See More Avatars from: Kinzart Kreetures

11 Sep 09 | List Price: L$

We often don’t review avatars based on copyrighted material, but we make exceptions occasionally, such as in the case of this Renamon avatar. A common creature to Digimon™ lovers alike, Renamon obviously take their influences from the Japanese Kitsunes. Ironically, here we find the Digital Monster re-created for a true Digital World.

Out of the Box:

• Male and Female Shapes and Skins
  • Mature Female Skin included
• Moving Eyes
• Tail wag
• Eye Expressions
• Sculpted or Flexi Tail
• Sculpted Arm-warmers

Measurement	Value
Script Time with HUD	NOT APPLICABLE
Script Time without HUD	~0.034
Avatar Rendering Cost	~360-540

Build and Skin:

First of all, it should be noted that this avatar has been noted by the creator as one of ‘Fan Service.’ It was a product borne of boredom and as such, remains less feature-rich or as  complete as avatars that both preceded or followed it.

That aside, as I have not played Digimon in any form nor was I a fan of the television show, the least that can be said is that it truly does reflect the animated representations of the Digital monster.  The body textures are very simple, but effectively shaded across the belly and back, (as well as the breast area for females). Overall, flatness is avoided so the otherwise vibrant yellow fur wouldn’t be an eyesore on the screen. The markings on the front of the legs as well as the cheeks remain true to the original, though the leg-markings may seem a little large to some.

Take Notice: The pictures under this link are rated Mature – Click here to view the Female Adult Skins

This avatar comes three-toed feet and with a decently sized digitigrade leg attachment that doesn’t draw very much attention. Out of the box, however, where the avatar’s knee-caps meet the digitigrade attachments may require a little editing; the avatar’s legs are smaller than the digitigrade attachments, which creates a poor visual transition. The Flexible tail is conventional in implementation, looking similar to that of the Kinzart Fox’s. Yet, the Sculpted tail is far more visually appealing on this avatar and goes along with the stylised sculpt fluff of the rest of the avatar. Given that the semi-transparent alpha texture ‘fluff’ is used nowhere else on the avatar, the flexible tail looks slightly out of place.

The hands, like the feet have three digits, with the middle digit surrounded by a purple ring, which in turn holds the glove/arm-warmer attachment of sorts in place. The avatar is made to wear with the gloves, so removing them will require at least an amateur skill level. However, the gloves are made very well, to the point that they have almost become a focal point of the avatar themselves with their detailed textures. However, the Taoist (i.e. Ying/Yang) sign on the wrists of the glove are a little bit stretched.

Naturally, the Renamon comes with sculpt spikes for the back of the shoulders, and a decent mane that covers the shoulders and front-upper chest with an array of sculpted fluff prims as decoration.  Without the mane, the avatar seems to lose some of its personality. Finally, we reach the head. To put it simply, it’s a fairly simple head with moving eyes but an un-moving mouth. The accompanying notecard from the creator states that because of the peculiar shape of Renamon’s head, it was too difficult to include a Muzzle-talking function. The muzzle is set into a fairly steely, neutral expression with basic drawn details giving the entire muzzle its definition.

A weak point with this avatar, however is that the eyes are very near perpendicular to the muzzle which would make looking ‘forward’ for this species very difficult. As a result, the avatar can appear peculiar when looks straight-on at the face. This is a small shame given that from a side angle, the eye textures are vibrant and reflect the piercing glare of Renamon’s frosty blue eyes. Fortunately, the shading over the eyelids makes the avatar look slightly less wall-eyed, as well. Otherwise, we see the two softly curved ear-like protrusions at the top of the head and fluff on the cheeks.

Heads Up Display (HUD) and Features:

As before mentioned, there really are no features with this avatar other than the eye-expression settings and the tail swishing options, both of which are controlled by text commands detailed in the accompanying notecard.

Customisation:

The avatar is copiable and modifiable, so users should be able to play with its features, except for installing a muzzle-talking function on it. The head is made of entirely one single sculpt, so just short of reverse-engineering the avatar, it is not very possible to add a believable lower jaw. The head is slightly irregularly shaped, so there may be difficulty getting some third party hairs on. Cementing its status as perhaps a fetish object, I have already seen a rubbery/latex version of the Renamon avatar; purchasable as a modifiable package from a third party.

Conclusion:

Despite my lack of knowledge in matters concerning Digimon, I can at least say that looking at the appropriate pictures, this avatar does indeed manage to reflect the more popular renditions of the character. This avatar does not follow the quality standard or feature-depth that we have come to expect from Kinzart, but considering how it was just a side-project out of boredom, this is completely forgiveable. There is a reason this isn’t sold in the main Kinzart vendors, after all. Otherwise, this avatar is sure to have adopters who wish to take on the image of one of their favourite cartoon characters.

This review was written by Forepawz - Contributor and Senior Editor | Filed under Avatar Reviews, Kinzart Kreetures
Tagged digimon, gallery, kinz, kinzart, renamon.