Several months after their Fruit and Vampire Bat release, Lusk offers a new sculpted hyena avatar. The avatar comes in the popular spotted variety, as well as striped and brown hyena. In typical Luskwood style, this particular avatar is a strong interpretation of the iconic African Feliformia.

Out of the Box:

• Blinking Eyes
• Color Changing Eyes/Oddeyes Support
• Color Changing Hair (Scripted)
• Mouth Expressions
• Scripted Mouth Open/Close
• Twitching Ears
• Wagging Tail Up/Down
• Avatar HUD/GUI
• Included Pieces:
  • Flexi Tail
  • Hairless Head
  • Seperate Lower Jaw
  • Plantigrade Leg setup

Build and Skin

First of all, the skin is well done, far more detailed and holding more texture than a large variety of Luskwood’s older avatars, with the exception of the complexity of some of their Big Cat avatars. In the case of the Striped Hyena avatar that is being reviewed here, the creators have gone out of their way to ensure that not only the skin, but the textures on the attachments have a fur-like texture applied to them. The stripes are sharp in contrast against the main colour, making sure that there is no blurriness in the textures.

Moving on to the Build Quality, the attachments that are offered aside from the head are usual Lusk quality; they’re competent and fit well together, there’s no errors and the textures match up well. One can wear the feet with plantigrade or digitigrade legs, meaning you can wear the prim legs or wear normal SL clothing with them. The avatar also comes with arm attachments and paw-hands. The hands and feet are not neccesarily made to convey realism, but are cutely done and fit the avatar well.

In regards to the head, the avatar comes with iconic sculpted hyena ears with good textures and fluff. Additionally, a hyena-ish mane is included; adding to the homage of the species. The eyes do not move outside of blinking, as is par for Lusk avatars. However,  this is made up for by the quality of the muzzle. The muzzle and jaw are also sculpted and mesh well with the head. However, some may take issue with the lower jaw in a few small ways.

One of the advantages to the way that the jaw is set up with the avatar is that the mouth can open and show teeth without having to use a seperate mouth attachment for the jaw. However, the drawback is that this jaw cannot open and close on its own whenever one is talking; to have this function, the avatar would need a detached jaw that connects to a seperate attachment point. The Lusk staff was thoughtful to include a seperate jaw for their customers so they can gain talking functionality. However modders need keep in mind that the extra, detached jaw has no script contained within; it will be up to the user to place a script in the jaw for it to move during text or voice chat. There are both purchasable and free Open-source options for getting this option to work.

Heads Up Display (HUD)

The HUD is simple, but well done; allowing you to use a slider to choose the colour of the hair or the irises. The features offered are not dissimilar from that of their bat avatar, but are user-friendly through HUD and text command means. The HUD utilizes a neat slider function to get the job done. The HUD also offers the ability to modify settings for the mouth, the tail, the ears, and facial expression. The extras are available through a convenient ‘unpack extras’ button on the HUD itself. It’s basically the carrying over of the most successful parts of the Luskwood Bat HUD.

Customisability

The entire avatar is modifiable and copiable, which means that you can edit, add, and make any changes to the avatar to suit your taste. What is of important mention is the fact that one can easily apply hair that would normally work on a normal human avatar head to the hyena head. However, you might need to modify the hair for it to fit properly; as the hyena head is a bit larger than a normal head. Additionally, as mentioned before, if you’re at least a newbie at avatar modification, it may be a small task to get the jaw attachment to move.

Conclusion

In the end, this avatar is well rounded creation. From the mane down to the feet, the avatar replicates the properties familiar to hyenas. While people can not necessarily expect to find maximum realness to the avatar, Lusk made an avatar that looks lively and cute.