Tokushi continues to release avatars of both fantasy backgrounds and personal creations, as well as unique avatars of animals that people don’t usually consider. The latest in their line of often under-represented species is their recreation of the interesting Chinese Crested Dog.

Out of the Box:

• Scripted Moving 3d Eyes with the option to manually pose them via HUD
• 3 Eye states (33 colours)
  • Independent dilation control
  • 4 Ear positions with independent control with optional twitch and typing detection
• Muzzle Talking Function for Typing and Voice-chat
• 7 Eyebrow and 4 mouth expressions with 3 tongue states and optional tongue animation.
• 10 independent hand poses
  • Two claw modes (In/Out)
  • Manual finger posing with also the option of up to 5 arm animations with an optional auto pose mode (this will cycle between the different poses excluding the point and flip off poses)
• 3 Tail poses
• Both Male and Female shapes
• Scripted toes that feature two claw modes.
• Extra Tokushi hoodie with sculpted parts.
• Sculpted muzzle custom fit for this avatar

Build and Skin:

This avatar is mostly the Tokushi Fox in terms of the overall look; with a near identical head, legs and paw structure to the preceding fox avatar before it. In this respect, there is not too much that is entirely new. However, significant enough changes have been made to the textures on the body. That is, numerous additions have been made to details which make the avatar different enough from the original to warrant a new review.

Sculpt-wise, the avatar is competent in every way, maintaining the standard that Tokushi has set itself for texture quality. All of the attachments appear cleanly textured and shaped. There aren’t many, if any wrinkles or bumps in the sculpts anywhere. As for the textures themselves, whether on the body or on the attachments, the avatar uses strong shading and distinction between colours in tribute to the creature it is based off of.

Something that’s new with this avatar is that there is both a male and a female skin offered. While Tokushi offered unisex skins in their avatars before this point, this avatar features both a male and a female skin to go along with the shapes that accompany the avatar. The female shape has a fair degree more shading around the breasts while the males have less shading on the chest and more distinction on their belly. It’s a surprising, but interesting move on Tokushi’s part. One criticism for the skins is that despite the usually great quality of shading from Tokushi, the shading across areas like the front of the avatar or the buttocks are a touch too dark-grey. This does not work so well with the pink-ish hues of the textures as a whole. Otherwise, it’s plain to see that a good deal of work went into making the skin is made to appear splotchy and imitate the skin of the actual animal.

Attachments:

Lower Body:

The avatar’s feet are still relatively smaller than you’d find on most furry avatars, but do a good job of suiting the avatar itself.  Each has 4 toes and nicely textured and sculpted pawpads for a good, solid look. As with the fox avatar, users are able to semi-retract and semi-extend the foot-claws on this avatar, although I do not know if Chinese Crested Dogs can actually do this. The digitigrade legs themselves are well-constructed with a decent size and well-placed height and shape for the reverse knee bend. A common theme for this avatar is the ruffly accent prims which imitate the shaggy fur on the real creature. For the accent fur on this avatar, the creators have chosen to use sculpted ruffles of white fur with the tips accented with colour.

The tail itself is a very thin one, a strip of speckled skin at the base. However, the lower down the tail one looks, we find it covered with the same kind of shaggy fur that was viewed on the digitigrade legs. The shape and appearance of the tail overall is fluid and suits the avatar well. There are no flexible versions of the tail as this kind of tail most likely would not work by being made up of flexi-prims. However, the user can adjust the tail to 3 different positions or activate the subtle and occasional tail twitch.

Upper Body:

The hand and wrist attachments are the only items worn on the upper body. We had mentioned in the fox review that the hands are human-based when looking from above, but on the underside, you see a hand/paw mix with prevalent paw-pads. The hand size is appropriate for the body, and fits flush with the rest of the arm if one chose not to wear the wrist-fluff. Here, we see the continued application of Tokushi’s new user-controlled custom hand-pose system. As such, users still can use the pre-made Tokushi hand poses (pointing, etc.) or make their own combinations of arm animations and finger poses.

Head:

The head is textured to follow in line with the body itself, covered with splotches of pink skin and whatever the base-colour the user chose (e.g. orange, black, etc.) The muzzle itself is of reasonable length and shaped to fit the head adequately. For those wondering which head this avatar uses, it is the Arctic Fox head, or the alternative head that was offered with Tokushi’s “Red Fox” avatar. The interior itself is well designed and distinctly canine in appearance, especially considering the teeth. The tongue deserves mention because Tokushi has scripted the tongue to move during speech, adding an extra touch to the avatar. I completely missed this feature in the fox review, but users have the option of turning on a “Tongue Animation” which causes the tongue to animate in a panting kind of motion. This is one of the best panting animations we’ve seen to date.

Next, we look at the eyes; well textured and captivating, they move through scripted blink rather than eyeball attachments. Users can choose from numerous preset eye texture colours and eye dilation. As Chinese Crested Dogs are not vulpine, there is no option to make the pupils slitted.

As most of the head and body remains more or less hairless, the sides of the face receive no fluff prims, but the face still has a full compliment of whiskers placed on the end of the muzzle, the eyebrows, and the cheeks. As with most newer Tokushi avatars, the eyebrows are fully expressive with a number of settings to express emotions like confusion, surprise, or anger.

A major detail for the head is that of the hair; which, despite its length and appearance, remains strongly unisex. The pictures speak for themselves; long shaggy hair that droops down to the shoulders, but leaves room for the ears themselves. While on the topic of the ears, they come in two different versions; shaved and unshaved. The unshaved versions are just that; long, but covered on the outside surface only with a light amount of fur. For those who want to have a little more fun, they can wear the unshaven ears with a huge amount of fluff prims covering the surface; both the front and back of the ears. These are a good degree more ornate than the other choice.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

The Hoodie itself is the conventional Tokushi hoodie we’ve come to see with sculpted sleeve cuffs and hood. The sculpted part that fits over the hips comes in two different versions to suit both the included male and female shapes. The pictures are self-explanatory.

The Muzzle that comes with this avatar is a well fitted and believable leather muzzle complete with various buckles. The straps extend between the eyes and around the cheeks to meet at a ring at the back of the head. This happens to be one of the best muzzles that I’ve seen come with an avatar; such that it makes as much a cute accessory to wear. And of course, when the muzzle is worn, the jaw animations are turned off until the muzzle is taken off.

The avatar is controlled completely by way of its HUD, but as usual, Tokushi has offered a list of text commands that users can use to access and modify all of the options.

• Ears: Toggle Movement when Typing, Toggle Twitching, Toggle Twitching when touched, Individual Ear Position
• Eyes: Eye Texture, Toggle Eye Movement, Center Eye Position (Zero Eye Rotation), Toggle Blink, Toggle Eyelid State, Modify Pupil Dilation
• Face: Eyebrow Expressions (Angry, Sad, Surprised, etc.)
• Mouth: Open/Closed State Toggle, Custom Mouth Openness +/-, Tongue In/Out Toggle, Muzzle Expressions (Smile, Neutral and Frown)
• Tail: Choose from the numerous positions, Toggle Tail Animation
• Feet: Claws in or Out
• Hands: Toggle 10 Pre-made Hand Poses for each hand, Auto-Pose Toggle, Individual Finger Setting, Arm Animation Settings, Help Button

Customisation:

This avatar is copy-modifiable, so users should not have any real difficulty in modifying the avatar to suit their tastes. However, as the forehead shape for this avatar is not the conventional humanoid shape, users may need to play with any third party hairs they wish to wear.

Conclusion:

When the photos for this avatar were first made available, someone exclaimed in the Tokushi chat, “DX  OMGOMGOMG…….its both ugly and cute at the same time.” Many people have argued for or against the notion that Chinese Crested Dogs in real life are cute or not. Tokushi has, at least in my opinion, recreated the animal in Second Life with accuracy, but at the same time, made it much cuter through the application of their style. Out of all the canine avatars that I have seen and/or reviewed, I never thought I’d have come across a Chinese Crested Dog. For sure, if any users wished to don a rarely considered canine avatar, this one would be one to look over.