I'm trying my hardest to avoid avastar but there isn't a lot of information out there on ringing without it. I have had limited success using two cubes and joining them, then creating an armature and adding a bone, changing the bone names to the ones used in SL, and uploading.
However I ran into this strange issue where my mesh would change shape, size, and or orientation after you tick the animesh object button. This effect could be seen in the upload window when you tick weights as well. GIF Link
What am I missing?