Our second review on Chimaeric Creations is coincidentally their first avatar under this brand. We can definitely say that that insects are a rarity in Second Life, especially when it comes to avatars. For our first insectoid interview, we cover the unique Chimaeric Creations Moth.

Out of the Box:

• Male and Female Body Shapes
  • Tintable Hair for each sex
  • Mature Skins
• HUD with eye and wing Texturing and Tinting
  • Wings have 2 Separate ‘Texturing/Tinting’ Layers
  • Over 400 Wing Combinations
• Tintable, Two-Tone Eyes with 5 pupil types
• Flight AO with Always Fly Functionality

Build and Skin:

The skins for this avatar are many, and each of the different varieties are plentiful in design and colouration. Most of the time, when people think of moths, they think drab greys and browns. However, this avatar transcends that by offering some colour/textures across the body that look plausible in real life, but also rainbowy, fantasy skins. In general, the textures are soft in their appearance, but easily surrounded with ample shading and highlights to avoid flatness over the body. The avatar comes with both male and female skins, and associated mature skins. Some varieties like the rainbow moth allow users to use either a grey belly or go for something a little more spectacular, such a rainbow-belly. As seen in the picture below, sometimes we see highlights on the ends of the arm and leg attachments, the tailtip, as well as the tips of the attenae. At times, you may find little patterns added to the hips and shoulders like the photo below shows. As usual, the provided pictures do more justice than words.

Take Notice: The pictures under this link are rated Mature - Click here to view the Male and Female Adult Skin

Since moths have a unique anatomy, the creator has had quite the task of integrating the characteristics of an insect with an anthropomorphic body. As such, they’ve taken a liberty of giving the avatar some artistic imagination. The feet are among the most simple that I have seen, but do it very well. They are usually grey and simply two-toed. Otherwise, they are formless. This avatar is plantigrade, and while users can opt to wear any kind of long trousers that goes to the feet, well made plantigrade leg attachments help for a visual transition when being naked, or wearing shorts or a skirt. These are shaped interestingly, a kind of bumpy fluffiness that is subtle at the top and becomes more full at the bottom of the leg.

The ‘tail’ (abdomen) also uses this fluffy bumpiness from base to tip, creating an interesting visual effect. The size of the abdomen is appropriately sized to the avatar, not too large or too small, but clearly marking the body as distinctly insectoid. The shape and textures parallel that of the leg attachments, meaning that they look well made and coloured in all.

The hand attachments also mirror that of the feet, but take a marked approach towards a more hand-like appearance. That is, we find a 4-fingered hand with thick, but simple digits. As this avatar preceded the Chimaeric Creations Ferret, we do not see the movable fingers. However, for being static, non-moving fingers, these are done decently. The position and shape of each digit is relaxed and organic, easily fitting any setting the avatar is in. Here too we find the arm attachments to smooth the transition from hand-attachment to shape arm. These ones have a little bit more conventional sculpt ‘fluff’ just above the hands than the leg-attachments. They are also a little big thicker than the leg forms.

Perhaps the most visually eye-catching part of this avatar is the wings. As seen in the photo above, the choices of avatar skins are varied, but also too are the colours and styles of the wings. The creator lists over 400 combinations of wing styles on the vendor for this avatar. Each of the colour choices are actual texture changes instead of in-client re-colours of a single texture. In short, each wing is two-toned and dual textured; so users can set the spots to full-bright and glow in one colour/texture, while the rest of the wing is at a different setting.

Shape-wis,e the wings are pretty much the idealised idea of what a moth’s wings would look like. They are not semi-transparent, so you do not have any clipping issues with these wings. The contours and lines are 100% sculpted instead of texture wings, which offers a little bit of dimension from all angles instead of just on two planes as with semi-transparent wings.

At last, the head. The head is perhaps the simplest part of the avatar with fairly few features that stand out on their own. But definitely the most present feature is that of the eyes. These are very, very large eyes that are attached to the shape eyeballs underneath the head. As such, they are able to move according to where the mouse pointed is located on the screen. The eyes themselves come in a multitude of different settings, 5 different pupil types that users can choose from. These include round pupils, slitted pupils, or the more natural compound eyes.

The rest of the face is absolutely featureless other than some fluff prims at the sides of the face and a fairly prominent bottom lip. As a result, the eyes have taken up a large percentage of the real estate on the face, which for better or worse draws more attention to them. Some opinions were split on the execution of the eyes, a few people arguing that the avatar’s eyes size and textures were unsettling, while others were appreciative of the unique look.

Finally, the avatar comes with two tall, leaf-like antennae that are tipped with the secondary colour. They’re not too large, but add a nice effect to the head. From the side you can see how they flop over just the slightest. It should be mentioned that the avatar comes with a long and a short haircut that could easily be alternated between sexes.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

This avatar is completely controlled by the HUD. It is extremely simple, but effective at what it does.

• Eye: Two-Tone Glow, Colour, Full Bright Toggle, Pupil Type
• Wing: Two-Tone Glow, Colour, Full-Bright Toggle, Wing Texture
• Anims: Animation Overrider On/Off
• Always Fly: Always fly except when sitting

This avatar obviously comes with an animation overrider. It effectively includes a flight and a hover animation for day to day use in conjunction with the user’s own AO when standing around. However, the avatar also includes an ‘Always Fly’ option, in which the avatar kind of ‘fly-walks’ or ‘fly-overs’ when the avatar is standing still.

As for the flight animations, they are largely well done, but not spectacularly so. When the avatar is flapping its wings, depending on whether you’re using the walking fly or the actual flying, you see the shoulders and arms making a concentrated effort to move as the wings move. This may have been a conscious decision, and it does more or less show that having wings between the shoulders would require a concentrated effort to get airborne. In the end, the opinions of the animation come down to personal opinion.

Customisation:

This avatar is copy-modifiable, so users can be able to change it to suit whatever wishes that they have for it. The headsize is a little smaller than most, but a slight bit oddly shaped, so depending on the third-party hair, there may or may not be a need to give the hair some modifications in order to fit it.

Conclusion:

The Chimaeric Creations Moth competently adds a niche species of avatars by bringing an insect to Second Life. In short, the creator took an animal that we usually only recognise by its wings, and anthropomorphicised it with  imagination. While it may not suit a number of users’ taste, credit is given for evoking images of butterflies and moths even though it is considerably modified from what we see in textbooks.