A while ago someone left the following comment on a blog post: “I think the Gianni body and the Catwa head are a total disaster as the head tone can never quite match the body skin tone and you always have an unsightly visible neck seam.” It was a somewhat random comment, as the blog post did not mention either a Catwa head or the Signature Gianni body, but I can certainly sympathise with the frustration over an unsightly visible neck seam. We have become slightly more spoiled lately, with BOM skins for Lelutka EvoX heads that blend into the body, but is de Gianni-Catwa combo really a total disaster? Let’s take a look.
For the look I’m pulling out of my hat today, we’ll be looking at the Catwa Victor head, the Signature Gianni body (obviously) and the Evan skin for Catwa heads by Birth with their matching skin for Signature. I won’t say I had to look long and hard to find the neck seam, but I looked at it in many WindLights™ and moved the sun around a bit (oh how powerful we are in SL!) and there were many instances at which I could hardly detect the neck seam at all. As mentioned before, skins for newer heads go further down the neck, even into the chest a little bit and are blurred out at the bottom so they easily blend in with most body skins, when the skin tones more or less match up. Older skins are cut off at the neck, so understandably this makes matching up the body skin much trickier. There probably are some situation in which the seam becomes quite obvious. Would we call this a total disaster though? Of course, I have no idea which skin the commenter was using, what their graphics settings were or which WindLight™ they were in, but I definitely have had way worse neck seams than this.
Maybe I’ll do a look with the newer Catwa HD Pro George mesh head and the Gianni body at another time, but to be honest, it’s not my favourite head. Catwa seemed to be really at the top of the game, but when it comes to male mesh heads, they’ve been left in the dust by Lelutka. You could see that as an opinion, or you could look at what other bloggers and non-blogging residents are using and realise it’s probably true. For now though, I’ll be taking it easy for the rest of the evening.
**UPDATE**: There is now a follow-up blog post available on this topic.
Credits
- Catwa Victor mesh head
- Signature Gianni mesh body
- Birth Evan skin for Catwa heads and their matching body skin for the Signature mesh body (I’m using BOM for both). The beard and hairbase are included options for this skin.
- Jace shape
- L’etre Basic Mesh Ears
- Avi-Glam Erudite eyes, applied to the rigged eyes that come with Catwa heads. You need to wear the alpha layer that hides the system eyes.
- Wings TZ0525 hair
- Noche mesh nipples
- Dufaux patch sweatpants
- LISP Bazaar Mid Century Fireplace
Billy Beaverhausen 