of that list. (Work together with OpenSim peepz? They have some ‘here to find OS stuff for your worlds’ directories already.)
• Cross your mesh and keep hoping LL someday implements the possibility to easily add a CC license to inworld content.


Tags: BIAB, eloh eliot, fashion, skin, texture


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