With this review, we go back in time a little to revisit one of Kinzart’s earliest released avatars on the main grid. As such, we will have to remember how age factors into this 2-year-old avatar. With this avatar, we see an almost chimaeric quality with cloven hooves, a lion-esque face, and wings.
Out of the Box:
- Male and Female Shapes and Skins
- 13 Eye Colours (Prim Eyes)
- 3 Eye States
- Muzzle Talking Function
- Automated Wings (Fold, Unfold)
- Wagging Flexible Tail (With Toggle)
- Twitching Ears (With Toggle)
- 3 Ear Positions
- Hands with 6 Pre-made Poses
- Solid and a Flexible Mane included
- Optional Whiskers
- Custom Flight Animation Overrider
| Measurement | Value |
|---|---|
| Script Time / Memory (With HUD) | ~0.3-1.4ms / TBD |
| Script Time / Memory (without HUD) | ~0.25ms / TBD |
| Avatar Rendering Cost (Scale Here) | ~1600 |
| Modify? | Yes |
| Copy? | Yes |
| Transferable? | No |
Build and Skin:
The build quality for this avatar is not equal to that of modern Kinzart offerings, but appropriate for the Mid-2008 period when it was constructed. The sculpts are smooth, but we can see that in the head, for example, the creator used multiple sculpted prims to put the face together, causing a little bit more creasing than you would find on their more recent heads. Altogether, however, the sculpt quality is decent. There is no knobbling or wrinkling anywhere on the attachments.
Skin-wise, the avatar is usually one colour, but in three different shades, such as on the main body, the chest, and other areas like the tip of hair, wings, or the legs. The fur is simple but enhanced by a degree of shading for organic appearance and softness. If one looks closely, they can see the painted-in fuzziness to represent fur. There is another variety of the Thel that features tiger-like stripes. The lines that surround the body on this colour-choice are well drawn and shaded. As seen from accompanying photos, the lines themselves are sharp and very clear.
A down-side to the textures is that there is no PG skins; something that Kinzart corrected with later avatars. As such, the female skin comes with female genitilia and stick-on nipples. Males receive faint impressions of nipples under fur. All of the photos in this review have been taken at angles which hide the genitilia in order to keep things relatively PG. Warning, Mature: Here is a photo of the mature female Thel Skin in Full.
Attachments:
Lower Body:
This avatar has feet that more or less mimic a cross between hoofs and normal feet. Normally we find sections of hoof close to one another, but the Thel has a fair distance between two pieces of hoof, which gives it a toe-like appearance. With a little bit of prim-fluff surrounding the hoofs, the feet give way to digitigrade/unguligrade legs of appropriate size and shape to hold up the avatar’s bulk. The top of the leg attachments are a bit thick for the female shape, but look slightly better for the male shape. Some shape adjustment might be needed to smoothen the transition between the body shape and the leg attachments.
The other attachment included with the lower body is the tail, which is a single flexible prim. The colouration matches that of the body, though for the striped variety of avatar, the stripes aren’t very clear on the tail. Some users may have appreciated a version of the tail made of sculpts. Users are able to have the tail swish from side to side.
Upper Body:
Straight away, we’ll discuss the wings. For the most part, they are very similar to the wing-style employed in later avatars, such as the Kinzart Eastern Dragon or their bat. These wings attach to the shoulder points on the back. When the user is not flying; the wings fold behind the back. An arm-like structure extends from between the shoulder-blades to a hand-like formation where the wing starts. A theme with Kinzart wings is how they are formed from the hand-like digits, but that a single free digit remains at the apex of the wings. Each tip of the wing is topped with a sharp claw. The membrane that makes up the wing between the digits is thin and translucent, but is given shading and colour to look like skin. Additionally, the wing membrane has a bunch of holes scattered throughout which makes them look all the more interesting.
When the avatar begins flight, the Animation overrider takes over. The folded wings go invisible, and the fully extended wings become opaque. The animation overrider provides a smooth, competent flapping motion when idle, and a simple dive when you stop flying.
The hands are fairly basic despite their 4-fingered appearance. Users are able to set each individual hand in a variety of different poses, such as ‘relaxed,’ ‘middle-finger,’ ‘peace,’ etc. The hand attachments are large, but feral looking with very long claws and paw-pads on the palms. There is not much else to these attachments other than their spindly appearance and dangerous appearance.
We’ll mention briefly that there is also “chest fluff” included. These are simply sculpted fluff on the chest.
Head:
The head for this avatar stands out above the rest of the body because of its unique look. One part of the head that attracts a lot of attention is the eyes, where we will start our look at the head. The textures themselves are colourful; users can choose from a variety of pre-set textures in numerous different tones. While the slitted eyeball textures add to the avatar, the position of the eyes detracts from the head. That is, the avatar looks best from a side angle as opposed to a front angle which makes the eyes look awkwardly positioned. From the front, unfortunately the eyes look incredibly mismatched and as if they are staring into different directions. This was a issue of old Kinzart avatars that was quickly improved and eradicated in the ones that followed. Because the eyebrow sculpts are separate prims, the blink will not always be synchronised, especially in slow sims.
The muzzle is feline in appearance, almost lion, or tiger-like in its general shape. The sides of the rounded muzzle are bordered with thick white whiskers which users can opt out of by detaching the whisker attachment. Over the bottom lip are two protruding fangs which add a ferocious quality to the face. Additionally, thick sculpted fluff forms a kind of mini-goatee on the bottom jaw. The interior of the muzzle features the usual compliment of teeth, tongue, and a neatly textured uvula at the back of the mouth.
Above the forehead are the two long horns that have been shaped and textured extremely accurately. Another touch is the long, thin ears that sit next to the horns. While simple in structure, these have been constructed well, and the addition of a unique assortment of gold or silver rings on each ear adds to the Thel’s personality.
Finally, users are given the option to choose between two different kinds of ‘mane.’ One is a flexible-prim, while the other is made of full prims. In general, they both provide a large, flowing mane that makes its way down the back of the head.
Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):
This avatar uses the two-HUD system. The main ‘ HUD that comes with this avatar is the very basic one that Kinzart Kreetures used to provide to their earlier customers. All of the commands for the avatar are only accessible through this HUD. The other is only for eye texture selection. The options are:
- Hand Poses
- Smile/Frown Toggle
- Eyebrow Neutral/Angry
- Tail Swishing Toggle
- 3 Eye States
Customisation:
The head is of roughly human size, though slightly more rounded. In this way, users should be able to replace the mane with a hair of their own liking, or even go without. Because of the brows, it may be a little difficult to fit it to the forehead properly.
Conclusion:
The Kinzart Kreetures Thel is a fairly old avatar, clocking in at almost 2 years since its release, but suffice to say, it holds its own. The biggest criticism we had for the avatar was the eyes, but again, considering the avatar’s age, this is forgivable. Overall, the Thel still looks presentable and offers itself as a fun avatar with an interesting blend of features that users should find themselves able to enjoy.
