These .AVS files were origianlly part of a zipped file pac offered by Microsoft
on their download site alongside the Character Editor for Microsoft Chat 2.0.
They were originally offered as a help for people to get to learn how to use the
editor. After a while, there were many different versions of the same MS Chat
characters and the .AVS pack was removed from the download site.
For a time, Steve, aka Y_Guy, then held up the torch and continued to offer
the AVS's on his site. Some of Steve's AVS's were already colored so anyone
could just change the color as they desired. Prior to Steve closing his Dido.com
site ('The Un-Official MS Chat Add-On Site'), he too removed them for basically
the same reason Microsoft did.
With most of the older characters no longer being used or now have inactive
auto-download url's in them, Mermaid has made these .AVS's once again
available in hopes that more people would divert their attention from
developing characters out of copyrighted photos and attempt to create a real
"Comic" Character of their own!
These .AVS files are also a great source for
body parts for creating your own comic characters!
It is Mermaid's understanding that these Microsoft
.AVS files are considered 'public domain'.