Second Life’s eleventh anniversary is a fast approaching – as if you needed any reminding! And in keeping with last year, Linden Lab have entered into the spirit of things by giving away another celebratory avatar.

SL10B saw the Lab offer a large, materials-enabled bear to residents. This year, it’s a robot, and it comes as a rigged mesh avatar supporting fitted mesh. Also in keeping with 2013, it appears to be the first in a series of surprises coming from the Lab during June.

The blog post announcing the offering reads in part:

This robot is sleek and ready to explore the landscapes of Second Life. Made with Fitted Mesh, you can put your own stamp on this android by playing with some of the shape sliders. Just make sure you’re upgraded to a Viewer with Fitted Mesh enabled. There are two ways to get your robot – pick it up inworld at Hairy Hippo Fun Land in Bay City or just visit the Marketplace.

I have to say the little fellow (he is around the same height as the female mesh avatars supplied by the Lab) is rather cute and, in difference to the original release of the mesh avatars (which were updated today!), he does have a modifiable base shape, so can the height and shape can be adjusted using the supported shape sliders.

While it’s always controversial, given that AOs are very much a user creation and a part of general commerce within SL, I still can’t help but feel the Lab could also provide a very basic AO system with items like this – not everyone is liable to have robot-specific AOs in their inventory, so providing one with a basic “robot-y” walk and standing pose wouldn’t go amiss. It might even encourage people to wear the avatar more and go out and purchase additional walks and poses to add to it. But that’s just a very minor point. As I said, the little fellow is rather cute.

Elsewhere in the blog post, the Lab again references the SL11B Community Celebration, and give a reminder to all who are planning SL11B celebrations of their own to make sure they submit it for inclusion in the special SL11B category of the Destination Guide (use the “Misc” category when submitting the form and indicate the event is for SL11B in the description). For those who prefer, they can send their entries for the Destination Guide via e-mail to: editor@lindenlab.com, and using “SL11B” in the subject line on the email.