Tiny, Dinkies, Chibits?

So just what is meant by the terms Tiny, Dinkies and Chibit? These are avatar styles or types in Second Life. They are much smaller than the regular human, humanoid and anthropomorphic avatars mainly used. They all are part of a collective that is often referred to as tinies who are generally happy, food-centric, and creative creatures too adorable for words. (except maybe kawaii)

Tinies are the earliest form of small animal avatars and used a body squashing position to be worn. Thus anything with TINY animations will do very bad things to any other style of AV using it deforming it in quite unexpected ways. Same often goes for a Tiny av trying to use a normal animation. Here are a couple of examples of some Tiny avatars:

Dinkies were the brainchild of Etheria Parrott utilizing the SL Skeleton in a way that allows them to use many of the same animations as biggies. The trouble here is anything involving hand to head since the heads are oversized. These cool cats are found all over and getting ever more personalized with the intro of BOM compatible bodies. There even mods to have other animals such as pandas =). Here are a few Dinkies examples:

Chibits are the creation of Asma Harcourt of Guaran Dou and bring a chibi stylized avatar to “Second” Life. These can also use many of the same animations as reg sized avatars. Shown are some examples of the Chibit avatar: