What is Life Makeover?
Life Makeover is a chinese gacha dress-up game developed by Archosaur Games. If you're familiar with the Nikki franchise phone game installments, Shining Nikki and Love Nikki - you'll know exactly what type of game this is, because it's kind of a rip-off! From the UI, to the way the gacha functions, to the events - more or less it's the same thing. Except... I like how it looks like better! And it has a way better, and completely free character customization aspect. For the past 6 months, I've been playing this game daily, so I figured I should have a place where I'll talk about it endlessly.
The Shining Nikki image was taken from this TheGamer article
But first.. cabbage and gacha mechanics
I've been a proud hater of the gacha system, or rather, lootboxes as it used to be called, ever since I first encountered it. My first interaction with lootboxes was in Tera, a Korean MMO. Koreans are particularly infamous for their insidious and predatory lootbox practices in games. Just recently, Nexon, the company behind Maplestory and many, many other MMO's and phone games (including Tera, at some point!), has been fined for falsifying loot box drop rates. Mind you, these drop rates are already incredibly miserable. I've heard it's because gambling is illegal in Korea, so they go all out on game lootboxes because of a loophole. Technically, you always win something with a lootbox (despite it being virtually worthless ingame), and since pixels don't really have a value.. well! I think the same happens with those k-pop cds and photo cards. They have a similar stance on porn, due to porn being illegal, Korean games tend to be extra raunchy and toe the line just a bit too hard sometimes. Mostly with the female characters, of course.
I never bought lootboxes in Tera, ever. Partly because playing the game without buying lootboxes was totally possible, and they were mostly there for the cosmetics. And partly because I hated how expensive they were, how low the rates were, and so on. Fast forward to today, and it seems most gacha games require you to roll on the gachas, it's practically the main part of the game! This is why I'm ashamed to admit I even like this game in the first place. But no other game, not even The Sims 4 with the infinite amount of CC, has characters and clothes this cute... Well anyway, the nature of gacha in dressup gacha games feels a bit different. You truly almost always get something of value, because every item that drops is a clothing item. Duplicates get destroyed and you get a currency for other clothing items. As such, I weirdly don't find this system as insidious and unfair, although I still think it could be way, way cheaper. Despite this, I try not to spend money on the gacha mechanic. I did however spend money in other parts of the game...
Why I fell in love with this game
First of all, Life Makeover is available on both phones and the PC. The PC version offers 4K screenshots, which is amazing since screenshot taking is probably one of the most important parts of the game for me.
Next... CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION!! Once you make your model when you join the game, you aren't locked into that model forever! In fact, you can keep going to Reshape Look infinitely. Think of it like CAS in The Sims but only for genetics. Not only that, but you get 3 or 4 free slots at the beginning of the game so you can have multiple models at once. There's also a gallery where you can upload your models so if you have extra models you can't use, you can save them in the gallery. Your entries can be public, and thus you can share your models with everyone else and vice versa! There is not a single aspect of character customization that is paywalled, which is an amazing thing. I change my characters really frequently, and I'm always creating new faces, although for the past few months I did settle on having a favourite.
The clothes. This game excells in fantasy-ish, fairy, fake historical clothing, lacemonster chinese lolita styles. It does have modern clothes as well, but it's actually pretty lacking in that department so if you're into irl fashion... this might not be the game for you. I personally love my fairies and elves, so this is perfect for me. Please give me sparkles, wings, dreamy makeup and bare feet wrapped up in flowers, ty.
Sharing your outfits. There's two separate ways to share your outfits ingame. First one, which sadly became underutilized after the second one got introduced, is Fashion Diary. Fashion Diary is convenient because not only do you share your outfit and choose a cover picture which you can edit with games photo editing options, but this basically immortalizes your outfit, so you can come back to it anytime and put it onto your character as sadly outfit slots are limited. Not only will it transfer your outfit, but the dyes as well. And not only can you do that for your own entries, but other peoples entries too! Basically, you can share outfits which is really cute. You can also freely comment and like the Fashion Diary entries. The second feature is called VVANNA Community, VVANNA is just some ingame... fake brand I guess. VVANNA Community is kind of like instagram, and you can upload any type of picture from your PC. Which means pictures can be edited in other apps, so there's a lot more creativity, but it sucks how you can't share the outfits in the same way! You can link the Fashion Diary entry to it if you wish, but I didn't notice a lot of people doing that besides me, because sadly Fashion Diary becomes kind of redundant... Also, VVANNA Community doesn't allow you to comment freely, instead you can only use emojis and premade randomized comments. My favourite premade comment is "Make Dress-up Games Great Again!". Yes that's actually an ingame premade comment that the chinese have blessed us with.
Screenshot taking. This game knows screenshot taking is the best part, and therefore it makes sure you're going to enjoy it. When taking screenshots you can adjust your characters pose, you can also use a different facial pose on top of the body pose, you can adjust the wind direction, you can change the backgrounds, you can adjust the position of your character and the camera, you can choose whichever handheld you have in your wardrobe, you can take pictures with a friend or with any model that you have in your slots and you can edit the screenshot in real time. The editing isn't extremely versatile but I think it's good enough. Contrast, saturation, white balance, bloom, DOF and filters on top of that. Not bad!
The community. Since the 6 months I've been playing, I have only encountered 2 men, indirectly. One was a troll someone posted on the subreddit, and the other is some gay guy that sometimes posts in one of the Facebook groups. There's really no drama, just slightly infuriating players that seem to be playing a game and holding a phone for the first time in their life. But as far as game communities go, LM has a chill one.
Free event sets. All events in LM are free, and some of the best and most versatile hairs and clothes actually come from events, imo. Not only that, but event items are always fully dyeable as you don't need dupes, which makes them extra versatile!
What I dislike about the game
It's expensive. It's just way too costly, all things considered. 10€ every 45 days for the battlepass, 5€ every 30 days for the vip, 7€ every 10 days for new backgrounds and a couple of other things. Those are the guaranteed cosmetic items. Then you have the gacha. If the gacha is a 6 star one, you'd have to spend at least 100€ to get all the items, and around 250€ for all of the items + dupes for the dyes. If the gacha is a 5 star one, then the cost is smaller, around 70€ for both 5 stars sets and I'm not sure how much for the full dyes.
The dyeing system. LM dyeing system works like this: you have 16 palettes. 8 are unlockable right away, and for the other 8 you need wind vanes (some slowly farmable item) to unlock, if they're not a gacha item. If they are a gacha item, you need a dupe from the same set to unlock, which basically means you're locked out of the 8 extra dyes unless you want to spend ridiculous amounts of money. When it comes to hairs, that means the best colors - white, light blondes and blacks are locked forever! When it comes to clothes, black is locked unless the clothes already come with a default black dye! I have come to terms with that fact sadly, although luckily my favourite clothes colors are unlockable right away... Another thing, to unlock any dye you need this item called Trend Color Chart, and sadly they're pretty hard to come by. Meaning you need to be smart with your dye usage, especially if you're completely f2p.
The skin tones thing. So, this game actually has a pretty wide array of skintones available considering the fact that it's a chinese game, and there's nothing more east asians hate than tanned skin lmao. This issue has been getting better in the recent years but... In LM a lot of makeup etc doesn't look good on dark skin - very similar to The Sims 4 if you know what I'm talking about. MIND YOU the example below looks ridiculous because you can adjust the opacity of the makeup so the makeup in the picture is saturated because it's adjusted for a white skintone, however some makeup looks like that on dark skin all of the time, which really sucks. You absolutely can have a dark skinned model but I'd say 40% of lipsticks and blushes will be weird. It's not just the makeup though, it's the lighting as well. All of my models are lily white because it feels like if I use other skin tones (which I have, when I started playing), something just looked... off. I'm not sure what it is, or maybe I simply conditioned myself to like this pasty skintone the most because it's so prevalent ingame. It just feels like the ingame lighting makes most skintones look weird. IDK! Which brings me to the next complaint.
The censor system. Sadly, as this is a chinese game, it follows china rules on censoring. The chat is extremely censored, so often times what you say will come out looking so weird people won't even understand what you meant. Or even better, it'll sound way more lewd than intended because the censor always cuts the word completely. Another aspect that gets censored are the clothes, actually. Often times extra short puffy skirts and dresses will have bike shorts underneath, and cleavage can never be shown completely - it's always covered by some layer of lace or see through material at least. For what it's worth, this censoring system actually seems to deter men completely, so despite being able to make pretty curvy bodies the amount of men taking creepshots is close to 0. So, thank you China!
Gameplay Tips
Events
Styling Wizard:Styling wizard is an event that happens every 40 days and lasts for 2 weeks. Each day you are given a prompt and you can style your friends, guildies or random players with their own wardrobes.
An event beloved by everyone, yet every time it comes around it causes controversy and rustled feathers in the LM community. Why you may ask? Because many people don't bother to follow the prompts or put in effort - they just throw random things on your character and call it a day to get the points while sneakily marking themselves as anonymous - so you can't even find out who committed the crime of leaving your model half naked and freezing, or perhaps dressed in gaudy 3 star clothes when you own an immaculate 6 star wardrobe! After all, there's no punishment for doing that, all you need to do is dress up two people a day in a hair and a dress for the minimum requirement. To help you avoid angering devoted players, I have a couple of tips.
1.:When choosing who to style, choose from the third tab, called Other Players. Refresh the tab until you come across the default avatar. These players are usually inactive, or so new they don't really care you didn't bother styling them well. Enter their wardrobes and snoop around, if they only have 3-4 star items, you're in luck! Simply throw random items to satisfy the daily requirement and mark send as anonymous. You still want to conceal your identity, because you never know...
If you love to troll instead, perhaps befriend the whales in your server and then lovingly dress them exclusively in 3 stars clothes. Please dye the clothes the most gaudy colors, as usually whales have 3 star clothes completely dyed. I recommend the palette called "tulip". Make sure to dye the makeup as well for maximum anger. And of course, don't forget to mark yourself as anonymous...
2.:Likewise, do not get angry if you receive a bad rec yourself! People love to goof around and some people just don't have enough time to dress up a character with tons of effort. Sometimes it takes me half an hour if I try hard to make a good fit with all the correct dyes on a different model. Relax and have fun!
3.:If you want to make an outfit that will stun the person you're styling - use dyes, and add makeup as well!!! It will always impress.
4.:Don't be an asshole and use this opportunity to steal someones avatar! I know I'm basically giving out ideas but it has happened in the past so it's not an unknown topic... Some users are very attached to their models and if they don't list their IDs it's courteous to not recreate them... A little trolling is fine but being an asshole.. well obviously that's less fine!!!
NPC buying items at your home event:
Sucks that this event always has a different name so I can't title it properly. This is an event that also happens about every 40 days and lasts for 13 days. In this event an NPC will appear in front of every user's home and it will buy 3 items for different prices. If you get a rare NPC - you will also get a special currency along with the maximum usual currency if you sell the specific item the NPC is looking for.
1.: The first tip for this event - if you do not get the rare NPC at your home, be not afraid! You can visit anyone else's home to find the rare NPC.
2.: How to know if your NPC is rare? Easy - talk to the NPC and see what it says - if it says it's buying the item for 240 currency and 10 of the extra currency - it's rare! You can also tell by the NPC's appearance, but considering it's different almost every event it's best to just talk to it.
3.: The best way to get this event done fast is to track the chat. Do your dailies and after you're done, look for anyone saying "240+10" in the chat, this means that person has a rare NPC at their home. Be courteous and leave their home a like, and give them a gift as well!
4.: Beware of liars! Some people will lie they have a 240+10 for NO reason whatsoever. If you happen to miss that and sell to the wrong NPC, you won't be able to finish the whole event as you need to do it perfectly every day! So always double check the NPC once you enter the user's property.
The basics
Energy: Energy is a basic concept found in many a phone game. In LM you use it for one thing and one thing only - crafting sets. You craft sets to progress in the story. I've got exactly two tips on energy which I noticed many people miss out on.1.: Every day upon logging in, first farm the item that is a requirement for progressing the story - as far as the game allows you of course. Usually that item requires 2 story items to be farmed, one from the normal difficulty, and other from the hard difficulty. The hard difficulty item will be the bottleneck as you can only farm that item 6 times a day if you don't pay diamonds for it. That's fine! Take it easy, don't waste diamonds on the story, it means nothing anyway.
2.: Spend your energy as soon (or before) it reaches the maximum. That means you're going to spend your energy fully at least twice a day. This is the optimal way to spend energy if you want to gain XP and craft items at an optimal speed. You can stack energy above the maximum threshold, but once you pass the threshold it won't refill as time passes, it will only be refilled through game rewards etc. That's a major loss! So every time you log on, go into fashion studio and spend your energy on anything. This way you'll ensure you're always earning XP and your energy is constantly passively refilling. You'd be surprised at how many people don't know about this! I thought people should be familiar with phone game energy refilling in the year of our lord, 2024...
Gold: Gold is the currency used for rolling in the permanent low tier gacha, for buying items required to craft sets and for doing the beauty course in your guild. Always make sure you have enough gold for crafting sets. Other than that just keep hoarding it slowly. I never let my gold fall below 1mil, just in case. Usually when it comes close to 2mil I will use some of it on beauty courses and some of it on the permanent gacha.
Diamonds: The currency with which you can roll in all gachas (except for the gold one). You can buy a few other things with diamonds, such as backgrounds and character slots. They should always be used on gachas, but of course, feel free to buy the bgs you like and unlock as many models as you wish. You hoard diamonds for gachas mainly. Never use diamonds to refill various things such as items for crafting or dailies. However, there is one area of the game in which you're encouraged to use diamonds for besides gacha and that is Fashion Battle. More on that in the Fashion Battle section.. You can also use diamonds to buy Trend Color Charts in the shop - it's actually a better value to use diamonds than the coupons for this.
Coupons: The p2w currency. You can only get it by spending real money. You use it to buy various stuff in the shop. I don't really recommend it, it's mostly worth only using on gacha. Never convert coupons into diamonds. I only used this feature once or twice for 1 coupon exactly when I was missing diamonds for rolls and I had some leftover coupons from buying them once or twice. They always give you an incompatible amount of coupons for the gacha purchases so you're forced to buy more.
Daily activities
I won't go over all daily activities because many of them are self explanatory. Two of them however, I have some tips for!Fashion Battle: After a certain level and story chapter you unlock this daily activity that resets once a week. You get 5 attempts a day that can be stacked up to 15 in total. Each Monday and Sunday you get extra currency for doing more battles.
1.: This is where the diamonds come into play. You want to earn as many Fashion Stars as possible, because you'll be able to get the Fashion Battle sets fully. You don't have to do this if you don't like the sets, but getting the 6 stars will help you in Endorsement Queen! Each Monday you should spend around 200-250 diamonds to get as far as you can in the rankings. By doing it on Monday, you make sure your progress is fast and guaranteed, as less people will be clogging up the rankings, instead it will be just bots.
2.: Once you reach the ranking you're satisfied with (the comfiest ones are Fashion Trend Setter II and Fashion Trend Setter I), you should only spend 3 attempts a day for the rest of the week. That way, you will save 2 attempts daily for the beginning of the next week and save diamonds because you'll be purchasing less attempts on Monday. The reason why you do 3 attempts a day despite the ranking being good is because the first 3 fights in the day give you diamonds, so it's worth doing them.
3.: Between each attempt, refresh with 500 gold to battle the highest rank possible. Sometimes, that will let you skip a rank! I am not sure about the math behind each rank, but I've noticed this helps in climbing up faster, and thus having to spend less diamonds.
Endorsement Queen: This is a 188 day activity divided into 3 seasons. Each season lasts for 62 days. Once the 188 days end you get new outfits. You can still purchase the old outfits using the currency you earn from doing this activity. At the beginning of each season your progress is reset and you start from scratch.
1: The requirements for completing Endorsement Queen categories from my observation have been the following:
An SSR ally at level 50 and a mostly 5 star outfit with a couple of 6 star accessories.
OR
An almost fully 6 star outfit + SR ally at level 50.
2.: If you want to finish the event (as far as your outfits allow you to) you should log in at least once a day to pick up all the awards you earned and then progressing your shops. There's not much to it.
3.: If you care about getting the best possible awards from EQ, it'll take a long while without p2w, keep that in mind. You should attempt to get all 6 stars in every category from various free events, or activities like EQ and Fashion Battle. It's possible! But it'll take long. You can also save diamonds specifically for the 6 star gacha of the tag you need. That's the whole science behind it.
The Gacha
Gacha in this game is called a Lightchase (abbreviated as LC, heh), but I'll continue to call it gacha. Some people also refer to it as a "suit", I'm guessing that's because of Shining/Love Nikki.Gachas in this game can be divided into multiple categories and subcategories, but to keep things simple - they can be permanent and limited. All gacha except for Starlight Show are purchasable with diamonds and coupons.
Permanent Gacha:
1. Starlight show: It's the cheapest, gold only gacha. You also get the tickets daily for completing dailies. It's shitty, but it provides you with clothes when you're a fresh player so it's good to drop some gold on it whenever you have extra. Every 24 hours you get a free roll.
2. Beloved and Essence: You can use Radiant Invitation and Glorious Invitation tickets on them. Both are obtainable through various awards and other sources ingame. Every 48 hours you get a free roll.
3. Bloom:Newest permanent gacha, can only use Glorious Invitation tickets on it. Obtainable through awards and some other sources. Every 48 hours you get a free roll.
Limited Gacha:
1. Double 5 star: This gacha has two 5 Star sets in it (and other things of course, like makeup, an SR ally, one 4 star set and 5 and 6 star loose items). You get 15 free pulls when it arrives, it takes less money to complete these. Lasts 20 days.
2. One 6 star + One 5 star: This gacha has one 6 Star and one 5 Star set, plus the things listed above, except there's an SSR instead of an SR ally included. Much harder and costlier to complete. You get 18 free rolls upon arrival. Lasts 20 days.
3. Wish Boxes: These are kind of a new type of gacha with a single 5 star set and one 4 star set. They're going to run along reruns of limited gachas so old players can continue to spend their cash, of course. You can't catch a break! Each Wish Box has a different run time. The current one in global is 90 days, but some will be 20 days.
Tips:
1.: When it comes to deciding on which permanent gacha you should use tickets on - you should choose one which items you like the most and stick with it, until you at least finish one 6 star set within it.
2.: When rolling on a gacha keep this in mind, the moment you get a dress or a bottom (if the set has top + bottom) of a certain set you get locked into it, and the chances of receiving items from that set become higher. That means that if you have two 5 star sets and you get a dress from set number one, you probably won't get a single item from set number two until you're done with set number one. If you don't have a lot of tickets to spend then and you get locked into a set you don't like, cut your losses and don't bother rolling - unless you like both sets of course and you're ready to roll a lot. This rule only applies to sets within the same rarity, so getting locked into a 5 star set won't cuck you out of getting 6 star set items.
3.: You are guaranteed one 5 star item/SR ally card every 10 rolls in the double 5 star gachas. Likewise, you are guaranteed a 6 star item every 25 rolls in the 6 star gacha along with the 10 roll rule for the for the 5 Star I think, because it's not listed anywhere but I feel like it's true, lmao.
4.: The reason why Bloom gacha can only use Glorious invitations is because it's newer. Beloved and Essence are cross compatible with Glorious Invitations, which means you're able to finish these sooner if you use all the tickets on them. It still doesn't matter that much though, I'm personally putting a lot of tickets into Bloom because I like the items more lol
5.: At the start of every week you can buy three Glorious Invitations in the guild shop. Don't miss out on it!
6.: The rates of rare items don't get increased if you do 10x rolls. In fact, I feel like my luck is better if I do single rolls but this is all pure superstition. Roll in whichever way you prefer.
7.: Reruns of limited gacha will start to happen around the 1 year mark of the game's lifespan, as observed by the older regions. Limited gacha that was a collab (like the Sanrio one) will not have reruns because they'd need to renew their license for the collab. As such, if you really like a gacha and it's a collab - you will only have one chance to complete it.
8.: Personal advice, don't spend diamonds on permanent gacha. You will obtain everything from it eventually, whereas limited gacha is only there for a short time.
Character customization tips and musings
Character customization in Life Makeover is pretty nice, actually. You're allowed a fair bit of variety, and you can even make funny monstrosities.
However, despite the variety in character customization, a lot of users models end up looking very same-y and boring! A few days after new gacha drops I will go and lurk the models that belong to the biggest whales in the server, and be utterly disappointed in their lack of aesthetic. From the downright offensive colour choices, to maybe not even coloring the new clothes at all it makes you wonder why do they even spend tens of thousands of € on this game. But as they say, money can't buy class - and usually this is reflected in the most non-pay2win section of the game - the character customization!!! You see, the whaliest of whales can't buy their way to a pretty character, so a weirdly high percentage of them use the default preset avatars. Quite interesting...
They can't even be bothered to use someone else's premade character from the gallery, which is just strange because other users will upload absolutely adorable characters for everyone to use. Maybe it's their whale pride! "I spent so much money on this game, I will not use a lowly peasants model as it will taint my reputation!!". Yes, that must be it, I see no other answer for this conundrum.
Interestingly enough, once you descend a few steps on the leaderboard from the main 3 spots, you will start noticing beautiful, breath-taking or incredibly unique and interesting models, usually made by whales that are actually obsessed with this game for real. To that I say, good job!!! If you're going to spend insane amounts of money, please make sure that I seethe and cry when I see your wonderful and beautiful creation. It's the very least you can do!
However, whales aren't the only ones suffering from the "I use the barely changed preset model" syndrome. In fact, the population that suffers from it the most are the new players, which is completely natural. I too, suffered from this syndrome even though I thought I was above it due to my extensive experience of character creation in various games. But sometimes you get duped - you stare at the default premades for too long and they start to look normal. Their weird alien features become the default in your head, so anything different starts to look unnatural. We need to break free from this, so I came up with a few solutions to this problem...
Before I get to real meat of the matter there are two model types ingame - Woman and Girl. Girl is kind of.. fictional child like, I guess the closest term would be loli because it's completely unrealistic. For some reason these Girl type characters always have breasts? And their body and face proportions are completely cartoony, which is why I'm not including them at all in this sperg.
Alright then. *clears throat*
I have diagnosed the issues and come to you with a few tips on how to make your model look less alien/fish like.
Problem number 1.: The preset models.
When you first start making your character you get greeted with these little aliens.
The solution:
Once you get comfy with the game, start lurking around in the community. Look in the in-game gallery, and you might find some hidden gems. Go on pinterest and search "Life Makeover game face ID" and look around there as well. While the aforementioned traits might be present in these models as well, you will expose yourself to a greater variety of appearances. Choose a face ID you like, and use it as a base for your new model! Enough of the fish/pug/alien hybrid, enough!! I jest of course, make your model look however you want...
Problem number 2.: The body proportions
This might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it wasn't mine in the start either. And now I know, just how wrong I was. The preset proportions are messed up!
The solution:
I know it seems like a non-issue and a personal preference, but since I've been asked once how do I make my models look adult - head size is a simple answer. I just reduce the head size to minimum, and enlarge the shoulders if necessary. Aside from the head/shoulders ratio, I also recommend making your characters a little bit thicker. The default skinniness is a bit too exaggerated and it will lead to your character looking like a malnourished bobblehead (refer to the 4th model in that picture above - but trust me it can get a lot skinnier than that). Increase the hip/butt size to whatever you desire, and try not to make the feet too tiny. I've seen some tiny footed models, and I have to admit, it freaked me out...
Problem number 3.: The faces
This one is the most obvious really. In the picture below we once again have a preset head vs. my model's head. First of all, notice the size. My character is a whole head taller, yet her head is so much smaller lol.
To de-pugify a character you want to increase face height, decrease face width, make the eyes less far-set, and enlarge the nose. If you want to further lengthen the face you want to position the eyes higher, enlarge the nose and position it lower, position the mouth lower as well and then enlarge the chin. Sadly the one thing the game char customization cucks you out of is making horse faced queens. As a half horse half human hybrid myself, I am disappointed.
Final thoughts
Now of course, you don't have to do these things at all, these character tips more or less just follow my journey through the game and my own process of making a character. Consider this text one big meme that could prove to be useful, if you didn't want a generic preset character... I leave you with this final image of a rank 1 player and a reddit user that makes really realistic faces. A lot is possible in this game, it just feels like barely anyone puts the character customization engine to work!
Gallery
Face ID Recommendations
I compiled my list of Face ID's in the global server that I personally like a lot, some of these I even used as bases for my models. These are all publicly available with the permission from the user to use them, sadly I do not have the credit and some of these won't appear as saved images in the gallery so I can't check the owner. I think if you delete the image from the gallery it still somehow stays in the database. Maybe I should save these on my gallery just in case... Click on the images for the full size.
My Outfits
They're not really chronological and I put in a lot of repeats simply because I like the pictures, please enjoy! Click on the thumbnail for the full image. Yes most of the pictures are of the same character, I can't get enough of her... I'll be adding the newest fits to the bottom.
Outfit Update Notes
20/04/2024
Added a Tifa cosplay outfit. I got this dress (yeah it's not a top and a skirt, how lame) in some 3€ pack I bought and I didn't know what to use it for... Felt bad to let it collect dust so I figured I'd use it for a Tifa cosplay! It's not exactly accurate but all these unnecessary belts are totally Nomura core anyway. The outfit itself is like an amalgamation of all of her popular renditions, the original ff7, a bit of the remake in regards to the skirt, and even the red ribbon from Advent Children. Sadly I don't have any cool fighting gloves or elbow guards. I used my newest character for her because I feel like she has some FF features to her...
23/04/2024
Made this cute, colorful and sporty catgirl outfit with as little dyes as possible, most of them have been unlocked before. It's really rare of me to do something that's more casual... Actually the only reason I started making the fit was the new eyeshadow, and I based everything around it. I really, REALLY love this lipstick though. It's a shame her eyebrow piercing isn't visible! Shit, I just noticed I didn't properly remove the bg on the left most pic and now she's missing half a foot... I'm too lazy to go back and fix it.
My Characters
This is my roster! I love each and every one of them, but the last two need some work. They're my oldest surviving characters. Along with the first one they're also the 3 characters I made from scratch myself, for the rest I've used some else's base and didn't tweak every single aspect of them.
I actually have 8 slots, but I didn't put the two missing characters here because one of them is literally just 1 with squintier/smilier eyes (you can see her in a lot of screenshots) and the other one is my old favourite that now looks off to me, in my outfit gallery she's on the second picture, the ballerina one, although her face isn't really visible in it. I need to replace her with something I'll actually use but... I'm still a bit attached.
Except for 1 that somehow looks good in every outfit I make, all of them correspond to certain vibes.
For example 4 and 6 will be wearing something really cute most of the time. 2 and 5 can fit in the same style that's more mature/serious. 3 is my newest so I haven't figured her out just yet, but I think she'll be versatile like 1. Christ, I need to give them names or something, referring to them as numbers makes them sound like prisoners... If I gave them names they'd become official OCs in my mind and I'd have to commit to the bit which is something I can't bring myself to do. They were made with certain personalities and traits in mind but sometimes they're also whatever I want them to be... I can never commit to things like these, it's why I'm not a good roleplayer.
It would appear I have totally kicked out the Girl model type out of my available characters, maybe I'll buy a slot soon and make one that will finally resonate with me in some way... I have an aversion to their bobbleheads and weird proportions.
I wanted to sperg about attempting to recreate the general aura of my Tera characters I'm still weirdly attached to in all games that I play - but I'll save that for the inevitable Tera shrine (sonntm).
Height comparison
Ok, my bad for not ordering them by height, but I wanted to follow the earlier order so you know who is who. It seems the longer I play this game, the thicker my characters get. However, their butts aren't getting proportionally bigger. Sadly it's because LM suffers from the same disease Sims 4 does, that is, wider butts tend to give a certain diaper effect to specific clothing items, and as such my thickest ladies are stuck with hank hill asses.
Outfits I made for others during Styling Wizard
This time around I'm in a community that organizes their own prompts. I'm pretty bad when it comes to coming up with creative ideas with the LM wardrobe, so I hope by the end of this event I'll exorcise the blandness out of myself. I just like goddess fits too much bros. Had the same issue in Everskies...
Day 1: Apocalypse
I went for a kind of "this woman actually caused the apocalypse" vibe, she's an evil queen... or something. Frankly, I just wanted to use this dress and this user had it in the wardrobe. Oh and, making an actually angry face is SO hard in this game.
Day 2: Tim Burton
For the first one, I'm happy I found a good model with a weird creepy face and a really skinny body. I was also lucky she had a lot of black clothes, and also a lot of old sets I really wanted to try out in the past! This outfit isn't really inspired by anything specific, just a general Tim Burton vibe which yeah.. I think I nailed.
For the second one, I wanted to do a corpse bride inspired outfit but her model doesn't really fit the Tim Burton look at all, and I really regretted using the dress on the day prior, because this was my only option! It had a both white and blue color unlocked by default, so it could look vaguely inspired after all... I think it turned out okay but I'm not too happy with the pictures I took.
Day 3: Mythology
For the first look, behold my brilliance!! Finally, a goddess theme!! I went with Artemis, because really, I based my entire look around this bow. Which ended up backfiring, because there's NO poses in which the model actually holds the bow straight, but whatever. I love the general colors on these pics and I think I nailed the amount of bloom, sometimes there's too much of it and it makes everything glossy. I like what I did with her make-up, this model has a stunning face which really helped with the goddess theme.
For the next one, I chose a model that has kind of a creepy looking character, and judging by the colors she unlocks and her Fashion Diary she loves goth-y looking fits. So I went with a kawaiified Nyx, I remember Nox in Smite had a candelabra so I figured why not use it here as well. Now that I look at it I messed up the bloom (that clock background is just weird) but I still like the general dark vibe.
Day 4: Biker Gangs
This theme is 100% out of my comfort zone, because I hate modern fashion fits in LM. Actually hate is a strong word, I'm just not a huge fan even though there's lots of cute things I'd wear irl. For the first model I went with a bosozoku inspired theme. It was really hard to work with this character, because the neutral position of her lips is in a permanent smile and she looks too happy and kind. In addition to that, her eyes are too big. She wasn't a good match for this theme at all but that's good, I appreciate the challenge! I tried really hard to make her look at least a bit determined and pissed off. ...I don't think it fully worked out.
The next model was more appropriate for the theme. Quite the frightening and unique face with strong features, I think I really nailed it with the hair choice. I'm only miffed about the top being so lame, but this is entirely LM's problem for not having enough cool tops so this lame leather one had to do. Also I really vibe with the face tattoo, good choice, me.
Day 5: Based on a Flower
Hmm I think this theme is too broad so in turn I'll end up making outfits that are just too me. Yes indeed, that was the case. For the first outfit, I went with a magenta/white theme based on the dianthus flower. I wish I could've included more magenta in the dress, to truly fit the ratio of the flower but sadly none of this model's clothes had that recolor. Sometimes I get an idea and stick with it, instead of adapting to the model's wardrobe but I think these stubbornly imposed restrictions add a bit of fun to the process. I'm not too happy with the screenshots, this background always disappoints me but I was too lazy to tweak the settings once I decided on the bg. I am so salty I didn't get this ballerina dress (the whole set is so pretty) when I started playing, I got a different set from that gacha. It's so beautiful and I love ballerina themed clothes in this game. Also, I did a really good job on the makeup here, but this model's face is doing the heavy lifting, she's so adorable and pretty.
For the second outfit I went with Scabiosa japonica (a type of pincushion flower), because of its frequent periwinkle coloring. The outfit displays multiple shades of blue/light purple/periwinkle, kind of to account for many shades this flower can be seen in. I think that idea was nicely executed, although the big fox tail may have been overkill. Well, I guess I can say I went out of my comfort zone by using colored hair. I'd definitely only go for a neutral color lmao.
Day 6: Fairytales
For the first look I did Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen. It was really hard getting this character to look like an antagonist but I did a good job if I do say so myself. Actually you'll notice just how much alike the two models I worked on today looked like.
For the second model, I got inspired by someone else's rendition of the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, but the twist was that it was the Shrek version. So I made the Fairy Godmother!!! I'm so happy with this one, and everyone else was too! First of all, I used colors I'd never use usually, and I even used a random old dress that I'm not into, and yet, it turned out great and vibrant! I'm actually digging the purple + red combo. Taking the pictures was really fun too, I tried to match them to actual poses Fairy Godmother is known for.
Day 7: Low Effort Cosplay
I wasn't sure how exactly I should portray a "low effort" cosplay, and nobody else had made their entries yet at that point. The way I interpret it, low effort could either mean I'm supposed to only use super low tier items or I could use decent items but not try so hard to make the fit recognizeable. For the first outfit I went with option b kind of, but I added a few casual accessories like the beret and scarf to make the fit look like a not really planned Halloween outfit, coupled with big "fake" wings. I like the fact this model chose to have black scleras, it's cool and I can never make it work...
Judging by everyone else's submissions, I seem to have made a mistake... most of the people just used extremely simple and recolored items to represent and merely.. remind you of the characters you're cosplaying. So I went with a random choice, Peter Griffin. But then I also recreated the meme death pose. Everyone really liked it lmao.
Day 8: Album Covers
Today I only made one, because I was busy with other stuff and frankly, kind of uninspired! I decided to make Hole's "Live Through This" because I was feeling nostalgic and I listened to it on repeat a few days ago but.. it was kind of a mistake. I got frustrated with looking for a suitable pose for the specific angle, and then I got even more frustrated after I couldn't find a correct facial expression... Truly one thing this game lacks is varied facial expressions.
