To follow up with their Anubis Jackal release, Tokushi now offers a non-Anubis, ‘natural’ Silver-backed Jackal for purchase. They also include a “Dingo” colouration without the grey stripe on the back for people who want a Dingo/Coyote-ish look. With a sly face, this avatar reflects an idealised version of its real-world counterpart.

Out of the Box:

• Animated Blink with random eye movement
  • Ability to manually move and set the eye position
• Male and Female Shapes and Skins
• Independent eye color control with 17 eye color options
• 7 eyebrow modes
• 3 ear positions with twitch and afk detect (ears fold back when your avatar is away)
• 4 muzzle modes with a tongue in and out option
• Talking Jaw for voice and text chat
• 5 independent hand poses with the option to set to auto (this will cycle between the different poses excluding the point and flip off poses)
• Two Tail types, A sculpted tail and a flexi tail (flexi tail includes a scripted wag)

Build and Skin:

Typical to Tokushi styles, the skin is digitally drawn and textured with a fair amount of detail. There’s no large amount of fuzziness in the textures other than when it is used to create the impression of soft fur. Appropriate shading utilised over the entire body ensures a lack of flatness. The ‘black-back’ markings on the back that are the default for all the avatars (with the exception of the dingo colouring) stand out well, the stripe extending from the small of the back up to between the ears, and then to the sides. While the body textures is relatively simple, it seems most of the work has gone into the detailing of the head and muzzle. We’ll revisit this when we talk about the build quality of the head. Coming with both a male and a female shape, the avatar offers a variation of the skin that accentuates the curves of breasts for female wearers.

The feet are sculpted and well textured, the toes dotted with sharp claws. Nothing too out of the ordinary foot-wise. The digitigrade leg attachments are very slender, much like the seemingly thin legs of its real world counterpart. The design of the digitigrade attachments has the digitigrade leg joint with the posterior end of the foot rather than a more dorsal approach, thus giving it more of a digitigrade appearance. One issue that arises is that the digitigrade attachment is fitted to the default offered body shape. Any changes to size or width parameters  (i.e. leg muscle, body fat, etc.) may result in the user having to make some adjustments to avoid odd looking knees.

The avatar comes with two relatively short, but neatly textured tails; one flexible, the other sculpted. Moving to the hand attachments, these paws look very very much like human hands, the finger-digits sculpted to appear relaxed and organic. In the still continuous effort to avoid the usage of invisiprims for hand attachments, Tokushi has opted for a slightly larger hand size which does the job effectively. As a result, however, the hands may appear too large and wieldly.

Finally we can discuss the head. It’s difficult to really decide what the focal point is, whether it be the large ears set atop the skull, the wiley eyes, or the long and pointed muzzle. Topped by a pretty nicely done canid nose, the muzzle is the highlight of texture on this avatar from tip to cheek. To go along with the textures is a sleekly designed muzzle with a variety of mouth expressions from smiles to growls and sticking ones’ tongue out. Tokushi has taken the route of other av creators; rather than having the eyelid sculpts as a seperate prim, the eyelids are incorporated into the headprim itself, which makes for a more seamless image overall. The eyes are wider than they are tall, making the jackal look like a very sly. Last, but certainly not least, the ears atop the head are very tall, again a throwback to the real world counterparts. The usage of transparent texture fluff on the ear interior adds to the ‘fluffy’ look.

One possible criticism that I have gotten from some peers have been that the muzzle length is very prominent. However, this is an issue that is left more to personal taste and opinion rather than artistic oversight.

Heads-Up Display (HUD)

The HUD is rather straight-forward, users can modify options for the head, ears, mouth, hands, and tail respectively. This accompanies a notecard full of text commands that allow people to modify HUD-controlled options. From the HUD, people can modify the movement of the eyes, eye colour, eyebrow expression, and eyelid state. Under Ears, users can change the position of the ears and toggle their twitchiness. Mouth settings include the toggling of talkjaw and the tongue as well as the mouth expressions and openness. The Hands menu allows users to change hand expression states (e.g. flipping the bird). Finally, users can choose whether they want their tail to wag or not under the Tail Menu.

Customisation

The avatar is rather standard in its ability to customise, with the exception of the need for extra attention when modifying the legs, which in itself is a very minor oversight. This avatar does not come with any hair attachments, so the user has more incentives to use their own hair. Additionally, as the forehead lies close to the muzzle, users may have to fiddle with custom hairs a bit more than usual. In the end, though, it is not hard for users to customise the avatar to their own tastes.

Conclusion

The Black-backed Jackal avatars from Tokushi are a solid offering for an overlooked species of canine. Additionally, this is perhaps one of the most successfully expressive avatars Tokushi has made to date. The usage of detailed textures on the muzzle combined with well executed sculpts produce an avatar full of character that stands on its own.