Recently, Luskwood has brought in a shift in style with the Lusktoons brand, and even more recently, taken a slightly different direction with the Kellashee. In this review, we discuss not only what is a unique creature, but a departure in style for Luskwood.
Out of the Box:
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Observations:
Build and Skins:
This avatar comes in a plethora of colours; even though the base colour of the avatar will always be black. Where the bright colours come into play is actually in how the markings are rendered; from startling neon blue-greens, to white, to warm oranges. The stripes themselves are never actually just a flat colour; but often are two contrasting colours or shades that make a neat visual effect. Hand-painted fur texturing is found over certain areas, accenting the chest fur, belly, and inner thighs. Overall, the textures are very well done.
Build-quality of this avatar is sound, with no real crinkling in the sculptures. Additionally, the avatar construction has put numerous sculpts together with minimal creases. The avatar comes as a male or a female shape, and accompanying skins. As usual, the former’s skin focuses on a more generically masculine look, while the female skin puts emphasis on a little extra breast shading.
Attachments:
Perhaps before we go anywhere with discussing the attachments fully, we’ll point out that this avatar comes as a very ‘fluffy’ one. Accent fluff is visible everywhere; from the digi-legs to the kneecaps, wrists, tail-tip, and more. These are usually colored in the same colour as the stripes, and fit with the avatar’s major colours.
Either way, we start with the legs. This avatar’s got your rudimentary feline-ish foot-paws with sculpted paw-pads on the underside and recolourable toe-claws. From the top of the feet you get the beginnings of the stripes that will soon cover the entire body. The legs are well proportioned and make a clean transition between the body mesh and the foot-paws. Additionally, the legs look well suited to the slightly stocky build of the overall avatar.
Next, this avatar comes with one option for a tail; a sculpted appendage with a somewhat tassel-like end made of both sculpted and flexible ‘fluff.’ A flexible tail likely would have cheapened the look of the avatar, but some may still wish they had this option. This avatar was intended to have a little bit of a dragon-like presence, so the thick, yet tapering tail fits. Users can either wear it down or have it curl upwards.
It’s at this point that I’ve realised that this avatar, like many others, would suffer if too many of the details was removed; each part removed would make it much less visually interesting and complete.
Of course, a highlight of this avatar is the wings; colorful, thin membranes that borrow heavily from that of a Monarch butterfly’s. These give the av most of its Fae quality, not only with their colour, but also their shape. While also being heavily butterfly-influenced, the muscled part of the wings, and the singular claw at the wing-tips present a draconian influence as well. The avatar comes with a single, but very cleanly animated, natural ‘flapping’ animation when station in mid-air. (We’d like to show video content, but SLARF isn’t just ready for that yet!)
The hand-paw attachments are similar to the footpaws, but follow the human hand structure closely while keeping claws and paw-pads. The finger poses are relaxed and suit the avatar in pretty much any situation it might be in. Before we go into greater detail about the head, we’ll point out that the avatar comes with a good touch of neck ‘ruffs’; fluff prims that forms a kind of mane on the chest and gives this avatar a fluffy, slightly lion-ish vibe.
Head:
Finally, we’re on the topic of the head. From the first look, the head takes influences from felines, but also again from Fae, and then again some dragon. The face is distinctly feline with a big-cat muzzle lined with lots of sculpted whiskers. One criticism could be that the whiskers could have been a little thinner so that they didn’t take up such a large part of the face’s overall look, but users can easily fiddle with that on their own. The interior of the muzzle comes with a full compliment of teeth as well as the ability to play stick one’s tongue out of their muzzle. The regular features are included with the muzzle, such as the muzzle-talking function during typing or voice.
Aside from the crisp and colorful facial markings, the focal point of the face would have to be the eyes. Outside of the Lusktoons brand, this is the first official main brand avatar to tackle moving eyes, and they do it well. The eye-whites and the pupils are fairly dark black, but the irises are themselves brightly textured and easily customized. Users can change the two iris colours using the HUD, as well as the helpful option of changing the size of the inner and outer iris rings (and therefore the pupils themselves). Otherwise, the eyebrows are fairly pronounced on this avatar, giving the head a slightly more feral shape. Generally, pronounced eyebrows can only ever be made better with facial expressions to up the emotive potential of the avatar.
As we draw to a close on our discussion of the head, we’ll point out the large amount of stylised sculpted and flexible prims on the cheeks, crown of the head, and the back of the head. Altogether, this gives the avatar a visual character and exemplifies the fluffiness the Kellashee exudes. Added to the fairly luxurious hairstyling is the addition of horns, antennae and ears. The ears themselves are feline-ish but with raggedy tips, and twitch idly on their own. For the antennae, users can either swivel them to the front of the head, or have them swept back away from the head. And finally, users have a choice between three different horn types, each offering something a little different.
Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):
Normally, we don’t say too much about the HUDs, instead choosing to let the photos do the talking. However, we do like to recognise when people do an exceptional (or otherwise terrible) job with their HUD designs and features. In this case, Luskwood has created one of the strongest HUDs we’ve had the opportunity to review. At first glance, it’s the usual Lusk HUD, but it’s surprisingly not the case.
To the far left is the HUD when it’s completely minimised. To the right of that, the main HUD itself deals with matters of the head; the options that people would want to edit most often; eye colours, pupil dilation, ear twitching, muzzle expressions and more. As always, the changes you make to the avatar are reflected on the face making up the HUD; every colour adjustment, and more.
The second major part of this HUD happens when you click the purple ‘ l> ‘ button. You’re now able to edit the options you wouldn’t change very often. Like the head, users are able to see a full representation of the avatar, as well as any changes they make. Each edit is snappily applied on both the HUD and the avatar itself.
The HUD comes across as user-friendly already, but the ability to click the “?” at the bottom left of the avatar allows users to select any option they see on the head and receive a small purple tooltip explaining what the option does, and exactly how to modify it (See far right). The pictures more or less speak for themselves here on in, but this all really demonstrate how an avatar can have an immersive, detailed and visually impressive HUD while maintaining the avatar’s total script memory usage below 500kb.
Customization:
This avatar comes as completely copiable and modifiable. If any parts say that they’re (no modifiy), an included notecard points out that that is not the case. The included hair is detachable, so users can put on a third party hair pretty easily. The head-shape is pretty unique though, so you may need at least a fair bit of experience with modifiying hairs to get them to fit properly.
Conclusion:
The Luskwood Kellashee is a completely different type of avatar for the company. The overall look is very different in that it’s not only a made-up/chimera type avatar, but one that uses the supposedly popular, vaunted “3D Eyes.” In both respects, this avatar changes things up stylistically, but confidently maintains the standard that Luskwood has set for itself in polishing and finishing an avatar. With a very cute character, a lot of fun colour, and an impressive HUD, the Kellashee comes together as a well-rounded, unique, and aesthetic avatar.
Addendum: I should note that this avatar is from a new creator that has joined the ranks of the Luskwood avatar creators. There are 4 different members that make up this task force; and this is the entry avatar for this one individual. Therefore, while one can expect avatars of this style to continue to come from Luskwood, this will not be the only style of avatar that will be released.
