I feel the new avatars are okay in my opinion. the only thing I have to say is that you say you are trying to make the new avatars as close to the old ones as possible and I see that you are almost there. the only issue I have is that the “default” mouth (first one in selection page) has different animations from the old one. This makes my avatar look completely different to how it used to with old avatars.
I would love the option to maybe go back to the old mouth animations. Maybe you can add more animations for each mouth selection. I really dislike the new default mouth. This is the only big issue I have with these new avatars. Please give it a thought. People are unhappy with the new avatars as it is already, so I believe this change will ease some of the hate.