Interview: Jakkal Dingo, Werewolf Dingo, and Kayla Stonecutter of The Werehouse

My werewolf avatar gets a lot of attention. It's really tall, it's typically white, and its claws are rather intimidating. I can't take credit for any of that. I got it at The Werehouse, a store dedicated to hybrid human/animal avatars. Jakkal does amazing work, and recently I caught up with her and her partners Werewolf Dingo and Kayla Stonecutter, to talk about her business. Near the end of the interview, watch for the message from Aura Linden about the rolling restart!

SLI: How long have you been making avatars for sale?

Jakkal Dingo: Since April 05, I think it was.

SLI: Did you see a niche, or were you just fooling around with it?

Jakkal Dingo: Well I'm an artist, so it was sort of a natural thing. At the time, the only known anthro av makers were Luskwood and a few others. None of them offered a more realistic style for avs. I like the others; they're very cute, but I'm not a cartoony type, I like realistic-looking stuff.

More after the jump!SLI: How long would you say it took you to learn to do these types of avatars?

Jakkal Dingo: Uhm, took me a long time to really figure out the editor. The first thing I made, I was so proud of, but I didn't know how to pan the camera. When I finally did, I realized none of my prims were touching each other! And you know, back then it was a lot harder, no grid, no way to really gauge rotation or location other than hard math or eyeballing it ... and I suck at math.

I can show you the first head I ever built. I named him Mr. Coyote Head *nods*

Werewolf Dingo: Oh GOD, you kept that thing?


SLI: When did you know you could turn this into a business?

Jakkal Dingo: Well, when I found out I could sell $L for USD? That's about when I figured I could do it like a business. *laughs*

But really, I just like building avatars. It's nice that people want to buy them. I'm no business person.

SLI: Are you doing well with them?

Jakkal Dingo: yeah, we're doing pretty well. We sell a good amount of avs per day. You know, when SL is up!

Werewolf Dingo: "We." I work for a living! :P

Jakkal Dingo: Hey you helped me make some of the prim av parts :]

SLI: Are you involved, Were?

Werewolf Dingo: Not really, no. :) Course, I just realized "we" equals

Kayla Stonecutter: :)

Werewolf Dingo: I watch. And yeah, I have built some parts. Because I am better with math, and have just enough OCD to want to make body parts symmetrical. :P

SLI: So, did you just start out with canines at first?

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, they're what I know best.

SLI: Do you have dogs and/or wolves in RL?

Jakkal Dingo: Two dogs.

SLI: Ah, so they can model for you.

Jakkal Dingo: Kinda, I usually don't use them, I tend to just eyeball stuff. I've painted lots of wolves.

Werewolf Dingo: She's a very good anthro artist off of SL. http://drakkolupen.deviantart.com


SLI: Since I've been back to the store on many occasions, I've noticed that the repertoire has really expanded to include a lot of different animal types, and more and more mythical ones. Are those by request, or is it just you branching out?

Jakkal Dingo: Most are by requests. People tell us all the time "Oh you should make this ..." and I think about if it would be easy, or if there's a pre-existing av I can work off of to make it. If I can, I usually have it built in a week

SLI: At least that way you know you're going to get at least one sale, yeah?

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, even tho sometimes our requesting people don't buy them! *laughs*

SLI: Not to get too deep into your territory, but what are the basic steps in avatar creation? I can't even make clothing, so it's fascinating to me.

Jakkal Dingo: Patience, Swearing at SL, Patience, Swearing at the editor, more patience, and then learning how to rebuild stuff from scratch.

Werewolf Dingo: ... Ouch. She hand-creates most of the textures, if not all of them. That much I don't know.

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, textures are the hardest part, I've had to do some of them 10-20 times before I can get them right.

Werewolf Dingo: But I *do* know I recently knocked an external hard drive off of her computer, destroying it, and all the body textures on it. :P

SLI: Ack!

Jakkal Dingo: I already repainted the basic set of them.


SLI: Are you two a couple in RL?

Jakkal Dingo: Yes, he's sitting 2 ft away from me.

Werewolf Dingo: Something like that, yeah. I get 1/4 of the room. She gets the rest. ;P

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, it's pretty much human avatar and then prims on top of it, and textures on all of them so they match.

SLI: So when you do one, you just attach the bits to your own avatar until it all works?

Jakkal Dingo: Yep.

SLI: Wow... painstaking.

Kayla Stonecutter: A good posestand is a must :) They help lining up things without attaching first.

SLI: And then after it's ready, Kayla, you come in?

Kayla Stonecutter: Some things I do while she works, if we know what the av should do. I can build test objects to use while she's doing the actual avs.

Jakkal Dingo: I usually come up and say "Hey Kayla, I had an awesome idea!" and then she rolls her eyes at me and tells me it's not possible, so we come up with something else.

Kayla Stonecutter: :P

SLI: The way every great team works.

Kayla Stonecutter: *nods*

Jakkal Dingo: But like she put the scriptwork in this av I'm wearing now.

SLI: Do you ever do custom work for someone's av, Kayla?

Kayla Stonecutter: I started in December, yes? My memory sucks sometimes :P Not yet, but I would if asked.

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, you helped me with the Manticore av, and that was December.

SLI: And by custom, I mean not just behavior, but poses? Or is that you, Jakkal?

Jakkal Dingo: I don't do custom work. I just find that very nerve wracking, having to actually work on something for someone else.

Kayla Stonecutter: If you mean anims, I can't do that stuff :P

SLI: Jakkal, you do the animation?

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah.

Kayla Stonecutter: I'm an OK builder, but I can't do things like the facial expressions on the Advanced avs. Jakkal sets up the exressions, and uses my scripts so they move. Other than the base part of the AOs, every av since the Manticore uses my scripts for them.

SLI: And those are color change, etc.?

Kayla Stonecutter: The werewolf v2 scripts, color change, tail, maul(other than the anims), etc. Kitsune. All critters and advanced avs.

SLI: Are you the only one who does these kinds of non-cute anthros, Jakkal?

Jakkal Dingo: I don't think so, but I don't really go around much to see what others are doing. I mostly just stay up here and build stuff. I have seen a couple of knockoffs of my avs, people trying to mimic what we do.

Kayla Stonecutter: Most big av makers are the Luskwood/Lost Creatures style.

Werewolf Dingo: "Non-cute!" Hey now! :P

SLI: *laughing* ... Well, for lack of a better term!

Werewolf Dingo: "Realistic." ;)


Jakkal Dingo: And I had two people try to rebuild our av prims and one guy gave the head out after doing it.

SLI: Oh, no! What became of that?

Jakkal Dingo: Nothing that I know of. For me the skins are pretty hard to make.

SLI: Interesting ... I'd have thought the opposite!

Jakkal Dingo: We're not as popular as say Luskwood and Lost Creatures. I think we do pretty well, but I don't think furries like our look. Kayla: what did that one person call them, so realistic they were creepy?

Werewolf Dingo: Jakkal's by far the most diverse, with the widest variety to choose from.

Jakkal Dingo: yeah we have like 400 avs

Kayla Stonecutter: I hang out in the WereHouse to help people sometimes,and once in a while someone will say they look too realistic :P

Werewolf Dingo: Well that's what everybody wants. Who wants the same old vanilla av as the next guy, and the guy next to him?

Kayla Stonecutter: yeah, one person said they were so realistic they were creepy.

Jakkal Dingo: I honestly think most of the people that buy my avs aren't furries.

Werewolf Dingo: Human av looks are infinitely adjustable. Any custom stuff, like these, is hard to customize.

Jakkal Dingo: I know a lot of people look for a costume for contests, RP, and parties.

Kayla Stonecutter: And just for something different.

SLI: It took me a week to find your stuff, and then I had to save up for it! I eventually broke down and just transferred the money from RL. SLI: TOTALLY worth it. I still get compliments all the time, and I tell them who did the work!

Werewolf Dingo: Thanks.

SLI: "Mother Nature", I say

Jakkal Dingo: I've had several people tell me they won the cost of the avatar in contests around SL. Avatar contests.

Werewolf Dingo: ... Yeah, she really is a force of nature sometimes. :P


SLI: So, what're your plans for the future with these avs?

Werewolf Dingo: Bring them into real life with nanotechnology.

SLI: YES!

Werewolf Dingo: ... Right.

Kayla Stonecutter: :)

SLI: I'm there.

Jakkal Dingo: There's always more I want to do with them than we're capable of doing, but the more we build and the more things LL gives us, we get closer and closer.

SLI: What would you like to do with these, if LL provided the tools?

Kayla Stonecutter: The abilities of the avs grow with my ability with LSL :)

Jakkal Dingo: I would really like for LL to give us the ability to make the human avatar invisible without invisiprims. Some extra joints or something would be nice, you know, for digitigrade legs and such.

I wish flexiprims were easier to work with, we're still trying to find a way to make wolf tails that look realistic. We've got the cat tails down, but not the canines yet.

Werewolf Dingo: More fluid body movements would be great. The default av walk looks like you've got something shoved up your ass.

SLI: I think if I had one request, it'd probably be the walk ... I'd love to have a four-limbed lope instead of a two-legged walk.

Jakkal Dingo: For the werewolf?

SLI: Yeah, like the quad.

Jakkal Dingo: Yeah, that's something I want to add to the V3.

Werewolf Dingo: Drawing ... board ... :)


Jakkal Dingo: I'll hafta redo the animations for that though. But I think I can make it smoother this time around.

SLI: Any shout outs to friends or family?

Kayla Stonecutter: <shameless plug> I have a store for scripted objects I make</shameless plug> :P

Jakkal Dingo: "go to my comic http://www.blacktapestries.com"

Werewolf Dingo: Plug whore. 8)

Kayla Stonecutter: You plugged Jakkal's art :P


Werewolf Dingo: Hey, I have something to plug! Wait. No I don't.

SLI: This interview will be fun to edit. Oh, do me a favor and give me your Werehouse website address too.

Jakkal Dingo: http://secondlife.drakkolupen.com

SLI: Thanks! And are there any vendors out there other than your shop?

Aura Linden: Commencing a rolling-restart. A two-minute warning will be issued before the sim you are in restarts. You can teleport to another sim to avoid being logged.

Jakkal Dingo: ! NO, MY STUFF

Kayla Stonecutter: Restart hopefully won't mean rollback.

Jakkal Dingo: Here comes the swearing at SL part.

Werewolf Dingo: Lovely. First time I come on in days, and "Hey, get out."

Jakkal Dingo: We've got vendors everywhere. Just Bruin and Furnation Omega are the main ones.

SLI: Thanks, you guys!