A departure from the bipedal avatars that have been reviewed thus far, we take a look at a quadrupedal bear instead. This avatar is a realistic and sculpted avatar that most definitely gives the impression of a larger-than-life, bumbling Grizzly while maintaining the cuteness of a teddy bear (at least until it gets angry).

Out of the Box:

• Fully sculpted avatar
• ZHAO-II powered Heads Up Display (HUD) which contains
  • Bear gestures
  • Facial expressions
    Different eye settings
  • Sounds
  • An Animation Overrider featuring realistic bear animations and a few ‘fun’ additional animations
• Copy/modify permissions, never worry about losing this avatar!  Plus I added an update script so there are free updates for life.
• A box of gestures which trigger the bear gestures without needing the HUD active

Build and Textures

Since the avatar is not a bipedal avatar based on the default Second Life shape, this avatar has required the body to be completely covered with sculpted prims so as to make the avat look more like a real bear that walks on all fours, rather than a “furry” type. What is amazing is that contrary to some other avatars we’ve reviewed, this one requires relatively fewer prims to make the bear look realistic; it instead focuses on detailed sculpts that work together whether the avatar is running, waving, sleeping, or dancing.

From the start, the avatar textures are fairly simple; the fur looks thick and scruzzy like one would imagine a bear’s fur would be like. What’s especially neat is the work on the head; the face is bear-like, straight down to the small eyes and very broad muzzle. The shading on the face makes sure that from any angle, whether behind, in front, or even at a fairly far distance, the face is distinct and distinct from the body.

Needless to say, this is not a lean bear; the creator has even put down “fat” as a tag on the listing for the bear. This bear is huge and roly-poly like potentially most of its real world counterparts; especially if they’ve gorged on Picnic baskets. One particular note of mention might be that it has a huge derriere. For some, it perhaps would be larger than it need to be, but on a personal scale, it’s a fat bear, of course it’ll have a fat butt!

Heads up DIsplay (HUD)

As mentioned before, the HUD is pretty much the central control for the entire avatar. Gestures, Animation Overrider, sounds, and facial expressions are controlled from the HUD in a similar fashion to the Luskwood Bats. It’s a well designed, user-friendly HUD for ease and quick use that offers the helpful asset of hiding the menu so as to take up a great deal less space on your screen.

The Animation Overrider comes with a run, walk, sleep animation, sitting animation and more; each of which are all visible on the picture of the HUD above.

Customisability

This avatar lacks many of the other built-in customisation features that other avs sport, but that doesn’t mean that one can go wild with customisation on the avatar. Given that it was sold as copy-mod, people can manually add decorations and colourings to the avatar themselves.

Conclusion

This was a pleasure to own. An eye-catcher because of the smoothness of its quadrupedal walks and the sheer size will make people do a double-take whence they see this avatar. No doubt, the creator was aiming for realism with this avatar, and very much attained it; the fuzzy innocence of a bear when it lumbers around, the dangerousness of a bear when it opens its jaws and bares its teeth.