See More Avatars from: Tokushi

11 Feb 10 | List Price: L$

Yet another in their line of make-believe creatures, Tokushi releases the Floof; a creature that comes as both a wearable arm-critter (sold separately) and a full-fledged avatar. This review focuses only the colourful, wearable avatar. This particular avatar has a fantastical, storybook quality to its appearance that makes it interesting.

Out of the Box:

Build and Skin:

This avatar is a fairly stout fellow with a squat figure. It has only has a generic “Floof” shape; nothing particularly masculine or female in any way as much asexual/unisex. The patternings on the skin are fairly simple, save for different tones and shades of the avatar. Tokushi does maintain its usage of highlights and shadows to give the skin dimension and depth, successfully keeping the shape and attachments from looking flat and lifeless. The usual Tokushi brush-stroke fur is on this avatar, most noticeable around the neck and top of the torso’s front and back.

The feet on the avatar are three-toed paws with extra-long toes tipped with black nails. There are no paw-pads on the feet, but a white-ish underside to each toe. The heels are small, but give way to a digitigrade leg which extends a fair bit away from the body than we normally see. Normally a digitigrade leg of this angle would look odd, but this avatar comes with thick thigh attachments that smooth out the transition between the body and the digitigrade legs. Each of the attachments are shaded well, and on the lateral surface a slightly darkened area shows off three relatively light spots.

The thigh prims also seemingly double as hindquarters for the avatar, and they handle most positions and poses that the avatar sets itself into without sticking awkwardly in any one way or the next. Above the hindquarters rests a tall and very thin prim tail that arches over the top of the avatar’s head. The base of the tail has a few fluff prims before the tail arches upwards. Just before the apex, a few more sculpted fluff prims show up before another gap, then a gravity defying, extra floofy tailtip. Inbetween the last two fluffy parts of the tail is the option for users to wear a rustic, neatly crafted bell. Through the HUD and commands, users can choose whether they wish the bell to ring or not. Additionally, users can choose whether to twitch the tail or not as well.

The arms and hands are the next most interesting part of the avatar from the tail. In particular, they are a mix of hand and wing. At the very end of the appendage, two claw-like digits give way to a bat-like wing that runs perpendicular to the arm. The wing membrane is thin and slightly ragged at the tips. Leading up to the arm joint, the wings begin to shrink away, but not before giving way to spiky fluff just before the arm-joint. Immediately surrounding the arm-joints are two singular semi-transparent fluff textures for visual effect. Here it’s a slight departure from the sculpt based form of fluff that dominates the body.

As usual, there comes with the avatar the obligatory Tokushi fluff prims. There is a slight detour with this as well, the chest fur moving up from just over the navel to widen into a widen into a mane-like mass of hair surrounding the neck and lower portions of the face. The mane in principle is neat and well executed, though a few users could find themselves wishing there was more fluff to make it look more full and luxurious.

The head has a rodent-ish influence with the first thing that may come to ones’ mind being ‘rabbit’. A landmark on the face is the extra-large, dark eyes that are reminiscent of mouse eyes. A little bit of pink lines the rims of the wide eyes before giving way to eyelid prims. This avatar is the first in a long time (for Tokushi) which does not offer a talking jaw function. Instead, we see an extra-smooth muzzle without any kind of joints visible. The bottom of the muzzle has a rodent appearance as well. The mouth gives way to a long cleft that goes up to a slightly protruding nose that has been lifted off of the face. The design is simple and effective, with the textures on the face providing decent dimension and organic quality. The sloping bridge of the muzzle leads to eyebrows with four light spots for decorative effect.

At the sides of the hairline, miniature horns stand perpendicular to the top of the head. Between these, we see the familiar sculpted fluff prims that we found in the mane and the tail tip of the tail. These prims move down the back of the head in single file to make a visual merger with the mane.

Finally, we touch on a major part of the avatar, both visually and in size. The ears on this species are taller than the default avatar shape; eclipsing the size of the Tokushi Qwhilla that came long before. They are not too deep, but fairly wide and tall. The width grows wider the further from the head that one gets before the ears round off. At the tip of the ears, some sculpted prims add a little furriness and decoration to the edges. The interior of the ear is textured to look like skin for much of the middle, but the base uses painted hair. A small criticism could be that the ears could have benefited from a little bit more fluff at the base interior.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

This avatar comes with a simple HUD that takes care of all the rudimentary features that come with the avatar. As well, all of the HUD commands are controllable by way of the text commands in the provided notecard.

The breakdown of the HUD and command features follows:

• Eyes: Left/Right Eye Colour, Glow +/-, Full-bright Toggle, Blink Toggle, 3 Eyelid States, Eye Reset
• Ears: Up/Mid-way/Back, Twitching Ear Toggle, Ear Reset
• Tail: Bell Jingle Toggle On/Off, Tail Twitch Toggle
• AO: Animation Overrider On/Off

Aside from the bell, there are two other additions that come with this avatar. First of all, we will mention the Animation Overrider. The animations that are in this do not cover actions like sitting or ordinary walking, but they do cover flying and running. When the user flies, we see the avatar flap its arm-wings in the air only through large strokes with its small wings. Other animations like diving and descent are included in the flying animations. Otherwise, users are also given the ability to ‘hop’ around in a lively manner if they set their avatar to “Always Run.” The result is a hopping prance about with the wings close to the body at the side.

Additionally, users get the Tokushi hoodie. As some may already be familiar with; it is basically a brown fabric hoodie with a brown, burlap-like fabric and patches all over. The front and back display different sizes of the Tokushi logo. The cuffs of the hoodie are neatly placed as well with sculpted sleeves articulating against the hand-wings.

Customisation:

This avatar is copy-modifiable, so users should have no issue changing it to suit their tastes. The head is of non-standard shape, so the addition of third party hair may well prove difficult.

Conclusion:

Tokushi has released another interesting, imaginary creature to complement their catalogue of Cookie Fnuffs, Qwhilla, and Kl’erin. Despite being a simple avatar without much of the flashy features that many have come to expect, the avatar holds its own as a unique departure from Tokushi’s regular releases. Storybook creatures such as these remain fun diversions from the direct re-imaging of real-world items and species.

This review was written by Forepawz - Contributor and Senior Editor | Filed under Avatar Reviews, Tokushi
Tagged floof, Tokushi.