It is a pleasure to introduce another new creator to our collection of avatar reviews. In the Fur Enterprises has been around for a few years now, making a number of avatars with their unique style. In this review, we discuss their deer avatar.

Out of the Box:

Measurement	Value
Script Time with HUD	~0.038
Script Time without HUD	~0.018
Avatar Rendering Cost	~1650

• Muzzle-Talking Function
• 20 Eye Colours
• Multiple Ear States
• Twitching Tail
• 10% of Proceeds go to the World Wildlife Fund

Build and Skin:

From first glance, what stands out on the body is not so much the attachments as much as the skin. The creator has made the textures over soft-looking with plentiful gradients for a fuzzy look. Some may or may not like this texture style. This avatar comes in numerous different colours/patterns, so users should not have any problems taking their pick. Some colouration/versions of the avatar are better than others, however. For example, the Piebald version of the avatar (Seen left) looks splotchy and unrealistic. Otherwise, shading is ample across the body, particularly around the chest and the abs, which suggests a strong buck. Females themselves are given a more subtle set of body tone, making their version of the avatar seemingly more effeminate and graceful. There is no PG skin for this avatar, however, so users must keep in mind that without any clothing, male and female nipples will show at all times. In this new age of age-verification, non-nippled versions of these skins is increasingly necessary.

Another area which shows itself to be a strength for this avatar is that of the foot attachments. Often hooves seem to be hit and miss for a lot of creators, and fortunately, ITFE has created a decent pair of cloven hoofs. Textured a shiny black and extremely smoothly sculpted, they raise the avatar a decent bit right off the ground. The feet then give way to competently made unguligrade legs with two vestigial toes just posterior to the hooves.

Next attachment on the way to the head is that of the tail. The creators have allowed users to use the tail in two forms; one is having attached to the the chest while the other is attached to the pelvis. This helps users to wear different clothing attachments on different areas without having to manually set their tail to a new attachment point. The tail is well made with a sculpted top and a fluffy semi-transparent prim bottom. Yet, a questionable trait of the tail is that the underside of the tail glows. The creators have not opted for hand-attachments, instead opting for featureless, furred hands.

Finally, we are on to the head. An important part of the head is no doubt the antlers; something that the creators have done well to replicate in the Buck version of this avatar. It is easy to assume that this is a white-tailed buck avatar because of the semblance of the antlers to that particular species of buck. The antlers are well sculpted and textured, though they arch more to the sides than forward as we would expect from a White-tailed deer. There is also a ‘fawn’ version of the avatar where the young male is given nubs instead of full horns. Female Adults are left with no nubs or antlers.

Bordering the antlers are the ears, naturally. The ones that come with the avatar are very simple sculpted prims which do their job decently. The textures are well done here. Some more detail could have been afforded to the ears through something like ear fluff; prim or transparent-fluff.

A unique trait of In the Fur Enterprises (ITF) is that it utilises the shape eyes under the avatar’s head in combination with the prims that make up the rest of the face. This method often causes mixed results and needs considerable attention to detail and facial construction for the final result to work. The eyes themselves have been replaced with prims which have horizontal, oval pupils. The irises themselves are colour-changeable to pre-fabricated textures according to the users’ interests. The textures for the eyeballs have been well constructed, bringing expression to the face. While some peers have argued it had an unhappy look, others argued the face exuded a state of shell-shock.

Most of the shape head is used for the head, which means that only the muzzle, ears, and antlers have been added to the structure. The muzzle itself is shaped appropriately to that of a deer’s, complete with believable textures which match the rest of the body. However, any long-time Second Life resident or avatar creator knows it is difficult to get body skins to match the exact textures on prims. Thus, we see that the prims are a little lighter than the skin, which makes the crease inbetween the shape head and the sculpted muzzle all the more prevalent and slightly off-putting. The other issue is that despite the distinctly deer-like shape of the muzzle, where the muzzle meets the face is a considerable amount of wrinkling. No doubt, the result has been a less than clean transition between the shape head and the muzzle. In fact, for the buck versions of the avatar, the shape ears peek out at the sides of the face, which is an unfortunate occurrence. Users can easily do a little bit of editing to get around this, but it would make better impressions if the issue was picked up before release.

The nose is appropriate for one of a deer, large, dark, and perhaps a touch too shiny for some. Where the nostrils should be, we do see some white fur instead of the nostrils, which detracts from the head further.

The interior of the muzzle is not badly done textured, with the teeth well positioned in the jaw. The arrangement of the teeth are true to that of a real deer’s, which has no upper incisors. The teeth are clearly herbivorous in appearance, as well. For some, the true-to-life arrangement of teeth may seem unsettling, but they are free to modify the mouth for a full set.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

This avatar has kept things simple and short, forgoing a lot of the regular features for just the barebones expected of most avatars. All of the avatar’s options are managed by the HUD which relies on the built-in Second Life dialog box to change options.

The options are as follows:

• Ears: Up, Down, Angled Twitch On/Off
• Eyes: Choose from 20 of preset eye colours
• Mouth: Muzzle Open/Half-open (Smile)/Closed, Muzzle Talking Function On/Off, HUD Messages On/Off, Talking Animation On/Off

In some versions of the avatar, there is also a listed option to be able to turn the Herring Fish in the mouth on or off available in the HUD. When the user clicks on it, there is no fish that shows up because that part of the HUD was likely for ITFE’s Cetacean line of avatars. There is no problem with re-using scripts between avatars, but because of this error some users may become confused as a result.

Customisation:

One of the strengths of avatars using this construction are that the heads are exactly the size and shape as any ‘normal’ human avatar. Thus, any hairs or acessories which were made for fully human (or at least semi-human) avatars will fit with nearly no modification. It is easy to modify the avatar as it is modifiable and copiable; all scripts have full permissions on them as well so that novice scripters can include their own functionality in the avatar.

Conclusion:

The ITFE deer is a strong avatar in a few respects, but lacking in a good few others. The textures over the entirety of the body have been decently done, being of appropriate quality and reflective of the species that they mean to emulate. At the same time, the quality of all of the attachments have been well, with the exception of the muzzle itself. The head remains the most important part of an avatar in many cases, and as such, there are some areas needing improvement. In that respect, the implementation could have been far better. However, ITFE does charge a lower price for this avatar, which may help offset the seriousness of some of the issues for potential buyers.