For the HOARD! ~ FEETS!!!

I am, at long last, the proud and very happy possessor of a pair of SLink mesh enhancement feet with claw and pawpad addon :D Messing up the purchase timescale somewhat, I only just bought these - but they fit well in a series of bodyparts posts, and are something I have had high on my shopping radar for a long time. When I was last in SL over a year ago, SLink had mesh feet for humans but had not updated the Exotix range to have the enhancement nail polish HUD capability - I don't really know why - so I held off from buying them, as they are expensive and I was pretty happy with my sculpty feet. But now they have been updated and are fully compatible with other creator brands, so I can haz matching hand and foot nail polish. Yay!

See how good they look! Sleek and smooth and pretty!

Pictured on my new, low prim mesh log swing from We're CLOSED and wearing a ZOZ nail polish for SLink enhancement hands and feet :) I nipped into Fashion for Life on the very last day, to pick up the PurpleMoon exclusive outfit, and had a bit of a wander around; I was happily ignoring all the stores until I stumbled on the nail polishes. I'll showcase them properly when I put up my PM Time Traveller.

With the cute little pawpads!

Yes I know, the swing pose is bending one ankle a little awkwardly, not the fault of the feet! They are a little tricky to set up, especially when - like me - you have an unusually coloured skin, but I am used to fiddling around with colour sliders, and although it wasn't stated anywhere in the instructions, I discovered that these feet have the same /13 skin RGB chat command as the sculpts. The HUD doesn't have any custom save slots but with the chat command, you can easily keep a notecard of presets to use, so I'll only have to tint them once for each skin. You also have to turn the custom nails off before adding the clawpads, or the two nail sets clash, and I had to put on a tiny bit of weight (!) before the feet fit perfectly; but once all these things are sorted, the feet are good to go.

I also made a couple of simple anklets to hide the texture seam where the feet meet the shin. You can't really avoid a slight discrepancy here, as the feet and skin use different textures and no amount of colour matching will be exact, but since SL is SLink crazy, a lot of skin designers offer a skin matching HUD that links with the feet, so humans with popular skins can probably get a seamless join. So popular are the SLink feet, many shoe designers have taken to making open shoes to fit various models of the feet - though most of them, being heels, require the raised 'mid' or 'high' feet, and I bought 'flat' because these feet are for when I'm not wearing shoes (duh!) and my nicest shoes all have fake feet inside anyway. I also didn't bother with the textured sock as it didn't counter the join, but these could be good for strongly patterned skins, where some alpha layering gradually merges into the skin tone.

:: Sculpted Exotix Feet for Comparison ::

I wore these for a long time and was very happy with them; but the top of the foot bulges rather untidily above the ankle, and the toes look a bit as though they were re-attached after an unpleasant accident involving a scythe. They look great underneath though! Also of course they didn't have enhancement nail polish like the mesh range, so I couldn't use a range of nail polishes, only the basic incorporated colours. And of course they are about a million times better looking than the default bodyshape feet, below. Ugh, creepy mutant monstrosities :( What WERE LL thinking?!

Poor naked feets... thank goodness for alpha masks!

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