“Oh, Louis… Louis. Still whining, Louis. Have you heard enough? I’ve had to listen to that for centuries.”
This week’s Monday Meme is all about movie characters, and from the moment I saw it I knew who I simply had to recreate. And boy oh boy, was it tricky ;-)
Meme instructions: Dress up your avatar as a character from a movie. Don’t forget to share the link to your post in the comments and add your pictures to the Blog Memes flickr group.
The Brat Prince himself, Lestat de Lioncourt. Now I’m no fan of Tom Cruise, but in this movie he was utterly brilliant (and yes, I’ll admit it: he was also fucking hot). So I trundled off to SL Marketplace, knowing the store that I needed for the outfit, and in the vain hope that I might find a hairstyle that came close enough. I managed both, but my sartorial darlings it was one hell of a struggle because I was chucked firmly back into the days of alpha-layered flexi hair and sculpt/prim clothing.
Ouch.
Yeah, much though I love Le Grenier du Château for their historical clothing, I’ve yet to find a store that’s making this kind of rococo fashion for men – in mesh. There’s plenty of stuff for the ladies (as always) but the guys are still stuck back in 2009. Still, I made the best with what I had, and some judicial choosing of poses and a smidge of Photoshoppery (yes, I hold my hands up to that; a bit of cloning went on here, where the waistcoat poked a little through the coat, etc) saw me ending up with something I was pretty happy with for a meme photoshoot.
The hair, as you can see, is alpha-layered, and it doesn’t play too well when you cam around to the side of it (good old alpha conflict issues) but it’s a good replica of Lestat’s loose hair in the movie, and for that I’ll forgive it a lot of problems ;-) I couldn’t find anything approaching his mussed-up queue (the tied-back style) so I went with the formal style he had at the start of the movie, where he first encountered Louis.
The shoes… *sigh* Again, issues. They’re absolutely spot-on, but (wait for it) they’re no copy and no mod. Argh! So yes, you’ll have to fiddle and fuss with your foot size, find an alpha layer that works (none is included in the pack), and eventually you’ll come up with something that’s workable. These are still my go-to shoes for this kind of look, though. Please, someone make something similar in unrigged, editable mesh!
Credits
Coat, breeches, waistcoat, stockings, shirt: Le Grenier du Château – Le Vicomte set
[ trasgo.beaumont ]
– Sold Separately
Shoes: Westboutin – Le Tancarville Noir Chausseures [ west.lyvingstone ]
Hair: Jolie Femme – Lestat (light honey blonde w/golden beach blonde) [ mcgeeb.gupte ]
Ring: Chop Zuey Couture Jewelry – The Raven’s Claw Men’s Ring [ belle.roussel ]
Skin: KOOQLA – Knight (01) [ rocketta.haven ]
Eyes: IKON – Hope Eyes (glass) [ ikon.innovia ]
Hands: Slink – AvEnhance Male Hands (relax) [ siddean.munro ]
Poses: Agapee [ argnit.igaly ]
This is pretty much the only movie I could tolerate him in lol. Love it!
Yep, same here! It’s not that he isn’t a good actor, because he is; it’s rather that none of his characters – Lestat excepted – feel distinct enough from each other. They’re all kind of “This is Tom Cruise playing a character,” as opposed to “this is a character who is played by an actor called Tom Cruise”.
Maybe it’s purely because he’s such a big name that it’s hard to look beyond that, but there are plenty of other big name actors whose performances are so good that you’re fully-immersed in them, so…
Ooooh…Lestat! Brat Prince, indeed…and so well-played by Mr. Cruise (and, as it turns out, by Skell!).
This is wonderful, but I know you had to work for it, what with the system clothing and all. I have seen some period things done in mesh, but for women. What’s up with that? Les hommes need some mesh period clothing too! (Mireielle wonders about RFyre… Will go check next login!)
And Mr. Cruise? mmmmmm…..!
Thank you!
Yeah, this one was tricky. I knew I could count on Le Grenier du Château for the exact style of coat that I needed, but since it’s such a niche fashion period for men I guess there isn’t any call for it, much less enough of a call that a designer would spend hours in Blender or Maya to create it, only to result in maybe ten or twenty sales at best.
There will always be every kind of fashion for women, purely because that’s the way SL has always been. Women drive the fashion industry inworld, so I can understand how that works. I can picture how, say, a formal ball set in this period would go: the ladies would all be in their exact replica period mesh ballgowns, and the men would make do with whatever clothing/sculpt/prim stuff was around. The average SL bloke isn’t too bothered about whether his waistcoat pokes right through his coat every time he so much as moves five degrees out of noob stand, so there simply isn’t the audible call across the grid of, “We need this stuff in mesh!”