If needed, we can move the eyes, noses, and mouths under the base on our HAs, but not the ears. There have been times I've wanted to not have human ears on an HA and have either had to find creative ways to cover them or just live with them because any option to cover just didn't work. It just seems strange that there is that one feature on the head that can't be layered. As a bonus, it will provide more options for when someone wants to wear a wig that covers the ear but wants to wear earrings.

Please?

I like the idea, but I also don't know how much it would help. I don't recall the Blistered Hearts skin having ears in the first place, but I recall wigs that show the ear giving me an ear-shaped hole when I uses the skin (I will check later when I'm not on mobile). I feel like even if the base was redone not to have ears, the wigs would probably still have that space.

It only be good for wigs that sit in front of the eats and even then, there might still be a small hole?

That is one of the biggest peeves I have with certain wigs is not being able to get the hair behind the ear. For that reason, this has my support.

I like this idea, too! I make a lot of bird-critter HAs, and if I'm not using a skin, it can be annoying trying to find items that cover the ears so it doesn't look weird. Having the option to layer the ears under the base would really help with that.

The ear would still be there to use with those wigs, so they wouldn't be affected at all unless someone decides to layer the ear behind the base while using them.

I like this idea, there's however one thing that might make this a bit difficult to implement:

If you look at a nude base (pictured below) you will see there is a shadow running along the back of the head that is interupted by the ear, the ear does not apear to have any shading of its own. Private Outfit

There are a few options to tackle this issue in making ears layerable:

1. just make the ear's black outline a seperate movable piece and learn to live with the circular hole in the shadow
2. make seperate ears for each base color and fill in the hole in the shadow
3. make both the black ear outline and the shadow layerable maybe add a shadow option with or without a hole

If they indeed make the ear layerable it would probably be nice for the artist to know what option is prefered because option 1 and 3 are nice for people who want ears on seperate skins, nr.2 is better for those who want to move ears above wigs and 2 and 3 for those who want to lose their ears altogether.

I prefer option 2 for layering ears over hair.

I think a better solution would be to make "sound canceller" ear--patches like the sheer sleeves. Each patch would match the skincolor and shading that would be there if the black lines of the ear would not.

Dang it, that does make things more complicated. Though if they do create a whole new layer for ears, then perhaps have options to choose ears like we do with hair, mouths, and eyes, except that instead of different shapes we have different colours?

Which is the option 2 you suggested, so yes, that. :)

If you want to hide the ears, then having them on a different layer doesn't change the fact that some wigs make room for the ear. You would still have to hide the ear shaped hole regardless if the ear is actually there or not. At some point, I think it just becomes an item issue, not a base issue.

It would depend on the amount of wigs that do that, but I don't think it would help hide the ears any better. I think it would only help people who want their ears more visible.

I'm still confused by this. The ears would still be there. If you have a wig with holes for ears, you just have the ears above the base and nothing changes at all. If you look at my current HA (depending on which one you see, considering the HA cache issues), I'm not wearing a wig but I have visible ears that I would like to be able to hide. Currently there is nothing I can do except use the skeleton skin but for this particular HA I so prefer the look it has that I'm living with the visible ear. I once did a Scrooge McDuck HA that I was able to do a work-around with ear muffs.

So overall this is about people being able to hide the ears in HAs they don't want showing human ears, and that it would allow some people to move ears above wigs that normally hide the ears is a bonus. For wigs that currently keep ears visible, if there are people who want those wigs to hide the ears then yeah, that's an item problem, not an avatar problem (and even then, layering wigs can often help).

I like that idea and I was even wondering yesterday if I should look into doing a CW set that does this, but after making this thread I learned that there are people who would like to layer the ears for other reasons.

Yes, a layerable ear would be very useful for skins too, like my current one, the pumpkin - the skin has no ear of itself and it looks very odd with most wigs. Also I kinda think this would be a problem for people who want no ear but want to wear wigs that are suppose to show ear, it will be just a weird cutout.

We never used to be able to layer behind the base, that's why old backdrops have the basic HA shape cut out. This would be no different. Maybe why this is why I'm finding this potential problem perplexing. If those people want the ear gone, then this will fix it for them. If they want the wigs not to show the ear, then that's already an issue they have with the item.

I couldn't explain it but that was my concern, and how many of those there are. Obviously it's up to the artist to see if that's worth changing the base (has the base ever been changed?) though.

Yup. You used to be able to choose your eyes, nose, mouth, and hair, but it would all exist on the base as a single layer, and you couldn't put anything behind the base. Once they changed that, it opened up sorts of design space. They didn't retroactively change items either which is why all the old backdrops still have the HA base cut out in them. There are people who ask for old backdrops to be updated, but they don't see the problem being the layering but in wanting to use the backdrops in new ways with the current layering system.

It still gets used sometimes, but I suspect with the onset of full art backdrops the widespread use of Vanishing Cream... vanished. :)

Now jou mention it just adding a ear 'color' to that menu that is just the black outlines would allows you to put ears on other skins Just an idea: putting ears in the base menu could also open up the possibility to choose differend kinds of ears like elf ears or ears with stretched earlobes. Also adding a just the outlines color would allow all ears that fit in the head's outlines on other skins.

I support this - but as others have stated its not as simple as it seems at first. Still. there are several potential solutions to the issues brought up.

Ears are attached to the HA base on an art level. All 56 bases (28 colors, boob and boob-less avatars) would have to be changed out for ear-less ones. While an overlay edit would probably be easy, it would then have to be saved twice over, and in every color available. An ear would also have to be made for each color as well (yes, there IS shading on the ear). The reason why this worked for eyes, noses, and mouths is because it wasn't an actual single layer of art before. They were all individual layers that you'd pick and the site would then place as a "base layer" (basically, we just wouldn't see the layers because it was hidden to us).

If this were to happen, I wouldn't be against it. But I'd honestly prefer they work on other stuff, and maybe release something that simply covers the ears like skin (bald caps, latex pieces, etc).

The trickiest part about this is that we don't have a file with all of the layers of the avatar base separated (at least, as far as I'm aware.) If we had that, separating the ear and filling in the shading and repeating for all color options wouldn't take very long at all.

If we ever update the shading on the base (which I hope we do at some point!!), that would be the time to do something like this.

I don't think it would solve all problems with wigs that cover that part of the head, but it would definitely solve issues where you just don't want your ears present. It would also be kind of nice to not have to worry about drawing the ear cutout in wigs (though we'd still have to be mindful of hair placement.)

I mean, that can be solved by drawing styles that simply cover the ears. Speaking as someone that does skeleton HA's a lot and have to work around the ear cutouts, if wigs switched to no-ear-cutouts I'd hate it. Some wigs rely on the ear cutout. In order to keep wigs wearable with and without a layerable ear, artists would have to really keep things in line otherwise the ear won't cover the hair properly resulting in unwanted sideburns, stray hairs/pixels, ear hair, tacked-on-ear-syndrome, and Hell I'm sure there'd be some that would have a hairline too far behind the ear. If eyes, makeup, noses, mouths, or the hairline we already have are any indication: No. Hairline would be all over the place. wouldn't be too bad, since an ear added on would simply cover what would be there. would be more difficult, but ultimately would work, maybe. Depends. isn't really doable, though. Hairs that are meant to look like it's tucked would kinda look odd without an ear, but chunks meant to 'fall over' the ear will be out. No more strategically placed sideburns. How would ears go with this though.

Thank you both. That was great feedback and I learned more about how a lot of this all works. :) (That almost sounds sarcastic, but I honestly enjoyed those posts.)