Cross-Reference: OpenSim Avatar Design Guide

“Shork!” Avatars & Equipment offer you an option to be the new “you”. You're a shark in an aquarium and want to meet humans without them freaking out?
You're a human and are fed up looking at the meeting of barely teen aged clones or roughly defined hyperbeefed chunkheads?
You're an Alien, AI or AC and want to meet humans but feel uneasy about trying to mimic one, because of “Uncanny Valley” and such? Don't want to hurt a humans feelings by telling them you're not gonna meet them in “Real Life”?

Go online, join OSGrid for free and get a “Shork!” avatar!

You can goof off, you can try to be very serious - and whatever fauxpas might happen, you'll always have the chance to point out that you're just learning about this “being somewhat human” thing.

Note: There are MANY alternative entry points to OpenSim, the Hypergrid/Metaverse of choice, aside of OSGrid. Look around!

The “Shork!” avatar series was initiated once the Shork Team realized that, in their future home of OpenSim/OSGrid, there weren't their preferred avatars available. After a month of tracking down avatar creators in Second Life and finding them not interested to either publish their avatars ( understandable ) or releasing their retired / abandoned / outdated avatars ( not really understandable for us ) on OpenSim/OSGrid, the Shork Team decided to commission a range of avatars combining the best of Second Life with the best of OpenSim/OSGrid.

• “Shork!” avatars and equipment will be available as freebies on OSGrid.
• “Shork!” avatars and their textures will be downloadable from the Shork Cafe homepage for modders and artists.
• If compatible with the rules of LindenLabs for Second Life, the “Shork!” avatars will also be made available for a low price on the SL Marketplace for those not able to import them from OSGrid or the Cafes homepage. However, this is unlikely due to the complexity to upload mesh to Second Life, but when somebody is interested in it, we will provide help where we can.

“Shork!” avatars will be released once their package is finished, assembled and tested in OpenSim. The downloads from the Cafe will include the textures and UV maps needed for users to individualize their skins and thus expand the “Shork!” avatar family as well as further goodies.

For maximum flexibility, “Shork!” avatars will be using components to construct the avatar upon any existing body - system default, Inithium, Belleza, Matreiya, … - capable of using a default avatar type skin (BOM enabled). This feature is well known from Luskwood, AVentity and Kinzart type avatars.

The “Shork!” avatars will use top-notch mesh components, which will make swishing or poseable tails possible, and where implemented, look much better than the older Flexiprims.
An example for what we aim for is the JOMO dragon avatar tail.
“Shork!” avatars will also utilize the Bento skeletal system for good looks and compatibility with planned future features of the Linden Labs derived technologies - such as gesture tracking. Also, the amount of scripts will be kept as small as possible to reduce the risk of future incompatibilities as well as to keep the server and client load of our avatars low.
We're social sharks, you see?
By publishing the components, we invite modders and scripters to produce individualizations. Following the CreativeCommons Share-Alike idea, all we ask that you artists either honor the Shork Spirit, or get in touch with us in Second Life or OSGrid ( preferred).

We ask Second Life creators specifically that mod-kits and -files should be published freely when the creator retires from Second Life, so that customers will have a chance to have such components updated even after their creator retires. We offer the Cafe website as a location to publish such items.

Here is the list of the currently planned avatars from Shork Industries for OpenSim

Status: 100% (deployed to Wright Plaza on 2023-08)
Creator(s): Kit (pixxieboy Resident) @ Second Life
Commissioning party: The creators themselves (outdated model, released for free in OpenSim via Shork Group)
Features: Mesh Avatar with texture

Status: 95% done, textures for alternative shark species still missing
Creator(s): Ironwood115 @ Discord
Commissioning party: aries_quitex @ Discord
Features: Full Perm, UV Maps, easy to mod; moving eyes, different sets of fins and tail

Status:
Creator(s): Juancho Renfold (SL)
Commissioning party: kaahupahau Resident @ SL / Kaahupahau Sharpfang @ OS
Features: Blinking eyes, swishing tail, talking jaw

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Commissioning party:
Features:

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Features:

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Shork! Equipment are those items that the business oriented shork as well as any mad scientist with a kinky agenda will find useful.

Status: 100% (deployed to Wright Plaza on 2023-07)
Creator(s):
⁑=🎨=⁑ Lead Artist, Texture, Animations, Sounds [SKS Myra Green]
⁑=💾=⁑ Lead Scripter, Menus, Toggles, Prim Animations [SKS Yee7I Emily]
⁑=📦=⁑ Original Model made by [Yenye Neema] (@ Second Life)
Commissioning party: kaahupahau Resident @ SL / Kaahupahau Sharpfang @ OS
Features: Positions and animations for victim and operator

Status: WIP
Creator(s):
⁑=🎨=⁑ Lead Artist, Texture, Animations, Sounds [SKS Myra Green]
⁑=💾=⁑ Lead Scripter, Menus, Toggles, Prim Animations [SKS Yee7I Emily]
Commissioning party: kaahupahau Resident @ SL / Kaahupahau Sharpfang @ OS
Features: