Strike A Pose with Lockwood
by BONZO, HSM Editor
The Home community has a major interest in fashion, there are clubs devoted to it. Some have emulated some of the reality competition shows like “Project Runway” and “America’s Next Top Model”. HSM’s team writer Jin Lovelace is even founder of the fashion group and publication Twilight Touch Inc. Fashion is big in Home, there is no doubt about that. A few of the developers have tapped into this market with a continuous line of fashion wear.
Lockwood and Granzella are among the leading developers providing a wide range of fashion accessories. With several sub brands, Lockwood has been able to explore the gamut of fashion possibilities. From trendy styles with Drey, to elegant fashion with Figment, and more pop urban culture with Delirious Squid and Jon Burgerman, even futuristic cyber punk with the Sodium lines. The Lockwood Showcase itself included a runway for the fashionistas to walk the catwalk and show off their threads. But the Home client itself limits your walk and poses, restricting your swagger.
Lockwood now steps in to provide a new variation of poses fitting with their Drey brand. This is distinctly different from new dances or emotes, and very little in this regard has been explored. Heavy Water’s pin up girls included a custom pose and walk, and Konami’s raver man included a few poses but those remained restricted to those particular outfits. Taking advantage of the new portable wearable item option, Lockwood has instead opted to provide poses for the Home models.
The Drey Supermodel Animation Pack is a bundle which includes four new animations for poses for male and four for female, for a total of eight new gestures to pull off at the end of the runway.
If you have ever seen a professional fashion show, or seen any of the aforementioned reality shows you know it’s the body language that sells the outfits. Body language is essential to communication in real life. We get more communication from body expression than we do from verbal communication. There are only a few standard poses you can use to really strike a pose for a fashion show, and let’s face it – the existing catwalk and model poses are cliche. The latter has it’s place, if you are trying emulate the 1950’s pin up model pose, but to more contemporary standards it is outdated.
There is a reason why the poses are given a specific name. They represent the message the pose is suppose to be expressing. Heroic, casual, defiant, elegant, coy – they aren’t just random names. This is a representation of a state of mind, a personality a way of saying something without words. That is why gesticulations are important and why they translate a specific message. In Home, we are limited by what physical expressions we can use.
When I first started using Home was also the first time I saw a fam basically “fighting.” I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. This continuous use of expressions like the the thumbs down, and fist shake, and talk to the hand gesture along with spamming the local chat channel was basically all they could do to “throw down.” It seemed incredibly silly and dumb, but also I have to admit a little funny to watch. It also reminded me that we use gestures and gesticulations to express emotions. We – the community of Home -need variations of that. We are limited to what we can express, and in a recent wish list article Machinima Aides I wrote about just that. The idea of having a variation of physical expressions primarily for the use of machinima films but also for the sake of a wider range in body language.
I hadn’t really considered the need in the fashion subculture of Home, but it is a perfectly suited market for just that. Not only for the fashionistas who enjoy putting together fashion shows, but also the Home photographer. New poses can give us a much needed change to stir up the norm of the picture posing we are all too used to by now.
The poses are subtle, so don’t expect something huge to change the game. But a change in any form is long over due. The four female poses still make you look like a mannequin once you execute the poses, and the male poses are slightly more subtle and a few are obviously striking a pose for a camera, you might even say a little cliche – particularly the classic catalogue pose.
This bundle includes only poses, and no custom cat walk or model walk, which, from what we have come to know from the fashion industry, is that how you walk plays as big a part as how you pose. The walk itself can say a lot. It denotes confidence, sexiness, femininity, or masculinity. A subtle change like a different walk would add a lot of spirit to the Home based fashion shows. Modeling is more than just about a pretty face, but how a model carries himself or herself on the runway is just as important.
Poses are just a beginning though, at least we can see that developers are seeing a market for alternative uses of gestures and poses and hopefully expand on that. While locomotions have been limited to fantasy flying, or running, and ninja style creeping, I hope we may see an experimentation of alternative walk motions and if the fashion subculture of Home proves itself to be as viable a market for these new commodities as it has been for the fashion accessories, then perhaps we may see a tremendous growth in these alternatives to the standards.
November 22nd, 2012 by BONZO | 2 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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Yeap! I grabbed at these without thinking why, then remembered about one of my Halloween parties I threw; a friend of mine came dressed as me! Thing is, his “costume” was finished only once he set the “casual” pose lol. See, that casual pose is one way I hold myself in RL, rather often in fact. But 1 of the 4 new poses is kinda creepily close to my usual stance, and no Bon, it’s not the catalogue one heh! Acctually, it takes weight off my sore foot which is why I stand like that so often.
I never checked out the girly ones since I won’t be using those and really my incentive for buying them was to emulate myself in Home much more accurately and not so much to actually pose. Which is why I hope you’re dead right about them bringing new walks to our avatars, that’d be cool. I’m tired of bobbing around Home like a space man going for his morning jog and look forward to finding a “swagger” for my avi that I’m told I do in RL -- personally, I have no idea what people are on about with this “swagger” business, I just WALK y’know!? LOL
GAWD this is such a great article, Bonxo! The fact that you’ve hit every nail in the coffin that describes these Poses is amazing. Lockwood knew what they were doing when they released, and I hope they continue on with more gestures and poises of this line.
I wouldn’t be surprised to even see Granzella bring their own line of poses to the table.
Great read, friend!