If you haven’t been to the 2009 Hair-Fair yet, do go this instant and head for Tekelili Tantalus’ booth. As usual, he has created a dazzling, detailed, and alternative collection of hair styles. What’s better, this year’s collection are all catered towards mer and aquatic humanoids.

If I could complain about anything concerning his work, it is a bit prim heavy, so if you’re into maintaining a low ARC you might have to do some balancing, but you’ll never find better detail. Go shop!

• SLURL: Tekelili’s shop @ Hair Fair 2009 (note, you can’t TP there directly, but this will put a marker on your map to walk to)
• SLURL: Tekelili in the Hollow Earth (main store)

I’ve had a few comments and questions in the past few days about my ever-present shine. What’s the secret? Well, aside from daily kelp wraps and eel oil rubs, a friend showed me that an application of Nyoko’s body oil does wonders for the skin and scales. The oil is available in four levels of shine and comes with clothing for every body layer. There’s also body glitter available in a comparable spectrum of choices.

Because of layering, it doesn’t always work with every mermaid outfit on the market, but (shameless plug) It does work with mine! If you have any NiXiE tail kit, you can wear the body oil on the shirt and pants layers, and wear the scales on the underwear layers. You can even wear a scant tail color on the sock layer and have a two-color blend!

Now then, next time I see you, you’d best be looking wet, shiny, and sexy!

• Price: 375L$; Set of all grades $1,200
• SLURL: Nyoko’s Wears

Let me, Azaiya Aeon, guide you towards the very best in mermaid items from across the grid.

As a mer, I’m known to be very blue. I’ve never quite understood why so many mers elect to wear human skin when there are so many more interesting choices available. Then again, I’ve never understood why so many people elect to be human in their Second Life when there are so many more interesting choices available. Anyway, as I’ve lived on a mermaid on the grid, I began with my regular human skin, but after a while started using colored skins. Colored skins are fun, exotic, and add another fun dimension to your avatar to play with. Show up to the beach with shimmering aqua skin and scales and you’re sure to turn a few heads.

While I’m no expert on the subject, I’ve always had a hard time finding colored skins. Many just seem appear to be uninteresting tints of existing fleshy skin. Portia Sin has created an excellent set of colored skins which are perfect for mermaids. They’re not just one color, but well-coordinated blends, and each design actually has faint scales if you look closely. Portia recently released a new line of skins and dropped the prices of all her old skins back dramatically. Each color is now L$199, so you have no excuse not to go and buy every single hue! There is a demo pack of all the skins right below the boxes, so find a good match for your fins and turn some heads!

• Price: L$199 per skin (!)
• SLURL: Sin Skins

And what’s an exotic mermaid without some skin decoration? My friend Abby introduced me to Etchd today, which may be my favorite tattoo shop now. Many of the designs are very tribal, with bold, body-covering, interesting shapes, unisex, perfect for a mer, and each is completely re-colorable to any hue you’d like. Prices are very affordable, between L$75 to L$300. Also worth a visit.

• Price: $75 to L$300
• SLURL: Etchd

I’m sure you’re all familiar with The Mermaid Problem, and for all its liberties of imagination, Second Life does present us sea-folk with a few “mermaid problems” of our own (one of which being The Problem proper, but we’ll discuss that another time). Any new mermaid will quickly observe that not many of SL’s waterways are merfolk friendly, and sometimes you want to swim near the surface of the water rather than comb the bottom of a sim. Obviously, the only way to do this is by flying (Dear Linden Lab: Why can’t there be an option for swimming? You’ve got animation states for it—animation states which I’ve never seen, because we can’t swim, mind you). But flying is exactly what one does, right out of the water on any extended stretch of swimming. Thus, the process of swimming is constant tedium; move, adjust depth (altitude), repeat.

To solve this SLMP™ (Second Life Mermaid Problem™), one needs to employ the use of a Swim Assist. The idea of the swim assist is simple: keep the mermaid in the water. The implementation itself is a bit trickier, though. In this article I’ll explain a few of the commercial solutions out there, and let you make the choice of which is best for you.

Erluen Twin’s SwimGem HUD • L$XXX

One of the older, and first swim assists by Erluen Twin, this keeps you in the water while you’re flying. You can control the depth at which you swim/float via the HUD. If you stop flying with it turned on, things will get a little wacky.

• Pros: Minor height adjustments, activation and deactivation very easy
• Cons: HUD is large, ugly, and cumbersome
• Purchase SLURL: Sirens MerMall

Mer Betta Floater Device • L$250

This is actually a neat little script that you can place inside any mertail, most likely in the tailfin. Much like SwimGem, it keeps you near the surface, and you have to be flying in order for it to work correctly. Touch the prim it’s in to turn it on and off. Opal Lei’s fin-a-licious Mer Betta tails come with this built-in, but I believe you’ll need to purchase the floater separately to add it to other tails.

• Pros: Light-Weight and Low-Lag
• Cons: Not Height-Adjustable
• Purchase SLURL: Mer Betta Mainstore

Mer-Float 1.0 • L$150

Imzadi Giles’ Impulse Designs’ Mer-Float is the newest assist on the marker and takes a different approach than the previously mentioned assists: It works by creating an invisible prim beneath the avatar. When you move, the prim goes with you. Interestingly, this only works when you are walking, and not flying, but it does work quite well. I have suspicion that this could create a lot of lag, too, but things seemed to work smoothly when a friend and I tested it out. The floater is configured using a HUD, which is nice-enough looking for me to tolerate, but still a bit large for something you really only need to set once.

• Pros: Flight not required (so you can see your AO’s regular ‘walking’ and ‘standing’ animations); very precise height adjustment
• Cons: Doesn’t work in no-build areas, setup does require basic building knowledge
• Purchase SLURL: Sirens MerMall

Is there a “one true” Swim Assist to solve this Mermaid Problem? It’s really a flavor of what works best for you. Each solution gains something, but sacrifices something too. The Mer Betta HUD is great for minimalists, but you can’t adjust your swim height. SwimGen allows you to do this, but the adjustments are minor, and you have a large, unnecessary HUD. Mer-Float allows you to adjust, but relies on creating prims beneath you so that it will only work in sims with building allowed. Still, I applaud all of these creators for their excellent work and for the diversity of solutions to this SLMP.

Of course, the best solution would need to come from Linden Lab in the software itself, to create a true “Swimming” avatar state, much like flying. I’ll be looking into adding a feature request to Second Life JIRA issue tracker, or, if someone already has, please let me know!

EDIT 7/8/08: The creator of Mer-Float should be credited as Impulse Designs

June Dion, unstoppable creating machine that she is, has started a new series of avatars based on the Zodiac. What’s her first release in the series? None other than Pisces!

Click to see larger images.

The Pisces avatars come in male and female versions, and include an optional mermaid/merman form, including an AO for just such an occasion. June’s work, as usual, is imaginative and includes several optional colours and attachments. Both Avatars are L$160. You can’t say no! Well, you can, but I didn’t.

In addition, Bare Rose has also released an instant mermaid hangout: Siren’s Lounge. 112 prims, L$100. You can try it out in-world, too (see link below).

• SLURL: BareRose HQ
• SLURL: BareRose Tokyo Mermaid Grotto

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with Tekelili Tantalus’ work, so when I found out that he had created a line of merfolk avatars, I had to dash over. Needless to say, I was quite dazzled in that I found not only some fantastic fins, but a pile of new Jewelry and accessories to boot.

Jewelry

I was introduced by a friend some time ago to the outstanding prim jewelry work of Tekelili, and since I’ve worn nothing but his Nereid set. It’s exactly the kind of thing I’d imagine a mermaid to wear—an elegant tangle of pearls, small shells, ornaments, and seaweed. It’s also fully mod (I did add some glow to my pearls) and re-colourable by script. Oh, and quite reasonably priced, from around L$100 for single items and L$350 for sets. Believe me, the sets are worth every Linden. I recommend the Maui or Nereid set for seafolk. There are even matching hairstyles (adorned with lavish ornamentation) to go with the jewelry sets.

Merfolk

But then, oh then, to my delight are the merfolk he has created. They leave absolutely nothing in want.

At the moment he has two avatars:  one based on the deep-sea-dwelling Anglerfish, the other a Flying Fish. The avatars are a complete makeover, including an AO, skin, fin attachments, jewelry, a weapon, and miniature pet. You can wear the avatar out of the box, or make your own customizations, as everything included is modifiable. Tekelili spoke a little to me about his inspirations:

I’ve always had a deep love of all things aquatic, and so naturally merfolk too. One of my long-time AV dreams since starting in SL was to find a "realistic" merman AV, and, I kept failing, despite finding some wonderful ones, such as the Grendel’s Sirens, which are absolutely amazing. But they still weren’t "real", as in, recognizably based on a real fish.

The avatars are L$750, but well worth it. Tekelili says that more aquatic avs are on the way in the coming weeks, the Siamese fighting fish next on his list. Guess who will be first in line? See you in the depths!

• SLURL: Dark Horizons Mainstore

I met Goldenstar Sands in Aquaria a few weeks ago and was introduced to her darling mertails based off of FL fish. The tails are all unisex and uni-age, as Goldenstar herself is a child, and the cover-ups for modest females are quite clever and well-intergrated into the design. If only my own tails could claim such versatility! (Though, I did see a merman wearing one the other day.)

Oh, and did I mention she makes glowing mer-raving attachments that leave particle light trails? Neat!

Tails are 150L$ There’s a fun arcade above her shop too!

• Safe Waters, Epione
  

A few months ago I tried to write a comprehensive AO guide in-world. I’ll probably revise it soon for this blog, but I was so excited about this I had to post now! A few months ago, a Japanese mermaid by the name of Kyota Spitteler (Kyota runs the Mermaid Temple in Gorlen Bay). Handed me an AO from a Japanese shop by the name of KAMI-HITOE as a gift. I was very impressed with the creativity and variety of its animations. I could tell that the creator, Sala Snook, really understood and thought carefully about how mermaids move.

Recently it seems Sala has created an even more robust AO, called the “Dramatic Sea” AO (sounds a bit odd of a name, but makes sense if you pay attention to Japanese product naming trends). It is stunning, and if you spend a lot of time as a mermaid you definitely want to look into purchasing it. It has 30 animations, each incredibly detailed and individual. She has created an animation for nearly every state your avatar is in, including multiple stands and special crouch swims. It’s a bit pricey at 500L$, but for the quality it is absolutely worth it. You’ll never need another AO.

• KAMI-HITOE, Japan 10

There are more and more mer-malls rezzing up in SL. Still, there’s some great items to be found hiding in unexpected places on the grid. I’ll be making a few posts every so often dedicated to these “hidden treasures”.

A while ago I was looking for some mer poses for my NiXiE tails packaging, and I joking suggested that a friend make some via a comment on flickr, which she then did!

Anyway, Cole made a bunch of poses. 14 total. Good for photoshoots or poseballs. Go check them out!

35L$ per pose, or 300L$ for the whole set. Copy & Mod.

• Cole’s Couture in Kakapo