How to Fade out a Rocketbox avatar (using iTween)?

Hey, so I've recently started learning Unity and I've come across a bit of a problem. I'm trying to fade a Rocketbox Avatar out of a scene (and then later fade it back in). After a lot of failed attempts and searching through answers I downloaded iTween, as it seemed like it would make the whole process very easy. here is the code I'm using:

function Start (){

iTween.FadeTo(gameObject,{"alpha":0, "time":0.5});

}

Unfortunately it still does not work, and as I have very little experience with Unity I'm slightly stuck on what could be the problem. I've tried changing the shader to 'Bumped diffuse', transparent 'Bumped diffuse' and transparent 'Bumped specular'.

I originally thought that it was because the object textures were components of a child of the Avatar but I read that iTween applies to object's children by default.

A possible reason that I can think of is that the avatar uses a 'Skinned Mesh Renderer' but I'm not sure what to do about it if that is indeed the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.