Living plushies, especially evil ones, are a staple of the childhood nightmare genre. This collaboration effort between Total Shift Productions and M.O.R. helps bring this sweet nightmare to life within Second Life.

Out of the Box:

Observations

Skin and Textures

Seeing as the avatar is a plushie, you’d expect it to have a clothlike skin, which this avatar does, and it does extremely well. The cloth texture is believable and consistent across the avatar, even making the ever-annoying belly seam present on many avatars non-existent. The stitches are somewhat erratic, which is just what one would expect of this kind of plushie. The stitches on the main skin are shaded a little, which makes them seem a little shiny, like they’re nylon.

The quality of the textures on the skin carries over to the attachments. The head and paws are plush as well, with the same excellent plush texture quality across them. The tails, neck fluff, wrist fluff, and ankle fluff are more fluffy in nature than plushie, and as such, have a more furred texture to them. They very accurately convey that thick fluff look which one would expect. Since the claws are, well, claws, they appear to be made of actual claw material rather than cloth. The pawpads look like they’re made out of a plastic material like they were buttons. The stitches have the same good quality as on the skin, too, but are not shaded as much, and so look more like fiber thread.

Overall Build

The majority of the avatar is sculpted, and the sculpts are of excellent quality. There is no visible wrinkling anywhere, and the texture connections, especially between the jaw and main head, are excellent. The claws especially have an interesting connection – they appear to be stuck into the paws, rather than stitched or glued. It’s difficult to create this sort of illusion.

Two shapes are included with the avatar – default and chubby. It’s normally difficult to get one set of attachments and textures to work together with different avatar thicknesses and the like, but this avatar does so excellently. The only thing to remember is if you wish to wear the chubby shape, you have to wear the corresponding button.

In-Depth Body Summary

The avatar’s paws and legs are attached – there is no separate paw attachment. As such, when you change the leg type, you also change feet, thus needing alterations to be done again on the alternate attachments. The paws change between plantigrade and digitigrade depending on which ‘leg’ you choose to wear; the plantigrade paws are larger and flatter, and the digitigrade ones are smaller and rounder. Otherwise, everything else about them is identical.

Both types of legs requires their own alpha layer. The plantigrade attachments do not go as high on the leg as the digitigrade version, hence the need for the different alpha layers. The texture on the front of the digi leg seems a little stretched, as does the texture on the leg prim that pokes out of the top.
Depending on the pose, you might get a little bit of the leg prim poking out of the top of the planti leg, too, but it blends in very well with the rest of the leg.

There are three tail attachments. I will review them in order from default to extras. None of them are scripted.

 The default tail you get when you open the box is the fluffy tail. This tail is very long and has some fluff prims at the tip. The fluff texture on the main prim looks normal for the first half of the tail, but gets stretched and dimmer as you go further.
The smooth tail is reptilian in overall appearance, somewhat like a skink’s tail. Stitches run along the top and bottom of the tail, becoming a little stretched at the very tip. The underside of the tail near the body shares the same texture style as the main body, fading off as the tail goes on. There are no fluff prims on this tail.
The bird tail is very short and splayed like a bird’s, but is floppy and appears furry rather than feathery, like the fluff on the rest of the avatar. There is a minute amount of texture wrinkling between the points on the tips of the tail.

The bellybutton is, indeed, a button. It’s very simple. There are two options for this button, depending on which shape you’re using, but they’re essentially identical. As with all buttons on this avatar, including the eyes, this button is recolorable, so you can change it to whatever color you please via the Edit menu.

The handpaws are very similar to the plantigrade paws, just more handlike. There’s a fourth claw added here to function as a thumb, and the pawpads are a little different to accommodate for that. As with the feet, the hands and wrists are linked into one attachment, so the hands themselves do not move. The attachments add some visual length onto the arms in general, though AOs may make this look a little awkward or unwieldy.

In-Depth Head Summary

As with the tails, there are three head options. I’ll review them in order from default to extras. Each head has a “grin” alternative, which simply adds a mirthy grin to the mouth.  Each new head also has a corresponding jaw. The inner mouth gives a great impression of being either plastic or wet, with lots of swirls and a fiendishly forked tongue. It looks a lot bigger on the inside.
The mammal head is the only head included to have ears. These ears are hard linked onto the avatar, so they do not move. There’s also a great deal of neck fluff attached to this head. The texture link between the attachments is near seamless.
The bird head has the same fluff as the mammal head. This head is more elongated, and the beak and its jaw don’t align perfectly, making for a jagged, slightly more intense mouth expression. There is also a darker area around the tip, similar to a non-plushy beak.
The reptile head has no fluff and no ears, leaving it quite bare compared to the others. The back of the head shows the typical sphere sculpt tip and the neck of the main body, and depending on the angle of the head, the alpha layer that makes the mesh head invisible can sometimes show a gap between the chin and the neck. Overall, it appears to be similarly designed like the mammal head, but in fact, it’s shaped very slightly differently.

Features and HUD

The HUD is extremely simple – three buttons controlling mouth openness.
The jaw reacts to typing, but the avatar does not include gestures required for voice response.

Customization

The buttons on the avatar are recolorable, so you can tint them to your pleasing.
Everything on the avatar is modifiable, save for the scripts. Feel free to modify the avatar, but as always, keep a backup of the original!
The creators have included some extra textures to help you modify the avatar – colored pad textures and three extra claw textures. These are all no transfer, so you can’t download them and modify them further.

Conclusion

With a variety of default color choices, the selection of body parts available by default, and the ease of modification, this avatar should help the dreamspinners of the Grid craft some lovely little nightmares for everyone.

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Turkey Day!

This avatar is being offered in different variations depending on seasons. Shown below a photograph of the “Turkey” variety of the Plushy avatar. It comes with everything shown in the review above, but also with two different turkey tails, and a turkey-themed bird head. While the avatar is not available at the time of writing this review, fans of the look can expect this avatar, and possibly others to show up as seasons change!

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Gung Hei Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year

For the Chinese New Year 2012, T.S.P. & M.o.R released a new version of the plushy; a Chinese dragon version. Like the Limited Edition Turkey, all of the other versions of the avatar are included in the “EXTRAS” box, (i.e. Mammalian, Avian, and Reptile heads and tails). Additionally, the avatar comes with both the plantigrade and digitigrade versions.

The dragon version of this avatar comes with vibrant colours and a tail and head attachments that give off  very Asian vibe altogether. Pictures speak louder than words, so we’ll leave  you with them.