Who is Trenton Kalamack?

According to his Real World biography, Trenton Kalamack is a "Former Cincinnati City Councilman, philanthropist, successful businessman, and leader of the recently revealed Elf society in Our Fair City. Married to the lovely Ceridwen Merriam Dulciate (though she it too busy with our children to join Second Life)." In other words, he's a main character in Kim Harrison's Hollows novels (Web), a series of books I have enjoyed over the past few years.

He is also my newest Alt, specifically created for a challenge from Venus Petrov from her recent MySL post to create an alt using only freebies. No Demos, no Dollarbies, no out-of-the-box default avatars. Figuring that most who try the challenge are women and thus would create female alts, I thought I'd try to make a dude. Silly me. This has been near impossible, but he's almost done so I think it is safe for an "official" picture at this time. The final pictures, when posted on Flickr, will have breakdowns of what he's wearing, but here's a rough list:

Skin: From Nivaro. I tried about five freebie skins from actual creators (not the ones you find at any nude beach's freebie shop) and this was the best overall. Good free skins for men are few and far between.

Hair: From the Linden stuff library we all have in our Inventories. This is the "Short with Bangs (Blonde)" style in one of the folders for women. Since he's a classical elf I think this really suits him. I tried quite a few free styles from across the Grid but most were only marginally acceptable.

Shape: A home-grown shape since the free men's shapes that I found were too comicbook hero-ish for me. I tried to follow real-world standards and I think I did okay (see here). Despite lots of looking I didn't find any good elf ears for free, but the Linden tools were good enough. Other vitals are set up so he can wear "standard" medium mesh clothes. Don't ask about freenises and I won't lie.

Eyes: From Avi-Glam, a nice set of gray eyes with a system layer and mesh if I wished to use them. It wasn't that hard to find some very good eyes out there and I even grabbed a slit-pupil set that I rather like.

Shirt: From BlakOpal. This is a tasteful vest/shirt/cravat that my brother wears on his Steampunk alt and that I think is fitting for an old world elf, though Trent is really very modern. I figure as a long-lived creature he has probably kept some of his favorite clothes over time.

Trousers & Boots: From our Inventory's Male Pirate option. Despite grabbing a ton of free footwear from Blackburns, this combo is a great match with the BlakOpal topper.

Finding clothes was hard, too, but I have a couple casual outfits and some swimwear. Silly me, I spent as much time organizing all the finds as I did finding them. Trent's Inventory is flawlessly organized with backups properly stored and his "drawers" labeled and sorted. Elves are such neat freaks. Hopefully he'll be done and photographed before the February 1st deadline.