Broken Plot Device - Max

Maxine

Next in my Broken Plot Device project is the Byron Apartment's resident hardcore cynic, Maxine. Max plays the role of "shoulder angel and demon" to everyone in the apartment block, and is just as capable of getting her peers into trouble, just as she is getting them out of it. She doesn't care about the repercussions of her actions, and isn't afraid to speak her mind.

To be honest, I didn't really like Max that much until I started working on her. When I finally got around to doing her avatar, I can see why she's one of the more popular characters in BPD; Her brutal, cynical personality, when coupled with her feisty, flirtatious nature, makes her one of those "impossibly hard to get" characters that everyone wants, but just can't have for obvious reasons. (Well, she -is- a cougar, and I don't mean those older women types.)

Surprisingly, Max was my easiest avatar to make - she doesn't use as many different avatar parts as Sunny and Inix did. The head was made using the Curious Chinchilla, while the rest of her body is a Felis. (The ears, however, come from another Chinchilla mod, which, amazingly, is another cat mod.) Every texture on the body is custom made, the skin once again being a modified Felis skin.

And finally, she stands at 5.45 feet in-world.

Texturing Max's head was much easier, having learned from my mistakes when trying to reskin Inix's head. As a result, the head textures look much smoother and less squashed. Whilst working, I realized that the markings under her eyes are meant to be muzzle markings. I left them under her eyes anyway, because a.) they look better under there anyway, and b.) the avatar feels more consistent with Liz's art style and Max's character design.

Finding the right hairstyle was pretty difficult, until I narrowed it down between two hairstyles - one from Truth, the other from Calico Ingmann. I ended up choosing the from Calico - while Truth had better, more detailed hair, Calico's matched Max's hair very well, and it had less bounce so it didn't fly all over the place whenever I walked and obscure the ears. I even shortened the bangs a little to give it that more natural "v" shape, and added her trademark hairclip on the left side.

Max's ear piercings consist of a hoop and three studs on each ear. Each hoop was made using two toruses linked together to form a more "bottom-heavy" earring, and studs were added on both sides of her ear, as shown in Max's character sheet. Something that a friend had pointed out to me.

Again, her claws are from Sensations, same as Inix. Except Max's are a little lighter in color.

While Maxine doesn't wander around barefoot like most of the BPD cast do, I felt it was necessary to give her bare feet for outfits like her bikini. Again, they're from the Curious Felis, reskinned to the same color and pattern as Max does in her character sheet. Same for toeclaws, too.

Next up are Max's tattoos. She wears two distinctive tattoos on each arm, one of a crescent moon face, the other an angry sun. Because Second Life has some seriously poor texture rigging for avatars (the arms are mirrored for some reason), each tattoo had to be made by adding them to an invisiprim on each arm. It's not perfect, but this kind of workaround will have to do for now.

I also added a small heart tattoo to Maxine's lower hip, towards her inner thigh. While it's not really necessary, and since people aren't going to be seeing her nude anyway, I added it anyway for the sake of adding detail to Max.

(...What, you didn't think I was going to show you her genitals, did you? c.c)

And finally... HOMG SMOKING IS BAD!!!!11one

*ahem*

Now that we got the basics out of the way, let's have a look at Maxine's wardrobe. Max is a little different from Sunny and Inix, having five outfits instead of four.

First up is her default costume. Here, she wears her trademark "CENSORED" top, knee-high boots and red tartan miniskirt. The top itself is made from a shirt template (hence the straps, which I couldn't get rid of), and the skirt is mesh clothing, so you won't be able to see it inworld without a mesh viewer. Being mesh, part of Max's legs clip through it a bit, and there really isn't much I can do about that. In addition to these articles of clothing, Max also wears a black collar from Derp, a cigarette, and a black studded belt from Grasp.

Next us is Max's "hoodie" outfit. What's remarkable about her hoodie is that it's made from two separate articles of clothing. The upper part and arms of her hoodie comes from Apricot Paws, while the body is another custom made shirt, with a feline-inspired Jolly Roger painted on the front. The rest of her clothing (panties, ripped jeans, and sneakers) were all bought from League.

Now here's a costume that some of you might like. This skimpy-looking bikini is from Blow-Up, one of the shops I was browing for Max's tartan skirt. I picked this one up, because it fits in nicely with Max's flirty nature, so it's a little fanservicey, I'll admit.

Here's Max wearing something simple to lounge around home in. Her sneakers and collar have both been recycled, except this time she wears a pair of cuffs, also from Derp. Her pants are a pair of brown canvas pants from King's (they're marketed for men, but they fit Max pretty well), and the Kami top is from DE Designs.

And finally... a rare shot of Max wearing something formal. As most fans will know, Max doesn't wear anything typilcally girly or lacey, so the dress I picked out of her had to be both sexy and revealling, and still match her taste in clothing. The dress itself comes from TGIS.

Her shoes also had to match Max's tastes too, since Inix's shoes wouldn't really do the job. Thankfully, HOO~ did a pair of high-heel shoes made specifically for feline characters. The feet and toes were easy to recolor, but I had to add my own toeclaws from Max's feet.

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And that's all there is to Max! I'll be taking a break to work on a mod request for someone, but when I do come back, we'll be covering the creator herself, Liz. See you soon :)

Broken Plot Device - Inix

Inix Tasma Maria-Jade

After I finished building Sunny, it was inevitable that I'd go and do another Broken Plot Device character sooner or later. With six more to choose from, I decided to go for my next favorite - Inix. My top two reasons for liking her are;

1.) Inix is one of the most enigmatic characters of the strip, and also the most fanservicey, and;
2.) Dragons rock.

Most of the parts I needed to make Inix with were already made (such as the head), but construction took longer than I did with Sunny. This is because Inix has a very complex design, and I had to rely on trial and error tactics to get her right. Like Sunny, I took a few liberties with her designs, but for the most part, she remains faithful to her current BPD incarnation.

As you can see from her introductory shot, Inix is a very tall person, and possibly the tallest cast member of the strip, towering even Zig. I reflected this by giving her a long, sleek and slender frame, as Eastern dragons usually are. Her shoulders and hips were made as narrow and proportionate as they can, and her limbs were made longer and thinner to accomplish this. In-world, she stands at 1.94 meters tall.

The next feature we'll look at is Inix's head. The head itself is made from a Dragon mod kit used for the Curious Ringtail - the same mod I used to make Serylis just over a year ago. Let's be straight, a lot of furry dragon avatars in Second Life are terrible - too many of them look far too feral or ugly looking, and leave very little room for modification/personalization. Using a modded dragon avatar works better, because then they'd at least look a little more humanoid. Which... is the whole point of anthropomorphism in the first place.

Anyway, rant over, let's get back to this mod. Inix had to be designed differently from Serylis because, as I said, she has a much more complex design than most dragon characters. While I initially tried to do a texture for her nose ribs, I found that using prims was a much easier solution, and gave me less of a headache to implement. Same goes for the eyebrows, aswell. Another interesting feature is that Inix has heterochromatic eyes - one blue, one amber. To achieve that effect, I had to recolor each eyeball separately, as the Ringtail HUD changes the color of both eyes at once. She also has a pair of "horns" above each eye, that grows just over her hair. The markings on each horn had to be done on a seperate prim, since the UV mapping on those horns are terrible.

Inix also sports lower back-length curly hair that she keeps in two ponytails over her shoulders. Her hair uses two different hairstyles to achieve the same effect she had in BPD, both from Truth hairs - Helena for the base, and Cady for the ponytails, one copy for each shoulder. Inix's hair had to be trimmed around the front so much, so that it achieves the "swept-back" look and doesn't clip through most of her distinguishing features, such as her ears and the horns. In my opinion, this was the most difficult part to do with this avatar. I also colored her hair all purple, since that's the most common color her hair is depicted as.

Next up are her ears. Each ear had to be resized and rotated around, so her hair doesn't clip through it, as stated before. As you can see, Inix has a -lot- of ear piercings, the most notable one being the chain that connects between her lower right lobe and right nostril. The chain took -forever- to make - and by forever, I obviously meant nearly two hours, at best. I did work out, eventually, that lining each link up in a straight line, then moving/rotating each one individually, forming a nice natural bend between both ends, worked best in my case. Of course, a sculpted version would've sufficed, but this will have to do.

Inix loves to wear high heel shoes - her favorite being open-toe stilletos. These ones look nice, but were designed for felines, canines and other avatars with small feet. To make matters worse, they're no mod, so a workaround had to be used - using the claws from the clawed feet I mentioned in my Sunny post, I linked each one up so they go over each toe, and added them to the same attachment slot my shoes were. (For the record, Inix' shoes are placed on the Lower Leg slot for stability reasons, otherwise they'd just be flying all over the place as I walked - as I discovered with her toeclaws.)

Now, we have our claws - again, these were recycled from my Serylis avatar. They're Sensation's Nails, and the great thing about them is that can be used for many avatar combinations, since you can use "claw" and "talon" nails too. Inix's nails use the claw option, however these are not featured on all of her outfits, as she wears gloves most of the time.

Finally on our Inix's Basics tour, we have the tail. This is a modified Kinzart Kreature Eastern Dragon tail, shrunk down to a more manageable, yet proportionate size (it was -huge- I tell you!), and of course the tail texture removed and color re-tinted to match that of Inix's body. The tail fluff was also re-tinted to match the same color as her hair.

Inix also has her huge trademark tattoo on her back, but we'll get to that later. Right now, let's take a look at some of her outfits.

One of the most consistent factors about Inix's clothing is that she looks to wear black, fashionable and revealing outfits. Her first dress - one of her most commonly worn outfits - is a black evening gown with an open left leg, giving her a formal, but sexy appearance. Another good feature about this dress is that it has an open back, giving voyeurs a good look at her back tattoo. The dress itself comes from Elegant Fashions, while the gloves are from a black corset I purchased from LOW fashions.

Her next outfit is a somewhat... "revealing" black Kitania dress from Insanya, complete with knee-high boots and black gloves. This is probably something Inix lounges around in, despite looking a little closer to "streetwalking" attire. Then again, this is Inix we're talking about, so some of the things she says and do don't really make sense half the time.

Next up is something a little more fitting, a very revealing combat dress from Deviance, named the Elementalist. It's also prone to getting a few naughty looks from people, but thankfully, she's got no naughty bits attached, so any onlookers may end up being a little disappointed ;). I also removed her ponytails from this outfit, since they kept clipping through the top.

And finally, I've threw in a nice makeshift bikini for Inix, consisting of a wrap top and a little short skirt (well, she -is- a mystic, and I had to find something that fits her character quite well). Personally, I like this outfit the most, so I just had to make a few more snapshots of her posing in it ;).

Now that we got everything out of the way, I can go into detail about Inix's tattoo - her most distinguishing feature. It's a huge tribal tattoo that goes from her neck to her tailbase, and even extends out to her shoulders. I tried to make it look as close to the the original as possible, drawing from a number of references and careful usage of the Pen tool in Photoshop. It's a very complicated design, but also very well-crafted, and the only to truly appreciate it's beauty is to look at it while Inix is nude.

Well... I asked her nicely, and she agreed to show off her tattoo just for you - just as long as you don't try to do anything funny to her. Enjoy!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all there is to Inix. In our next report, we'll be covering Liz's roommate, and the resident red-head chain-smoking kitty of Broken Plot Device, Max.

Tune in next time, avatar appreciaters!