Avatars

After an unsuccessful search for a new avatar creator and checking out what went down with Tektek, I decided to take the plunge and try out the actual Gaia Online avatar builder. Gaia Online has developed it since Tekton took down his Gaia Dream Avatar builder.

It has a few drawbacks:

• You have to create a Gaia Online account to use it.
  
• To create a Gaia Online account, you have to choose a male or female gender. Your avatar builder then defaults to the gender you chose.
  
• It took a little figuring out to use; it doesn't work the same way the Tektek builder did.
  

It also has a few advantages:

• When building a character, you can choose to view the opposite gender build as well as your assigned one.
  
• You have more options for clothing, etc than you did with the Tektek builder. eg. I actually could give Gen freckles! (But it can be harder to find what you want.)
  
• You get several poses of each gender - standing, kneeling, and from the back. If you use the "save image" button or PrntScr to capture the finished avatar, you'll get all the different poses.
  

I'm going to see if I can continue to access my account even if I don't confirm it... I'll let you know how it goes.  

Here's my first trial, captured using the "Save Image" button built in to the avatar creator:

Gonna post some screen captures of the interface so y'all can see what it's like.

When I get to the Gaia Online Avatar Builder screen, it looks like this:



You can change the background colour from solid white to another solid colour using RGB codes or selecting from an Adobe Photoshop-like colour gradient. You can change your avatar's arm positions using the "Change Pose" button. "Reset" just returns your avatars to the default state.

If you click on the "View Opposite Gender" box, this is what happens:



If you click on "Get naked", it will remove all equipped items, except males still wear boxer briefs and females wear bras and bikini briefs.

Now let's get down to business. You start by picking one of 53 different base body type icons found under the heading "Select base". I'm gonna make a little mushroom fairy dude for shits and giggles, so I'm going to pick the "Brown Orc Skin" base. As you can see, the builder applies this choice to both male and female body types.



I'm going to change the hair first, so scroll down to "Search Items." You narrow down your search using the drop-down lists. Hair is covered under the "base hair" category with some additional options under the "head" category. Yeah, this is where the builder is slightly more annoying than Tekton's was... Click the "Go" button to retrieve your search results.



As you can see, this brings up every conceivable style and colour under the sun. I'm going to narrow it down to green-coloured hair by entering that keyword in the empty box next to the "Go" button.  I'll have to click "Go" again to bring up all the green hair styles, but you savvy people can eliminate that step by entering keywords at the same time as selecting "base hair" (or whatever else your little heart desires) and then only clicking "Go" once.

Now on to the other kind-of annoying thing about this builder: guys and girls can both wear the same hairstyles... but you'll have to pick the same base hair style twice if you want to see what it looks like on both your male and female avatars.  So, I have to pick the girl's version of the style to get it to show up on the girl body, and the guy's version of the style to get it to show up on the guy's body.   Fortunately they are always geographically close to one another when you're looking at all the different hairstyles. When looking at additional hairstyles by doing a "head" item search, hairstyles are unisex.



Now I will pick some clothes, so back to the "Search Items" step I go. I want to find a shirt so I did a search for "torso" and used the keyword "brown" to narrow it down. One of the cool things about this builder is that if you select certain items it will give you the option to pick a different pose for your avatar to take on, and will also offer you other items that belong to the same set. Here you can see my choices when I picked the "Celestial Deputy" shirt.



You'll also see that under "Equipped List" there is now a Celestial Deputy icon. If you decide you don't want that item after all, you just click on the icon to remove it.

A good thing about clothes is that THEY, at least, are unisex, so you don't have to pick the same shirt twice in order to see it on both male and female bodies.

So, you go through the "Search Items" process multiple times until you get all the facial features, hairstyles, clothes, accessories, and backgrounds that you want for your avatars.  I should mention that you can narrow down your searches further by using more than one keyword; for example "brown boot" brings up all the brown boots, as opposed to all the brown footwear available.  Here's my finished toadstool fairy creatures:



Their equipped list includes:
Toadstool (On My Head)
Forest Mushroom
Ruby Toadstool
Daylight Toro the Bulltaur (ears)
Celestial Deputy
Vogue Ombre Antoine Curls (Midnight Green)
Initiate Tooth Fairy (missing tooth)
Olive Investigator Skirt

To save your avatar(s) you can use your PrntScr button or just simply click the "Save Image" button which will automatically save your avatars to your Downloads folder on your computer. Here's my finished product using the "Save Image" button:



We could cut and paste a specific pose into the Rocksfallwiki, just like we used to do with Tektek's builder, of course.  

Still haven't confirmed my account. Still haven't been given the boot. It's only been 3 days, though.

Over a week has passed and they haven't locked me out for not confirming my account. I get somewhat annoying yellow banners at the top of the Gaia Online screen reminding me that they sent a super important email to me, but that is the only drawback so far. I still have full access to the avatar builder, just in case anyone was wondering...

Still no sign of being locked out for not confirming.

Still able to access, over a month later. No annoying emails or anything. So, go make an account, don't confirm it, and then just use the avatar builder! Go forth, Diablotinites, and be fruitful!