Linden Lifestyles did a skin survey for grid down day trying to start a dialogue. Being the anal retentive person I am I sorted through about the comments until I really started to get a regression to the mean (how’s that lingo for a former researcher) and came up with some generalizations for ya’ll and a few quotes

1. People consider price in a skin purchase and prefer to buy extras like prim lashes & nails separately.
2. While lots of people have many varieties, mostly have only a few skins.
3. People expect to pay between L$500-L$1500 for a good skin
4. People are divided about evenly between expecting to pay same price for each variation & large price base skin and less for variation.
5. Most people own a few variations of preferred skins, but would buy more if price were less of an issue.
6. Most seem to wear a few different skin lines, but a significant amount are very loyal to a skin line.
7. The face is the most important part of a skin purchase.
8. Most prefer tintable brows, but a significant number prefer auburn/brunette brows.
9. Overwhelming preference toward natural, but sculpted brows.
10. The majority prefer natural/neutral cosmetics or glamour/high fashion cosmetics.
11. Color preference lean town neutral or red base shades but a few profess to love it all.
12. Heavy & subtle eyeliner/mascara both received a significant number of votes. Most voted for subtle or no lip-liner. Glossy lips dominated, but several preferred flat lips. Subtle blush was an overwhelming winner.Neutral nail shade overwhelmingly one with a few voting for nail shad to match the lipstick or other cosmetics.
13. Bits were an average consideration in a skin purchase for the most part, with several folks saying it was most important.
14. Skin tone preferences seem to lean toward the paler skins. Tan votes leaned toward Medium Tan. This area had a lot of comments with a few calls for asian & ultralight tones, but not many goth votes. Several also voted for tintable so they could pick their own skin tone.
15. Shape wise, don’t really ask people to change their “own” shape. (Personally, I’ve quit or never started using skins because they didn’t work well with my shape. I didn’t buy Canimal skins for a long time, until I realized all I had to do was tweak the inside of my eyes just a bit.) Raindrop Drinkwater seems like me she states, “I’ll tweak my shape to get the best out of the skin, but some of them just won’t work with me still looking like “me”. I won’t buy these ones, even if I like them overall.”
16. People spilt on lots of detail/definition and subtle detail/definition.
17. On Photorealism, the majority of people actually preferred a good combination of anime and photo reality. To quote Ann Launay, “overly realistic skins look strange to me in our cartoon world.” And I agree myself, but a significant # stated they preferred as photorealistic as possible.
18. Textured on elements, people didn’t seem to care for but many didn’t mind as long as they could be easily covered.
19. Breast detailing is important. It varies between the make/break decision and an important but not vital consideration.For the most part people prefer medium areolas shaded appropriate to the skin tone, neutral/smooth textured, and the majority prefer hard/pert nipples.
20. Bum detail is important, but not vital.
21. The Kitty is important, but not vital. Several prefer different kitty styles available.
22. Overall people stated they know feet are challenging, but appreciate the effort a designer takes with them.

So what skins are your favorite and why?

Many moons ago (before I started SL) people bought a base skin and makeups to go on those skins, would you like to see a return to that trend?