After a fairly lengthy pause, Aventity has offered a budget wolf avatar, and re-released their Limited Edition Serval and Phoenix. Having already owned the Serval since the first time it was released, I have an opportunity to review it before it goes away on March 3rd, 2009.
Out of the Box:
- Both male and female avatars for 600L
- Customizeable independent eye colors
- Eyes close on AFK or by command
- Ears fold back when typing or clicked
- Ears stay folded on command
- Ears twitch randomly
- Wagging tail
- Optional hand paws
- Grayscale hair (manually recolorable)
- Control Menu
- Free updates
Build and Skin:
The Aventity Serval is perhaps their most patterned avatar, second only to their zebra. The textures are well done on their own, given that this avatar is almost 2 years old. It isn’t expected, (given the age of this avatar) that it would meet all of the standards that avatar creators usually aspire to today. As such, while the spots are intricately painted and the avatar textures shaded, there are artifacts that one would find on JPEG textures on the body. However, this issue is not noticeable unless one zooms in close to the body textures. Other than these slight imperfections, (such as a spot not perfectly matching up in one or two areas), the textures still stand as some of the best from the 2006-2007 period.
The Serval came out before sculpted prims hit; a few months after the avatars’ release, sculpted prims moved onto the main grid. As such, everything is made out of prims. Starting with the feet, the avatar comes with competent footpaws that are well shaped and easily feline. There are no digitigrade legs that come with this avatar; only plantigrade attachments to make the footpaws look better on their own. The same goes for the handpaws that have been included in the avatar. These also come with arm attachments to make the handpaws look more continuous with the avatar. The tail is a flexible tail; there are no solid prim options.
Finally, we move to the head. First of all, there is no talking jaw function with this avatar (This was released before this function became popularised). That said, the avatar stands very well on its own with a clear cut muzzle that is textured well enough to look like it is sculpted. The whiskers are fine and plentiful, and the eyes are bright and large; framed with an appropriate patterning of spots and colour. On a second note, however, the eye is concentrated on two seperate prims; meaning that from the side view, if one looks closely enough, they can see the seperation between the eye outline and the eye texture itself. The ears are also noteable as they relfect the large rotating satellites that Servals generally possess. The fuzz-prims could have been less prominent, but again, this is an older avatar.
Heads Up Display (HUD):
The avatar does not come with any HUD, but instead is mainly text-command operated on channel /42. However, like most Aventity Avatars, using /42menu will allow one to change and set options using the Menu Dialogue box function in SL. (The Blue Box Menu.) From this menu, one can change settings for their Eyes, Tail, and Ears.
Customisation
The avatar is easily customiseable, given that it is copiable and modifiable. One can try to add muzzle-talk to the avatar on their own, but it require a substantial amount of work as the muzzle was not designed to easily add this function. The head is smaller than most 2007 avatars, so one can add their own hair to replace the default; but a resizing will be neccesary.
Conclusion
This avatar is one of the strongest avatars that Aventity has released in its tenure, alongside their foxes, huskies, corvids, and horses. It is nice to see a blast from the past still be applicable and very wearable almost 2 years after its original release, despite some of its dated features. As for how well it reflects a Serval, from the large ears down to the small muzzle, anyone who knows their cats can easily identify this feisty feline.
