See More Avatars from: Luskwood

07 Jul 09 | List Price: L$

Easily identifiable for their defensive spraying and smell, skunks have often been an animal to run from. However, they are a lot less of a force to be reckoned with in Second Life through avatars that revisit the striped (or spotted) critters. In this review we take a look at the Luskwood Skunks.

A quick note:

This avatar was built in 2007, so it lacks some of the features that Luskwood and other creators use today, such as the usage of a talking jaw.

Out of the Box:

• Changeable Eye Color
• Eye Expression
• Scripted Hair Colour Alteration
• Facial Expression
• Fangs In/Out
• Claws In/Out
• Ear Expression and Twitching
• 2 Static, flexi-prim accented tails
• 8 Animations and Poses
  • Spray Poses and Particles

Build and Skin:

The issue with skunks is that by default, that they tend to be monochromatic; in varying shades of black and white. For a skunk avatar, therefore, the degree to which there are clear, distinct markings that reflect the original animal are just as important as texture quality. Skin-wise, this skunk has a fairly flat texture colouring to it. At the time this avatar had been released, the usage of shading to give the body skin a little more definition had not become standard. However, the detail in the markings helps to make up for this. There are two variations of skunk markings; a striped skunk and a spotted skunk.

In the striped skunk, the work has gone into defining the back stripes, as well as into the belly/chest fur patch. Alternatively, for the spotted skunk variation, there is no alternate coloured fur on the chest/belly, but instead there are an array of spots on the back. As is seen in the 360 degree panoramas of both avatars, there are differences in head and tail texturing between the two varieties of skunk.

The feet are rather standard claw-tipped and four-toed paws with prim pawpads on the underside. These are complimented by plantigrade leg attachments with fluff prims to smooth out the avatar shape-to-foot transition. The hand-paw attachments are similar, but more handlike, with some fluff attachments on the top side of the paw. Here too are arm attachments to smoothen the arm-to-handpaw transition. As is customary with many Luskwood avatars, there is some chest fluff as well.

Most notable about this avatar is perhaps the tail. This avatar was made before the addition of sculpted prims to Second Life, but after the addition of flexi-prims. This meant that Luskwood would have the ability to make a somewhat flexible tail, but could not make as countoured a shape as is possible with sculpts today. Their solution was to make a tail made up of solid torii and sphere prims alongisde flexible prims to produce a ‘fluffy’ looking tail.

Finally we can discuss the head. As would be expected, they maintain the markings of the skunk both under the hairprims, but also in the hairprims themselves. Users can change the colour of both the hair and the stripe that runs through the hair separately. As a whole, the head has a pleasant face; a broad muzzle and soft eyes makes the avatar seem friendly and approachable.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

Luskwood builds on the functionality of the options available with the HUD, two in particular being the ability to modify the twitchiness of the ears which have here become their own attachments. Additionally, the user is able to change the colour of the hair stripes like with the ability to change eye colour. The HUD allows people to change their eye colour with a RGB sliding mechanism and default palette choices, eye expressions, mouth expressions, ear-expression and twitchiness. Users are still able to save preset defaults for their avatar within the HUD itself.

A major feature that has been added exclusively for this avatar is partly controlled by the HUD, but the majority of its functions lie outside of the HUD’s control. In particular, the HUD has a toggle for a curling-up-on-the floor animation, as well as the ability for a user to posture themselves into a positions suitable to their respective behaviours in spraying. In particular, the striped skunk gets down on all fours and arches their back to spray, while the spotted skunk does an impressive handstand for its preparation. Unique to the striped skunk is the ability for the user to have their avatar stomp on the ground in warning as well. Finally, there is the ability for the avatar to spray a stream of particles.

Finally, I apparently nearly missed these animations because they only operate by command rather than through the HUD. People can therefore…

• /1curl              Toggles a curled sleeping position. (redundant with HUD)
• /1recline         Toggles a leaning back, reclined position.
• /1spray            Sprays a light stream of skunkstuff. (redundant with HUD)
• /1stomp           Stomps on all fours (striped only). (redundant with HUD)
• /1crossedsit    Simple sit for the ground.
• /1layback         Toggles a lay down on back position.
• /1laybelly         Toggles a lay down on belly position.
• /1pounce         Pounces forward and returns.
• /1scratch          Scratches back of head briefly.

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Customisation:

The avatar is fully modifiable and copiable, which ensures that people can play with the parts to their harts content. Clothing is easy to wear, though modification may be required to be able to use sculpt clothing alongside the arm and leg attachments. The head is fairly round and the hair is attached to the head, (this was before Luskwood began to make hair detachable), so in order to use your own hair, you will have to delink these hairs and modify your replacement to fit the head.

Conclusion:

The skunk avatar pays homage to its real world counterparts through reproducing their markings and their behaviours with attention to detail. The animations are a nice touch to a generally photogenic avatar that can double as  a conversation piece (i.e. with the spraying). Given that this avatar was built in a time when there was no sculpts and avatar creation techniques simply hadn’t developed to today’s level, the avatar remains a marker of the drive for creators to work with and sometimes around the Second Life client limitations.

This review was written by Forepawz - Contributor and Senior Editor | Filed under Avatar Reviews, Luskwood
Tagged gallery, lusk, luskwood, mephit, skunk.