Kinzart Kreetures Fox

Just when you thought there were already allot of Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) avatars out there, Kinzart Kreetures has come out with another one. So what makes this one different from all the other one’s we’ve seen before from other creators? Let’s find out…

Out of the Box

• Dynamic Two-Color changing eyes
• Eyes with five blink settings
• Hands with Seven separately controlled hand poses
• Flexible wagging tail
• Talk jaw with manual HUD override
• Ears with position settings and twitch control; If twitch is on, ears will auto fold back when typing.
• Toned make and female skins/Mature female skin
• Male and female separate tintable hairs
• Sexy texture toning

 

 

 

Build and Skin

Build quality is quite good using almost entirely sculpted prims. The avatar is sold with both Male and Female shapes, textures, and hairstyles, and is available in a standard selection of colors with a few unusual ones. There is also a mature texture for the female avatar included. The rest of the avatar includes the expected Hand, Leg, Feet, and Tail attachments.

The head is very well modeled and looks quite smooth and natural. Since the the entire head and top of the muzzle are all one sculpted prim, there are no visible seams, and those that are on the muzzle are hidden quite well. The eyes are made of prims attached to the base avatar eyes. Aside from the usual ability to change the eye color or even glow setting, Kinzart has offered a notable feature that expands the customisability of the eyes. In essence, the user can choose both a primary and secondary color for the eyes, such that you could have a uniformly colored green eye for example, or a combination; blue and purple, for example.  Hair is attached to a separate attachment point for easy replacement; there are two hairs included, one in a more masculine style, the other more feminine.

The jaw as typical, is separate and moves whenever you type or speak, It can also be set to a number of positions between fully closed and fully open through the provided HUD. Like most other vulpine avatars, the ears twitch on their own and fold back when one is communicating. However, one can choose whether to have the ears folded back permanently, as well as toggle whether they want one or both ears to twitch by clicking the individual ear. The ears scripts also have a scritch feature that alerts you whenever any other user clicks on them. The only thing I was left wanting was a bit more ability to play with the facial expression, particularly in the eyebrows or the muzzle itself.

Another less noticed but well done part of the avatar are the forepaws, which are scripted and have seven different poses available. They certainly add some expressiveness and differentiate the avatar from others with possibly the most poses available in prim hands. In fact, they make me wish they were used more often in gestures. The forepaws also use some sort of animation to try and make the base avatar hands fit in a slightly smaller space while not having to use invisiprims. This is a nice step in the right direction in my opinion because it makes the paws less bulky and avoids having quite noticeable invisiprims hiding parts of the avatar’s body at certain view angles. Unfortunately this feature is in “beta”, as the documentation admits, and it shows. I noticed that other animations would at times override the hand animations, causing the base avatar fingers to be seen.

The legs are quite well done with the typical digitigrade look to them with dewclaws located on the upper part of the feet. The feet use a special shoe clothing layer to make them even smaller to fit into the hind paws. Sculpted invisiprims, which makes them much less noticeable and contoured are used to hide the base avatar mesh on the legs and feet. The tail is pretty typical for a flexi tail with the options to wag or not.

As is normal, we strive to bring up a few criticisms, trivial as they may be. Starting from the head down, I felt that the default, generic hair passes through the avatar’s ears a bit too much, but this isn’t a huge issue as people usually replace default hairs. Additionally, the ear twitch seemed a bit too random at times, causing each ear to move different directions in a slightly unnatural-looking manner.  Finally, the eyes, while very nicely designed and textured have circular pupils instead of vertical-slit pupils similar to real-world foxes, which may or may not have been a choice made under artistic license.

HUD

The HUD is pretty much the same as previous Kinzart Kreetures HUDs, consisting of a hide show button that then opens the HUD to a single page displaying the various options the avatar has. It works well enough and has some neat features, such as an open angle selector for the muzzle that can be touch-dragged to almost any angle. Included as well are selectors for primary and secondary eye color and eye glow.

Compared to some other HUDs though it’s a little cluttered. The HUD looks great on its own, but the eye color/glow palettes looked out of place compared to the rest of it. It could have been beneficial to have the selection pallets either hideable or on another separate HUD. However those again are minor issues that don’t interfere with it’s all over functionality.

Customization

Like most avatars these days this avatar’s parts are all modifiable so the end user can tweak them in anyway they please. However, since it uses prim eyes attached to the base avatar’s eyes shapes need a bit extra attention for the face settings to keep the eyes lined up properly. Also, like with many furry avatars, the digitigrade legs will get in the way of pants. They can be detached, but then you loose the rear fluff and dewclaws on the feet.

Conclusion

With so many creators making  fox avatars in Second Life, this means that there are a number of different artistic styles available to suit various users tastes. However, this multitude of fox avatars has a down-side; each fox is hard pressed to stand out in the marketplace. While no avatar is perfect, this is one of the better looking Red Fox avatars to come out in the most recent period of 2008-2009. Despite a slightly higher price, with it’s good looks and modern features it’s a great choice for anyone looking for a Fox Avatar on Second Life.