See More Avatars from: Ninjaweasel Studios
16 Mar 09 | List Price: L$
After a bit of a hiatus, Ninjaweasel has returned to release a Fennec avatar. Following their successful update of their rat avatar, the creator have gone back to revisit their aging (and now lower priced) Fennec avatar with an updated, more expressive avatar with new personality.
Out of the Box:
- Includes both male and female shapes
- 14 different eye colours; each eye colourable individually
- Twitching/Poseable Ears
- Animated Jaw with ‘talk’ movement during typing and voice
- Tongue-Razz and Animation Gesture
- Modifiable and Copyable
Build and Skin
As aforementioned, the avatar is expressive and contains personality that NWS is noted for putting into their avatars. The textures are well done, fleshing out a modern cartoonish style of light but bold lines with appropriate shading and colour. The colour choices are not as variable as their pre-sculpted avatars, however, whatever colours made available are likely the colours people buy most often. The textures on the avatar are uniform from head to toe without any discontinuities of any kind.
The quality of the attachments is well done, with Ninjaweasel offering both digitigrade and plantigrade legs and feet to wear with the avatar. The digitigrade legs use invisiprims, so there might be some invisibility issues against semi-transparent and fully transparent textures. True to the Ninjaweasel proportions, the limbs are slightly larger than natural fennecs’ would be, lending to the the exaggerated toon quality of the avatar. The feet and legs are built well, and meaty hand-paws are included. The tail is fully sculpted, but there is no flexible tail included if you are looking for one.
Moving to the head, it is undeniably a fennec avatar with the very large ears and relatively small muzzle. Starting with the ears, they are sculpted and scripted to twitch and swivel in three different modes: Folded behind the head, Standing up, and Perked straight over the head. Like the rest of the body, the ears and head are textured well, with the eyes bright and lively. The eyes move on their own with random script movement, just like the NWS rat avatar. This helps to make the avatar look more alive and attentive. The muzzle also opens and closes with Muzzle movement action while typing or using voice chat.
The avatar comes with both a male and female shapes and appropriate heads for both genders. The differences lie in both the hair that comes with the head and the eyes. In the end, one head will look masculine, while the other will be strongly effeminate.
Heads up Display (HUD)
At the time of this review publication, there has been no HUD included with the avatar. However, there has been assurance by NWS staff that at a later date, the HUD will be made available to customers. When that does happen, this review will be updated with the new information.
The avatar comes with commands that allow users to modify and customise their avatar. These are all available in the notecard that comes with the avatar. With these commands, people can change the ear position, change their eye colour, change the eye expressions (open, closed, tired, squint) and tongue settings.
Customisation
Since the avatar is based on toony proportions, it can be difficult for beginner users to get accessories built for more proportional avatars to work with this avatar. However, even amateur users will be able to do the rudimentary modifications neccesary after a little fiddling with this avatar. Accessories to fit the head such as hair might be a little difficult to fit to this avatar as the shape is very circular. Otherwise, this avatar is very modifiable; it comes as Modifiable and Copiable.
Conclusion
This Fennec avatar is well rounded and full of personality that one would expect from Ninjaweasel. In the end, the product can mostly only be judged by personal preference; specifically in regard to whether one likes the look of the avatar or not. The entire avatar is a complete package, even without the initially released HUD.
Tagged fennec, fox, gallery, Ninjaweasel, NWS.
