Foxbean Laboratories Nadine 1.5 prim breasts: a review

Big Booby Girls in Second Life started a series of very good reviews of prim breasts. Alas, the blog (and the Whimsy's Closet blog that it seems to have merged with) have gone dormant, so I will write a review of Foxbean Laboratories' "Nadine" breasts, release 1.5.

You should know this: Foxbean Liebknecht is a very dear friend, and she's given me some of her products. (I bought a set last night to make sure I know exactly what is in the box.) I will nonetheless do my best to write an objective review. Foxbean's work stands on its own; it doesn't require a biased review from me to prop it up.

Foxbean Liebknecht has been making prim breasts since the days before sculpted prims. In those days, clothing associated with prim breasts was built from prims, attached to the breasts, that you could associate a texture with and turn transparent if you wished.

The "Nadine" breasts, or as we will refer to them henceforth, "Nadines", use sculpted prims for a more natural, organic shape than is possible with the geometric prims that were all Second Life originally had. With the 1.5 release, they have a "clothing layer" to which you can apply a texture to match a top.

When you open up the box (and the box within it!), here's what you'll find:

• the Nadine prim breasts with all four combinations of with/without clothing layer and with/without bra
• plump, "torpedoes", and quad (!) versions with and without bra
• two versions of a tintable halter top; as with all tops that work with prim breasts, there's the usual sort of paint-on texture top one wears, and a texture one applies to the prim breasts
• a description of all the textual commands one can use to control the breasts
• a HUD and documentation for it; the HUD gives you control over size, position, skin (see below), color, and lactation
• a colorizer
• two shapes designed to work with the prim breasts
• documentation on texturing for the breasts and the bra
• a suckle attachment and documentation for it

That last item needs some explanation: it doesn't include the animation you might expect, but instead it attracts the prim breasts' lactation to it along a potentially gravity-defying path. I only used it once, to see what it does.

The above list doesn't mention an important feature: the breasts come with four skin textures for the breasts: pale, tan, bronze, and African-American. They work well with certain Redgrave skins.

(Speaking of skins, Shayna Korobase has been working on skins for prim breasts that should be available shortly. She has appliers that work for several brands, including Nadines. I look forward to seeing them!)

All that is well and good, but it tells you nothing about the most important thing: how they look. The nipple is a sculpted prim unto itself, while the breast proper includes the areola. That makes it easier to get a very realistic skin texture... but what I most dearly love about these prim breasts is their shape. I suspect that the name "Nadine" is a clue to their inspiration; there is a model named Nadine Jansen.

I have received many compliments about them. Here are some examples.

From a thread about prim breasts in Second Life at the Breast Expansion Archive forum:

One user, commenting on a photo I took in the Minoan Empire with the "torpedo" Nadines: "Those sculpty breasts look so real."

I replied: "That's why I love Foxbean's work. The 'Nadine' prim breasts are amazing, and IMHO Lolas are their only rival in SL for appearance."

Another comment: "I totally agree when it comes to natural looking Foxbean and Lola are the top, but I have to throw my chips in with eCorp on their creativeness and builds."

I respect that. All prim breast makers have my gratitude; some push the envelope, and different people have different interests.

A comment on the same photo, this time from flickr:

"You know, one thing that I like about you is that even though your breasts are a bit out of the standard norm, you take the time to make them look like they have actual gravity to them, instead of them being just big balloons floating on your chest. That little bit of detail is refreshing in a way."

About clothing availability: I've not seen many clothiers that explicitly mention Foxbean Laboratories compatibility, alas, but Nadine 1.5 breasts are compatible with eCorp installers, which are plentiful in the prim breast clothing world.

After all that, I must admit that Nadines have one disadvantage, for me at least.

Remember the HUD and its great variety of adjustments of prim breast position? One of those adjustments is to move the prim breasts closer to each other or farther apart. This adjustment works on all the prim breasts that come with the package--except for the set with the clothing layer. To work with that set, the actual shape, not just size, of the clothing layer would have to change so it would still fit precisely around the breasts themselves. I don't know whether that is possible.

Why does that make a difference? Because of the way Nadines are shaped. If you look at some prim breasts, you'll see that at the top, they come to a point above the sternum. Whatever one might think of that for verisimilitude, you can grow them to considerable size and they will still come to a point above the sternum. Nadines don't come to a common midpoint; they each have their own.

If, like me, you want to push the limits, you'll find those limits are tighter than they would be for some other prim breasts because of that difference. Make Nadines too large, and they'll attach at the top to your upper arms; make them larger still, and the tops won't be attached to your body at all. I must experiment further, but as I have them, they look unnatural with low-cut tops well before that size. My desire to be extremely well-endowed thus pushes me towards modest dress save in the Minoan Empire, where going topless is the social norm, letting me move the breasts closer together at larger sizes. I blame only myself for that; whatever prim breasts' design, I will push them as far as I can.

I hasten to add that Nadines aren't alone in having problems at extreme size. Lolas will stick out through your back if you make them too big! Even Implant Nation prim breasts have a difficulty, though they can be pushed much further than Nadines: the wrinkles that happen in sculpted prims at the "north pole" become rather noticeable.

So, in summary: if you want your figure to be controlled by others via various mechanisms, Nadines are not for you. If you want your breasts to look like they obviously have implants, Nadines are not for you. If, however, you want to look and feel beautiful, I can say that I use Nadines, and that is what they do for me. I've tried other prim breasts, briefly, but I always go back.

I shouldn't go on about appearance without showing it, so here are some photos, though of course you can see examples scattered through this blog. (Admittedly, using myself as a model has the disadvantage that you won't see a range of sizes.) NSFW photos are after the break.

UPDATE: Reine, in the comments, is absolutely right. I should mention that Nadine 1.5 costs L$300. As I write, the only place I know of to get them is at the lower level of the Busty Village Mall, at Phaedra (85, 32, 23).

The last of the above photos shows the issue with décolletage at large size.

The first photo is the one that received the compliments quoted above.