Les yeux très NPIRL....

I have to own up to this with considerable shame, but it took me an awfully long time to discover the charms of Second Life® eyes. In my newbie days I put on a plain dark brown pair and gave the matter no further thought whatsoever until way beyond my first rezday anniversary. They were simply too small of a visual component to make much of a difference to the overall Gestalt of the avatar; you could not even really see them unless you fully zoomed into a face... And who zooms into people's faces like that to begin with, would have been my justifications, I suppose.

I am not sure at what point it began to dawn on me that I was seriously missing out on something here. I think it must have been when I saw my first pair of neko cat's eyes. Quite a few neko designers have these, I want to show my very favorite ones in the image below. What differentiates them from human eyes is the shape of the pupil, which, cat-like, is elongated.



Shaoshan Llanfair's Star Eyes (top and second row) come in many colors. In addition to the sine qua non elongated pupil the sclera is dark, setting off a delicate starburst surronding the pupil and the iris. BastChild Lotus' Evocative Neko Eyes (bottom) are set against an almost black sclera and come in many hues, my preferred one being the orange since it comes very close to the cat's eye gaze. Second row from the bottom is my favorite: These eyes created by Philo Sion react to Second Life light. Sadly, your personal time of day settings will not affect them, however if you use the default Second Life day cycle you will see that these eyes expand as the environment dims, becoming fully dilated at night and then contract when daylight returns, precisely the way feline eyes do as well. This is achieved through tiny prims which become attached to your eyeballs and are somewhat tricky to adjust - but well worth the final effort I find.
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Another collection by Philo Scion is the one of the haunting Mythic Eyes (top), huge irises which make for a vulnerable avatar face if ever I saw one. A wonderful huge iris eye called Merged has also been created by AlterEgoTrip Svenska (bottom).
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eko Merlin is a man on whom I shall be writing quite a bit more before too long. For now, I would like to just whet your appetitie by showing you two of his highly NPIRL eyes: Bio-X above and Black Magician below.
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Aoimizuno Meili's intricate avatar objects were featured on this blog only a few days ago and now I want to add her Doll's Eyes to the material that I talked about then. These are indeed so lovely that Bett has already blogged them here previously. Two of these eyes remind me of a world atlas globe, superimposed with a radar scanner (maybe?) while the third one is more of a huge iris eye, textured with a lovely blue blur.
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And of course a mini post of NPIRL eyes in Second Life would certainly not be complete without showing four Yip's eye collection, two of which are inspired by Magritte's paintings and the third a gorgeous floral fantasy.
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You can find Shaoshan Llanfair's Star Eyes at Night Sky (teleport directly from here and BastChild Lotus' Evocative Neko Eyes can be seen at Lapointe and BastChild (teleport directly from here. Philo Sion's Light Responsive Neko Eyes as well as her Mythic Eyes can be found at her store Hybird (teleport directly from here. I have not been able to locate an in-world vendor for AlterEgoTrip Svenska, however her eyes can be obtained on her page at shop.onrez. eko Merlin's store Blitzed can be reached by teleporting directly from here. four Yip's eyes can be obtained from her little store reachable directly from here.

You can view large sizes of all the eye photos on my Flickr feed here.