ARF! — Angry Ruth Fashion

For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve worn my own eyes in my avatar.  From the original series of Zieen’s Eyes around Winter 2006 to my newest version Zieen’s Eyes Generation 2 Final (what a mouthful).  These eyes have suited me and most the newbies and friends I’ve passed them out to for free seem to enjoy them enough, but it’s obvious that they’re lacking in a certain degree of production quality.  I am no Photoshop whiz, so my eyes aren’t exactly of the highest caliber.  But they are my eyes, I make them the exact colors I want.  It’s nice knowing you’re wearing something you made yourself.   I can only imagine what it’s like for big name, hand-drawn designers like Armidi and Nylon Outfitters (I don’t care what you say, they’re big name in my book).

I was finally broke the proverbial umbilical cord when I spotted Lano Ling’s Poetic Color Eyes - Christmas Freebie on SL Free*Style.  Free, high quality eyes were something I simply couldn’t pass up.  I popped by Zusshon and grabbed my freebie.  I was not impressed.  The eyes appeared HUGE with my tiny little eye openings and I felt like some sort of demonic sprite with my glowing black eyes with the glowing orange rim.  The adventure into the world of foreign optics didn’t end there.

Checking my ‘Your Contacts’ photo feed on Flickr for the 50th time of the day, I found a fantastic new shot from the beautiful Kekona Aichi featuring the same eyes I’d already blown off.  They looked fantastic on her fair skin and round face.  I couldn’t resist posting my opinion on what appeared to be a poetic disaster on my avie, and Lano Ling himself spotted the comment and sent me a pair of his lightest eyes for testing.

Enough with the boring prologue!  Pictures and my analysis after the jump!

I can’t deny the quality of detail in Poetic Color Eyes, but I also didn’t want to look like an alien without any iris.  Lano Ling’s contacted me about my enmity towards his eyes and pointed out that each package of Poetic Color Eyes came in three different sizes.  This is the first time I’ve spotted eyes other than my own that come in different sizes.  While I have no doubt that he was copying my idea (sarcasm), I’m glad to see it’s catching on.

The Christmas Freebie eyes came only in medium, but the set of Quicksilver eyes Lano Ling sent me offered large and small options as well.  I was glad to see that ‘Quicksilver - small’ were the exact same size as my own eyes (which may be based off of the original eye template size offered by Linden Labs).

I have the right size now for a more accurate comparison and it’s a real shock to the system.  Through the many versions of Zieen’s Eyes I have made them darker and dirtier to try and get away from the horrible anime eyes you see all over SL (a solid white sclera w/ no veins or imperfections).  And now with Poetic Color Eyes, my own eyes look much like the anime eyes I’ve fought to differentiate from.

The question now is, has Lano Ling taken it too far.  While my eyes are comparable to a neon sign when put next to his, I find his eyes much darker than the average eye in a quick Google Image search.  Another gripe I’ve always had with SL eyes, is the complete lack of veins and redness as you near the outer-most edges of the texture.  Lano Ling’s eyes possess a much more subtle ‘dirtiness’ to them, with a much more realistic ‘redness’.  Although there are no visible veins in the sclera, this is something that people will seldom notice unless they’ve actually zoomed in for a closer look.

The next thing I looked at was the iris.  This is the most difficult area to compare, as the iris has such a great range of colors, highlights, and shadows in the human eye.  I will not give either eye and absolute thumbs up for thumbs down based on this area.  I favour the lightness of my iris, but there is a more detail in Lano Ling’s Poetic Color Eyes.  Here’s a quick reference on some human eyes if you need something to compare against:

The final two areas I compared are the pupil and the lighting glare.  When it comes to the glare, I feel Lano Ling is the unadulterated victor.  The pupil is my only big gripe with Poetic Color Eyes.  It’s just too big!  Even with the small eyes, I feel like my avie must be standing in a nearly pitch-black room.  In a bright area I look some something out of a the Roswell files.

The entire eye seems to scale uniformly from large to small, so my conclusion is that the pupil is too large across all sizes.  In my own eyes, the size difference between Large and Small is ONLY the pupil size.  Lano Ling has taken it one step further by offering three wholly different sizes, but I would like to see an option for a smaller pupil as well.  While the eyes have grown on me as I wear them, I still feel all too awkward with the overly dilated pupils.  The question is, is Lano Ling prepared to commit the added time and money to offer six or more different options with each pair of eyes for one dissatisfied avatar?

The Final Verdict

Lano Ling’s Poetic Color Eyes stand on their own with the high detail and production quality. The sclera (white part) seems too clouded and dirty to be healthy; almost jaundiced.  While the darker nature of the Lano Ling’s eyes sets them apart from those of other designers, I don’t think it would hurt to lighten things up just a bit and try to eliminate the shadow/halo around the iris that inexplicably rears it’s ugly head after being uploaded to SL (I’m assuming this dark halo wasn’t intentional, as a similar phenomenon occurred after uploading my lighter eyes).  The pupil also seems a tad large for my taste, but that’s something I’m sure will just take some getting use to.  *UPDATE* I spoke with Lano Ling about his eyes and he’s taking into consideration a slightly lighter sclera and smaller pupil.  With his next series of eyes — which are to be lighter in color — I’ll post another review.  Until then, I’m wearing these eyes to get use to the massive change from my own.

Poetic Color Eyes are definitely in a different league than Zieen’s Eyes, which is not only apparent in the design, but also the price.  Zusshon’s eyes come in at L$200/each.  That’s quite a chunk of change when you consider you’re forking out almost USD 1.00 for a piece of intangible digital media, but the deep, beautiful colors present in the iris, it may just be worth it.

*UPDATE* I’ve spoken with Lano Ling and it appears that the eyes, as presented in this article, appear much darker than he’d previously witnessed.  It appears that the indescrepencies may be due in part to the lack of a good face light.  I went and purchased the face light he was using, FaceFX Designer Facelight, and the eyes really did brighten up.  And a note on FaceFX’s face light…  After forking out the L$375 for this little gadget, a friend sent me a 100% free face light produced by CogNation.  The CogNation offers nearly every feature that FaceFX does for absolutely free.  While CG Facelight lacks the ’softness’ setting and a few added facelight positions, I think it’s more than enough for conservative facelight use.