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09 Jul 10 | List Price: 1950L$

1st Act has burst onto the scene with their well muscled, hulking interpretation of the werewolf legend of yore. Available in a number of realistic wolf varieties as well as fictional ones, this avatar offers an interesting user experience.

Out of the Box:

• Full Animation Overrider with biped and quadruped sets
• 34 eye colors, 2 sclera colors (white and black)
• Seamless blinking eyes and selectable eye states
• Muzzle Talking Function (Compatible with Text or Voice)
• Multiple muzzle states
• 2 Facial Expressions
• Howling Gesture
• Growling Gesture
• Custom avatar deformer
• Custom HUD for easy control and option selection
• Free updates for life

Measurement	Value
Script Time / Memory (With HUD)	~0.2ms / TBD
Script Time / Memory (without HUD)	N/A (Need 2/3 HUDs to get the full functionality of the avatar) / TBD
Avatar Rendering Cost (Scale Here)	~1220
Modify?	Yes
Copy?	Yes
Transferable?	No

Build and Skin:

For starters, this avatar is fully covered in prims. That means that the sculpt quality and design becomes immensely as important as the textures. This avatar has a definite strong suit in the way how it comes together. One of the creators for this avatar has been known to create prim bodies that focus on various kinds of muscular shape for some years now, and their practice in that business show with this avatar.

In terms of textures, these match the quality of the sculpts, and accent each of the body’s details and definition. The avatar comes in a number of different colours and markings, but the overall style remains the same. That said, the resolution of the textures are high, giving the impression of fur whether the camera is near or far from the avatar. There is considerable usage of highlights and shadows on this avatar, which makes it pop out to the eye all the more regardless of angle.

In sum, the avatar as a whole has quite the imposing, eye-catching image that stands out from the usually not-as-detailed backdrop of Second Life. In many a way, the avatar itself looks like it came straight out of a video game rather than Second Life itself. This would not be the first avatar we’ve seen that has successfully managed to look eye-popping, but the creators deserve some notice for overall quality and sharpness of appearance.

Body:

As we’ve mentioned before, there is considerable experience making avatars of a buff nature behind this avatar. Overall, the shape puts a lot of emphasis on the shoulders and the arms, giving focus to the hulking figure of the wolf when it stands on two legs. The included pictures explain and show much more than I could through description. Without going into too much detail, it is more than sufficient to say that the body overall is very well thought out. Onlookers will see a feral, gruff nature that is only exemplified by the included animation overrider.

The arms are fairly long, but not necessarily skinny since there’s much muscle on the upper arms and big 5-fingered hand-paws take the place of normal hands. The obligatory paw-pads on the palms and long and sharp claws show that the avatar is built to appear imposing and potentially dangerous. We also draw your attention to the avatar’s well-built thighs, as well as the most weight-bearing digitigrade legs we’ve ever reviewed.

Most of the body uses slightly idealised prim ‘fluff’ in areas like the elbows or around the head for visual effect. The only area of the body that uses semi-transparent textures is the tail, which, despite being made of flexible prims fits in with the rest of the avatar with good textures.

The creators have taken the initiative to grant male and female users differences between genders. To that end, not only does the female receive a pair of decently sized mammaries for the chest, but the overall shape of the avatar remains buff, yet gains an effeminate look. The overall shape of the female avatar has less broad shoulders, a thin waist, and the hindquarters are slightly larger. We appreciate the work that went into ensuring that females would still receive a buff body-type alongside slightly feminine curves.

Head:

The huge body somewhat dwarves the head a little bit, making one wonder how the avatar would have looked with a slightly larger head altogether. However, the size isn’t unrealistic at all when one takes a look at body-builder types. The overly built upper torso has the wolf hunching over a slight bit, increasing the ‘feral’ look. This places the head and neck in a position that not only suits the avatar very well, but also maintains a good bit of flexibility in the neck.

The face itself is equally well done and unique and identifiably canine. While it’s easy to name the creature as being a wolf, there is potential for those who like to modify their avatars into another canine species. The avatar comes with 2 different facial expressions; one which is the default; a surly, yet enigmatic expression in which you don’t really know if one if smiling or scowling (Picture: Below – Left). The brows are very pronounced, giving the head a feral appearance while developing a little character for the avatar as a whole. Another area of the head that was well done is the eyes; they’re very direct, and the positions and textures grant the avatar intelligence and a piercing glare.

The other facial expression is a complete snarl (Picture: Above – Middle), causing the bridge of the muzzle to wrinkle angrily and pull the lips back to expose the large and very sharp teeth that line the gums. This expression not only shows a kind of crazed anger, and shows off the well-done dental work inside the muzzle. This expression itself would have to be one of the most intense angry facial expressions we’ve seen. The ears also move on their own and during each emote. It should be noted that many of the avatar’s features concern the head.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

This HUD allows the user to control all aspects of the avatar. The HUD is heavily animated and it is very intuitive in its design. There are no text commands for this avatar, but the HUD is affective and responsive. The following 5 Pages are included (Left to Right on the Wheel):

• 1st Act Logo: Displays the credits of the avatar creation team.
• The Snarling Wolf Icon: Activates the werewolf’s growl emote, causing the wolf to snarl menacingly. Sound and Animation included.
• The Howling Wolf Icon: Activates the werewolf’s howl emote, causing the wolf to throw it’s head back and let out a howl to the air. Sound and Animation included.
• The Wolf Head Icon: Control the expressions of your werewolf.
  • Calm or Growling Facial Expression (Toggle)
  • Expression sliders
    • Ear States
    • Jaw State
    • Eyelid State
• The Eye Icon:
  • 34 Eye-Colour Wheel (Can Set Individual eye colour) Read the Instructions for more information.
  • Can change the Eye Whites (Sclera) between white or black.

Accessories (Sold Separately):

Sold separately is the option for the user to buy torn shorts for the avatar. A neat thing when creators create their own add-ons or partner with a third party to produce such add-ons, is that the quality usually will be somewhere along the same lines of the avatar itself, thereby fitting in and exemplifying the look. The jeans look like they would have fit a normal human-sized avatar before said person burst into a werewolf form. The jeans are sold for 600L; with different fits depending on the wolf’s sex. These jeans are also modifiable, so some may manage to get them to fit on other avatars.

Animation Overrider and Deformer:

The Animation Overrider for this avatar manages to animate almost every single movement and action the avatar takes with over 3 dozen animations. Whether the user is sitting, running, flying, swimming or even just standing, the avatar moves with a surprising amount of smoothness and grace despite its size. Combined with the imposing figure, the animation overrider provides a feral pose and mannerisms, as well as body language of self-confidence. The quality of the animations makes this one of the smoothest animated bipedal avatars we’ve encountered here at S.L.A.R.F.

There are a few quick notes we’d like to make, however. This avatar utilises a deformer that is kept separate from the AO, which means that, if, for example, the user wants to turn off the AO and sit on a poseball, the avatar can sit on the poseball perfectly, and their size and shape will be maintained regardless. Additionally, users are still able to use their own AO with this avatar, as the deformer will work in conjunction with it. Thus, despite being full-prim and needing a deformer, the avatar still leaves room for customisation in the way it moves. There is more to the Deformer, including some of its auto-detection features, but that is better left for you to read in the well written instructions accompanying the avatar.

The other thing I would like to mention is that the avatar comes with two AO settings; one allows the user to move around as a biped, while the other setting makes the avatar ‘quad.’ Therefore, the user can choose whether they wish to stand upright and walk on two-legs, or if they would like to remain close to the floor; walking on all-fours and often crouching. Both options have their advantages and body language, which gives users a little leeway when it gets to body language customisation.

Customisation:

This avatar is rather easy to customise as it comes with modify and copy permissions. There are a fair few attachments left for users to experiment and try different accessories with the avatar.

Conclusion:

The 1st Act Werewolf avatar serves to have been a successful release for the company’s first outing. The avatar is well designed, built, textured, and animated. While not everyone may have an affinity for its muscular body, the avatar confidently has created a werewolf personality in this hulking avatar. To that end, it would seem that creators have taken attention to and focused on providing an experience with their avatar to their customers. They’re certainly not the first to do this, (we’ve seen some creators include back-stories to their avatar), but 1st Act has focused on making the purchase of the avatar a humorous and interesting visual experience (Click for Vendor photo) when in-world. We, here at SLARF, look forward to seeing 1st Act’s ‘second act.’

This review was written by Forepawz - Contributor and Senior Editor | Filed under Avatar Reviews
Tagged 1st act, muscles, muscular, were, werewolf, wolf.