Linden Lab recently announced that there were to be several new avatars added to those available to new residents, which we have now seen starting to appear in our inventories, but where did these new avatars come from and what was the process of creating them?  We spoke to one of the people responsible for creating these new looks, Wraith Unsung.

Wraith Unsung is by no means new to the world to avatar designs, as she is also the proprietor and designers behind Fairy's Grove Creations, a store dedicated to high quality fantasy avatars.  We asked how she first became involved with Linden Labs in the new designs.

"Linden Labs announced the decision to get in world designers to make new Default Avatars." explained Unsung, "A week or so later a friend of mine (not involved with LL in any form or fashion) gave me a notecard from LL outlining the submission process and the requirements.  The application included rules for the avatars. a few of them were: they had to be complete head-to-toe, drag-on wear avatars. The designer had to have clear ownership of all pieces. They had to be PG. etc.  Then it asked for us to tell them why we thought our work should be considered, so I wrote up a letter telling them about myself, my designs, and my thoughts on the need for Fantasy Avatars to be included in the default set."

With this, Unsung set about creating avatars in a fantasy image to be sent to LL. "As far as the actual design of the avatars... I created Two Elven Avatars, a Male and a Female. LL basically did not tell me what to do in any way; they looked at them at different stages and made a few suggestions, but they basically liked and accepted that work as is."

Designs were submitted to LL, and after a selection process, they have started to introduce the new designs into our inventories for newcomers to Second Life to choose, although it seems out of all the designs submitted by various designers, only a few are available so far.

"I was a little disappointed to only see the one Male avatar included out of the 8 I submitted, I offered several other options to LL, and they asked me to include some of my Harlequins, in 3 different colors, Male and Female, but on the whole they did not tell me what to make," she said.
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"My reason for doing this project was twofold", Unsung said. "1. Second Life is not growing. A big part of the reason is the New User Experience. Most new users don't last an hour in SL. Part of that is the way they look and the frustration with figuring out how to not look like Ruth."