saving the appearance of your avatar

there's an old adage: "if it's important back it up. if it's really important, back it up TWICE"

I strongly advise saving the appearance of your avatar - you really want to do this, often!
consider it a backup of your body shape, just in case things go wrong.

the Appearance of your avatar has to do with body shape, and features.  i.e. you've made your avatar a certain height, feet a certain size, eyes, ears, nose, etc...

right-click on your avatar, select Appearance

when the Appearance Window opens, look at the bottom.  select: Save As 
another window will open

for the file name I suggest this format for saving your first body shape:

! My Body Shape [current date]

• exclamation point
  
• two (2) spaces
  
• My Body Shape (just a suggestion :)
• current date in square brackets (using the date for reference)

this format serves three purposes:
i) the exclamation point denotes this as very important! :)
ii) because of the ASCII values of characters, the ASCII value of the exclamation point (33) will place this at the top, preceding all common characters.
iii) only a space (32) precedes an exclamation point, hence the 2 spaces :)


click: Save; OK

this file will end up in the system folder: My Body.  located at the top of the inventory window.

if anything goes wrong with your avatar shape, you just WEAR your Shape again.

using this method you can make other shapes with the same body, or try different body shapes and save those under a different name.