See More Avatars from: Curious Inc.

10 Jul 09 | List Price: L$

Released publicly for beta testing twice before, the Curious Inc. Ringtail avatar is now available for purchase in different colour variations. With a few style changes and a streamlined HUD, the avatar presents a complete package of look and functionality.

Out of the Box:

• 3D Eyes
• RGB/HSL Colour configuration
• Adjustable dilation
• Sculpted blink animation
• Twitching, easily maneuverable ears.
• Animated mouth that responds to typing, speech gestures, or other animations of your choice
• Smiling or Not Smiling
• Toned Body
• Breathtakingly beautiful anti-aliased whiskers
• Efficient use of prims, textures and scripts. FPS friendly.
• Basic HUD features

Build and Skin:

What is immediately noticeable about the skin is the smoothness of the texturing and the generous amount of shading applied to give the body tone and definition. The skins themselves consist of two basic colours; one for the body overall, while the other colour makes up the belly, muzzle,  and parts of the arms and legs. Given the relatively basic nature of the skin, effort was put into making it visually interesting through smooth transitions between fur colour. Additionally, the usage of the shading creates definition along areas such as the back and the stomach (In the chest for female skin wearers as well). Suffice to say, while the skins are on the upper end of average, the texture-work on the attachments really matter the most on this avatar.

The foot-paws are well-proportioned with small white claws on the tips. The paws take an approach where they look like a direct cross between a mostly human foot with pawpads near the front end of the foot. While, there is a slight touch of sculpt wrinkling on the posterior end of the footpaw, what makes up for this  is the new way that the creator has crafted a better illusion of ‘fluff’. On specific attachment sites (i.e. leg and arm prims, tail, ears), the sculpts taper off slightly to a separate, flattened prim with a layer of airbrushed ‘fluff’ texture. This is definitely a new play on an age-old technique which has been done well enough that from any angle, the tuft of fur is believable despite being only one prim.

Moving on, the hand-paw and arm attachments are relatively similar to that of the leg and foot attachments, though the hand-paws look markedly more like hand-paw combinations instead of copy-pasted foot-paws. Finally, the tail deserves notable mention for it’s large and curvy presence. Using the same thin-prim texture fluff to accent itself, the tail stands out not only because of the texture work, but because it raises well above the head of the avatar itself. Ringtails are related to the common Raccoon so the tail pays appropriate homage to the family.

The head is smoothly contoured, and the eyes are enrapturing. Uchi has a knack for creating eye textures that are bright and interesting, something that has been progressively carried over from his static eye textures to this more complex eye design. The eyes are large and wide; with the separate eye attachments allowing the pupils to move around on their own. The texture-work is most pronounced here on the head, with smooth, yet strongly detailed ring-tailed cat markings around the eyes and base of the muzzle. Texturing also stands out on the nose and the inside of the ears themselves.

Appreciably, the jaw has become its own attachment, which avoids the non-moving teeth problem in the ‘Felis,’ but takes away the moving lips. This is made up for with a moving tongue when the avatar ‘talks’, as well as the new ability to wear a smile or a frown. The head is supported by very fine whiskers from the muzzle and just above the eye-sockets. Additionally, in a change from the Beta ringtail before it, this one has ears that twitch and move on their own as separate attachments. These too utilise the thin-prim texture fluff at the base of the ears and on the inside.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

This is the first complete HUD that has come with a Curious Inc. Avatar in a long while. Suffice to say, the design is innovative and intuitive, with near Operating System-like functionality to access and modify the options. The HUD mostly modifies the eyes; with settings allowing the user to modify both the upper and lower eyelids, eye dilation, and the eye colours (i.e. iris, cornea, and shadow). Being able to directly shape the eye size and dimensions through eyelid settings makes possible a plethora of facial expressions; something that was successfully implemented with sliders for both the top and bottom eyelids. What is particularly interesting is that no matter where the slider is set, the eye still carries out it’s smooth blinking.

The eye dilation itself is not something new, (it was brought forth with the Felis, and some other creators like Kinzart have toyed with it), but when coined together with the 3 eye-colour settings, users can make the eyes look anywhere from fiendishly evil to absolutely giddy (or stoned). Appreciably, by hitting the “Toggle Mode” switch, users can change the method whereby they choose their colours. Like with many photo/picture editing software, the user can pick their eye colours through either the conventional Red-Blue-Green (RGB) settings, or that of Hue-Saturation-Luminescence (Hue,, Sat, Lum).

Finally, the checkmark box menu allows users to choose when they want the muzzle-speaking function to work, while using voice or text are obvious settings. I do remain curious as to what ‘Other’ setting pertains to, however. Here too, users can choose whether they want the mouth in a smile or an almost pouty frown, or toggle the ear twitching.

I should not neglect to mention that the HUD shows changes to the eyes directly on the face itself; any modification of eye colours, pupil dilation or eyelid states are immediately reflected on the head on the top right of the HUD. This is not the fault of the creator at all, but the near ageless alpha transparency bug plays havok with different parts of the HUD. However, depending on what client you use, this may show up less or more often. Sometimes merely selecting the HUD with the ‘Build’ menu makes everything visible and clear.

Customisation:

Like with many avatars, this one is very modifiable, with both mod/copy perms available. I have seen more than a few users having turned the ringtail into sharks, badgers, and raccoons, just to name a few. Before I leave this behind, I should note that the head is very much suited to have custom, third-party hairs added to it. In fact, the creator encourages wearer individuality by naming the basic hair: “Ringtail – Hair (Get some real hair.)”.

Conclusion:

The Ringtailed Cat is a whole and well-rounded avatar that restates the creator’s ability for creating aesthetically appealing avatars with a feature-filled edge. For a while, it seemed that very few creators had been pushing the boundaries of avatar features, but it remains a pleasure to see both old and newly established players pressing forward to find new applications of SL’s script and graphics engines. The reinvention and revision of popular techniques and options makes the Ringtail one of the strongest works that Curious Inc. has released to date.

This review was written by Forepawz - Contributor and Senior Editor | Filed under Avatar Reviews, Curious Inc.
Tagged curious, gallery, ringtail, ringtailed cat, uchi.