Styled in the Japanese Kemono  fashion, the creator seeks to bring an Eastern approach to avatars with this tiger. Brightly textured and buff, this avatar does come with vast shortcomings.

Out of the Box:

• Full prim avatar (No scripts, No animations)
• Clothing (Cloth, Mawashi, Fundoshi Harness, Pelvic Piercing)

Build and Skin

Covered completely with prims, the avatar has no need for a skin on the shape underneath. The texturing is bright and imaginative, but unfortunately, that is the best that could be said about them. We applaud the effort to address the difficulty of placing the stripes of a tiger on a full-prim avatar, but we are dissapointed by how it seems to have been slapped onto the musculature as an afterthought. Additionally, in other areas, the textures feel mismatched, what with some chest and belly prims being pure white, yet others have scruzzy swirls on them.

Turning to the build, one can immediately see the ‘buffness’ of the tiger; from head to toe, the avatar exudes a bodybuilding lifestyle. In terms of style, everything is exaggerated, from the enemy-mauling claws to bulging neck muscles. As usual, we’ll work from the bottom of the avatar to the top, discussing notable features along the way.

The feet are large and padded, tipped with very long claws. Particularly interesting on the footpaws is the usage of fluff flexiprims over the toes. These were clearly intended to give the avatar a more organic, fluffy look, but they are used too sparingly and in odd locations to really make a difference to the avatar’s overall apperance. In fact, they seem to detract from the avatar quite a bit, as you will see further into the review. On the digitigrade legs, there is fluff here too, and while the bottom of the leg starts off as thick as the footpaw, the leg tapers to become very thin in the kneecap. Before we leave the bottom half of the avatar altogether, I should not neglect to mention the issue of symmetry; when putting the avatar on a posing stand, it is clear that many of the parts, not just the legs are not only misproportioned, but positioned improperly. Here in this picture, you can see that one leg (and foot) is attached higher than the other.

Moving towards the thighs and the hips, there isn’t very much by way of texturing and stripes, just simple orange and white fur until we reach the waistline and buttocks. From the pictures, you can see still more usage of the same stray flexible prim fluff. One notable usage is where it is in the form of a rough, and bristly pleasure trail that works its way from below the pecs to a curious bare patch of skin between the legs, and again at the base of the tiger tail. Two of the most peculiar placements of fluff are inside the buttocks, sticking out of each cheek somewhat awkwardly. The musculature on the front of the avatar is meant to portray a tight stomach, but not neccesarily washboard abs. One of the few areas on the avatar that sculpts are used are on the nipples and the ‘outtie’ belly button, which seem to be poor places to use sculpts. These nipples and belly button take too much attention away from what should be on the muscles themselves.

The back muscles are far less than attractive than that of the front, however. Despite the obvious intention to create a hulking persona in this avatar, the muscles on the back seem more reminscent of an array of sandbags woven together and shaped to give the impression of muscles. In short, there is too much musculature and prim-work on the back that is not present in the front of the torso. Therefore, when eyeballing over the transition from the front of the avatar to the back, there is a large and uncomfortable-looking bulging at the sides. Unfortunately here too, the texturing is most dismal; in few cases does the texture seem to match up between prims. All of that said, the tail is very small and wimpy; nearly an afterthought compared to the rest of the body.

Fortunately, in terms of the upper torso, the pecs do match up better with the back prims, but this means that the pecs are very wide; the width at the least matching the hips. The armpits reused the same flexible transparent hair as armpit hair. Another issue with the avatar is that despite all the work that went into the muscular back, compared to the torso, the shoulders and arms are much less muscular.  When standing still, the claws and paws of the avatar are swallowed up inside of the torso, specifically because the avatar lacks an Animation Overrider to avoid this. The biceps are devoid of stripes, but the lower portion of the arms picks them up again, ending off with beefy hand-like paws with opposable thumbs. Much like the foot flexi prims, the ones here are out of place and distracting from the build quality due to misplacement and being too prominent.

Finally, we reach the head. This avatar does not have much of a neck, which means that the head is very cemented to the shoulders and close to the collarbone. Around the back of the head are hollowed cylinder-flexies that I assume represent long neck-fur. These were poorly done, such that one peer has quipped about their likeness to ‘windsocks.’

The facial expression is set into a strong expression that would invoke memories of some animes and mangas featuring very masculine anthropomorphic animals. The thick and broad chin is covered with bristly flexis in a kind of bristly soulpatch.  The muzzle is rather short and yet very broad, leading way to  yellow eyes covered with a very heavy brow. This helps add to the masculinity factor of the avatar’s face, but for some people, it could be reminiscent of Lombroso’s Criminal Profile.  The head does not contain any form of hair, instead showing off the tiger stripes while two torii ears rest above the head.

Features and Customisation

The avatar comes with a few complimentary pieces of clothing itself for those who need a quick outfit to cover their nether regions.  Each are Japanese inspired, from the Mawashis that display a tightly wrapped ballsac, to a piercing on the furless patch of skin between the legs. The avatar also comes as both modifiable and copiable for people to modify and change the avatar to their heart’s content.

Conclusion

There really isn’t too much more to the avatar other than its appearance and the outfits that are included. Overall, while it is plain to see where the creator was coming from, the execution was unfortunately flawed, producing a final product that could have marvelous potential, if not for the feeling of incompleteness and poor planning. One issue is that while the creator has intended to create a uniquely styled avatar, it is difficult to decide whether the attempt was at a ‘realistic’ avatar, or one of a slightly cartoony, ‘exaggerated’ avatar. Many of the errors in this avatar could be overlooked purely on the basis of the fact that it is one of the first commercially available avatars the creator has made… But, given that it is selling for 1000L, these errors cannot be passed over, especially when matched to heavyweights in the avatar creation community who sell more aesthetic and feature-filled avatars for comparable prices.