For anybody into video games, Koopas and Royal Koopas should be familiar species. However, they’re somewhat rare in Second Life. Peach Fuzz has taken the Royal Koopas and brought them to life with these interesting avatars.
Out of the Box:
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Observations
Skin and Textures:
Koopas are reptilian, specifically turtle- or tortoise-like. As such, they are rather scaly creatures. It is hard to emulate scales on Second Life, especially as a texture, even moreso as a skin. Keeping that in mind, this avatar’s skin is actually of very good quality, with almost no seams noticeable anywhere on the skin. The most prominent seam is on the back of the neck.
The scales are shiny, but not overpoweringly so. This gives them a nice scaly feel without making them look like shiny leather or buttons.
While the texture quality overall is very good, there is one noticeable problem. Where the prim attachments meet the mesh body – the elbows and knees, for example – a very obvious clash of textures can be seen. The scales on the skin are large and shine on each individual scale, while the scales on the prim attachments are much smaller and shine over an area. When zoomed out, this isn’t a big complaint, but when zoomed in, it’s very obvious. Clothing can cover this up, however.
Overall Build
The avatar is almost entirely sculpted. In general, the sculpt quality, especially that of the geometric sculpts found on the shell, is good. There is some sculpt wrinkling noticeable, though.
As far as attachments go, everything on the avatar fits together well. The only real complaint is that the shell clips through the avatar’s arms quite often, but that’s always going to be hard to avoid regardless.
In-Depth Body Summary
The feet are standard, 3-toed, reptilian, plantigrade feet. They’re similar in shape to human feet, with the sole of the foot being a fleshy pink color and the top part being scaled in whatever color you chose (green, yellow, etc).
The legs are interesting. Rather than trying to adapt the ankle of the prim foot to fit the mesh ankle, the creator has opted to create a full prim lower leg. This does help the leg and foot of the avatar fit together better. The avatar looks fine with and without the lower leg prims.
Also, note that because this avatar was released before the advent of alpha layers, the creator has used invisi-prims on the legs and heels of the feet to hide the mesh. No alpha layer is included with the avatar.
The tail is short and stubby, much like a turtle’s. It’s textured in a similar fashion to the other prim attachments, with smaller, not overly prominent scales.
The shell is probably the most important part on a Koopa. The creator has opted to sculpt the majority of the shell, including the geometric ’tiles’. This is done very well – there’s no wrinkling visible anywhere on the shell and its textures match those of the avatar itself. If you detach and rez the shell, it looks very much like a shell from the original games. It is unscripted, but as it’s modifiable, you could easily add your own scripts to emulate that famous Koopa shell attack!
The creator has chosen to use prim forearms on this avatar as well to help the hand blend into the mesh arm. These work well, but unlike the leg attachments, it’s probably advisable to keep these attached.
The hands are also human-like in shape and size, with four fingers on each hand. The palm and underside of the fingers are also a pink fleshy color, like the soles on the feet. Each finger ends in a large, somewhat dulled claw.
Again, as this avatar was released before alpha layers, the creator had two options for hiding the mesh hand: Use an invisible prim and have that clip through the avatar body, or make the hand a bit larger than needed to hide the hand. The creator has gone with the latter option. However, with some animations, the fingers will poke out of the hand. This can be easily remedied by adding your own alpha layer.
In-Depth Head Summary
The head of this avatar varies slightly between the genders. The most notable difference between them is that the male has much larger horns than the female. They also each come with a different set of hair.
The Koopa’s skull is rounded, rather than elongated. The muzzle itself is also more rounded than pointy, which fits the species. They also have a prominent lower lip, which seems to be more noticeable on the female avatar than the male.
The mouth boasts a full set of teeth with a dual set of mean-looking fangs. The front set of these fangs poke out over the bottom lip, clipping through it a little.
The eyes, which attach to the mesh eyes, are free-moving. They will follow your cursor like the normal mesh eyes do. These can be re-colored via the HUD or retextured by you using the recolor pack.
The eyelids are separate from the head – they rotate, rather than sculpt animate, to blink. Thankfully, however, they are one prim, which avoids the annoying de-synchronization problem often found with prim eyelids on older avs.
The hair for the avatar is fairly basic and mostly sculpted. These differ between the genders – females have a longer set of hair with a full set of bangs, while the males have a more swept-back look.
The head overall is nicely designed, but there are a few sculpt and texture disagreements, such as the abrupt texture change where the muzzle meets the skull.
Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD)
The HUD is a simple one-page, self-explanatory one. The only complaint is that it does not have a ‘hide’ feature. It must be detached instead.
All features are controlled via HUD. The jaw, lips, and brows have three, three, and seven states, respectively. The eyes have four stages of openness that can be controlled with the numbers to the right of the eye colors.
There’s a little surprise hidden within the avatar as well, according to the notecard… We can’t spoil the surprise, though, mostly because we haven’t found it yet ourselves!
Customization
The avatar is extremely customizable. The creator has generously made available all of the textures, in greyscale, used on the avatar – skins included in two layers – so you can save the textures out of Second Life, open them up in your favorite image editing program, and edit them to your heart’s desire.
As the skull of the Koopa is rounded, it shouldn’t be a problem getting third-party hairs to fit. The biggest problem one might encounter here is the horns getting in the way of things.
Conclusion
Old-school gamers looking for avatars of their favorite characters should enjoy adding this avatar to their collection. With its great customization potential, it can be changed to fit almost any taste in color or pattern.
