In this review, we take a look at one of Tokushi’s newest offerings; the Zela. Originally thought to be a Zebra-Goat mix, they are, in their final form, more of a Zebra Unicorn type of Chimera.

Out of the Box:

Observations:

Build and Skin:

These avatars maintain the texture quality standard of Tokushi avatars; solid lines and details, and coming in a variety of different colours and tones. Each Zela comes with a wholly different colour arrangement, making each ‘version’ vastly different than the other. Perhaps the best example of this is the Rainbow Zela, which incorporates many different colours of the rainbow while remaining aesthetic. Sometimes Tokushi avatars were plagued by the belly-line phenomenon, but that is absent in this avatar, with all of the textures nicely painted and continuous across both the body shape and the attachments.

In terms of the build and construction of the avatar, the Zela comes through at the standard that we’ve seen Tokushi set for itself in the past; clean sculpts, minimal creasing as possible, and the absence of sculpt wrinkling or knobbling. Overall, the avatar was well-designed and put together.

Attachments:

Going over the body, we’ll start at the feet. The avatar comes with cloven hooves, a-la cervine or traditional unicorn. The legs themselves are unguligrade, but there is a lot of decorative sculpted fluff that covers most of them. If users wish to de-fluff the legs, they’ll find very suitable appendages.

Our next topic will be that of the tail. This avatar comes with only a thin, sculpted tail, with a large amount of sculpted hair facing the floor. There isn’t a huge lot that can be done to the tail feature-wise, except to have it twitch idly. In general, though, it adds a lot to the avatar in terms of aesthetics and colour.

Then we have the arm attachments. The hands for this avatar are 4-fingered hoof-hand crosses with hoof tips on the end of each finger. As usual, users are able to select from a number of preset hand positions (middle finger, thumbs up, etc.) with accompanying arm animations. Users can also create their own arm/hand poses by combining any of the 5 arm animations with custom finger positions. For decorative effect, some sculpted fluff lines the wrists of the arms.

Aside from a touch of colorful chest fluff, that brings us to the wings. These are purely decorative, not opening during flight, or coming with any animations. However, they compliment the avatar very nicely. The feathers are well textured and appear neatly realistic, while the ‘arm’ of the wings remains colorful and well contoured.

Head:

Now we’ve come upon the centerpiece of this avatar; the head. At first glance, the face is somewhat hard to ‘place,’ the look could easily be compared to, or made up of influences from goats, unicorns, and donkeys. Either way, the end-result was a lively, unique face that suits the rest of the avatar.

A very noticeable attribute of this avatar’s face happens to be its eyes; large, and coming with all of the usual features; the selection of eye-colours and the ability to enlarge or decrease the pupils. Again, Tokushi departs from their usual habit of random scripted eye movement to the eyeballs being attached to the body mesh eyeballs. This way, the eyes follow the user’s mouse. To some, the face in the default state may seem a little too wide-eyed; this can be remedied by using one of the available eyelid settings to make the face look slightly more relaxed.

Users are also able to change to 1 of 3 different eyebrow expressions in conjunction with 1 of 3 muzzle expressions. The mouth expressions bring a bit extra personality to the avatar with both a soft smile and the pouty frown. Otherwise, the interior of the short muzzle features a tongue that users can stick in and out of their muzzle, and readily retexturable mouth interior (Users get to choose between 4 tongue and 4 mouth textures). The little jaw goatee is a nice touch.

Overall, the appearance of the face is helped a great deal by the great design and colours on the face. Other details on the head are the stylized equine-style mane that runs from the forehead down to the small of the back, two sleek, gazelle-like horns that arch to the back of the head, and the long, uniquely shaped ears. Users are able to have the ears twitch idly on their own, or have one or both of them stay in 1 of 3 positions.

Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):

The HUD is very user-friendly and self-explanatory; from the photo you can see the features available to users. As usual, users can look through the included notecard to view text commands which control everything.

Customization:

This avatar is fully customizable because the permissions are modify, copy, and non-transferable. Due to the shape of the head, it may be a little hard to get some third-party hairs to fit; but the size of the head is pretty optimal. Hence, modifying the hair would require less resizing and more changes to individual prims.

Conclusion:

The Zela is a unique little creature that adds to Tokushi’s lineup of made-up, chimera-style avatars. The avatar carries its own in the department of character, and easily establishes itself as one of the most visually interesting in Tokushi’s repertoire.