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ARTICLE BY GWYNETH JONES - THE DARING LIBRARIAN
It’s a cartoon! It’s an avatar!
It’s 20 super sites to a new animated you!
Want to jump-start your web presence and connect with your
school community in a hip happening animated way? Channel
your inner super hero with easy and fun character creators!
Here’s a list of more than 20 websites that you can use to create
fun avatars.
Consider creating avatars for students who are
blogging or contributing to wiki discussions.
Having an icon to speak from sometimes frees
students, especially the more shy or reticent, to
really express themselves without restraint.
Creating a signature avatar is also a fun way to create a brand
image. Though this article is aimed at teacher librarians
creating avatars for themselves and not with classrooms of
students, there are several sites here that kids would dig and
would also be appropriate to use with them.
This concept can work for shy grown-ups, too!
Either way, having a fun signature avatar is great to
use with Twitter, blogging, commenting, Slideshare,
business cards, and a whole host all of social media
communications. Super hero cape optional!
1. Ultimate Flash Face v0.42b
5. WeeMee
Channel your inner CSI detective with this site, which is quite
like a police photofit – very sketchy!
Produce a Lego character that looks like you.
Use this site to create a wee
mini version of yourself plus
you can add all kinds of fun
(and geeky!) accessories.
There’s plenty of scope for
customization of your avatar.
Hint: Use the dropdown to select categories and browse
through your options and screenshot when you’re happy.
3. Mr. Picassohead
6. Mii Avatar Generator
http://flashface.ctapt.de/
2. Make yourself in Lego
http://reasonablyclever.com/mini/flash/minifig.swf
http://www.picassohead.com/
create.html
Become an abstract work of
art in the style of Picasso with
Mr. Picassohead. Put your eyes,
nose, and ears wherever you
want!
4. Simpsons Movie
http://www.simpsonsmovie.
com/main.html
Ever want to be a Simpsons
character? Now you can create
your own Simpsons-style
doppelganger in the style of
the Simpsons. It’s pretty easy
and fun to choose the clothes,
hair, etc, but do note that the
saving feature didn’t work for
me the two times I tried it so
when you get your character
the way you want it – take a
screenshot!
http://www.weeworld.com/
http://www.wiiplayable.com/playgame.php?gameid=157
Like WeeMee (mentioned above) this is an easy way to create a
Mii style characters as found on the Wii computer console.
7. South Park studio
http://www.sp-studio.de/
Even if you’re a soulless
ginger like me, you too can
have your own South Park
avatar! You can choose
your clothes, jewellery, hair,
expression, and background.
Hint: Make sure to save
one cartoon without a
background for photo fun
inserting “yourself” into other pictures. With Photoshop go to
Magic Eraser and take out background and save as a .PNG. Now
you can insert your cartoon into any background!
www.sybasigns.com.au
8. WimpYourself
http://www.wimpyourself.
com/
Cartoon yourself in the
popular style of Diary of a
Wimpy Kid book series!
9. HeroMachine 2.5
http://www.ugo.com/games/superhero-generatorheromachine-2-5
Turn yourself into a super hero character. This would also be
great as a part of a digital storytelling resource or story starter.
10. Marvel’s Superhero Avatar Maker
http://marvel.com/games/play/31/create_your_own_superhero
11. Design a Marvel Superhero Comic Strip
http://marvelkids.marvel.com/shows/122/the_super_hero_
squad_show
12. Design Superhero Speech bubbles and Text
http://www.superlame.com/
13. Hero Factory
http://cpbherofactory.com/
Use this as an alternative to
Hero Machine.
14. BuiLD YouR WiLD
SeLF
http://www.buildyourwildself.
com/
From the Wildlife
Conservation Society: Create
an avatar out of bits and
pieces of humans and other
animals – head, arms, legs, clothes, eyes, mouth, tail,
wings, shells … just pick the parts you like and assemble them
together, choose a background, and at the end you’ll get
animorphtastic name and description!
15. ToonDoo
http://www.toondoo.com/
Very easy to do and super
fun site to create your own
comic strips! From the helpful
ToonDoo wiki some of the
outstanding features: drag ‘n
drop assets, 1, 2 or 3-panel
comic strips, can be used with multiple languages, and the
ability to choose from a vast variety of characters, props and
backgrounds categorized into specific galleries.
16. Toonlet
http://toonlet.com/
Allows students to create their own comic strips populated by
their own characters. They can choose how many frames they
want for their cartoon, and the simple editor makes it easy to
drop their characters into a story.
17. Clay Yourself
http://clayyourself.com/
Sponsored by Hotels.com
Clay Yourself lets you create
a version of yourself in
modeling clay. You can start
with the given facial frames
and then customize other
features. These features
include hairstyle, eyes, eyebrows, glasses, eyeballs, nose, and
mouth. When you are done with your customization you can
share your character on Facebook or Twitter. You can also
download your character in JPG format or take a screenshot.
It’s Claytastic!
18. ArtisanCam
http://www.artisancam.
org.uk/flashapps/
exploreselfportraits/
A quick way of producing a
sketch version of yourself.
Limited choices, for example
I couldn’t get my red hair –
had to settle for pink!
www.sybasigns.com.au
19. Mad Men Yourself
20. Go!Animate
NOT for the students.
Fans of the TV show Mad
Men can create a sharp
dressed 60s-style avatar of
themselves.
Finally, my favourite, and
the site that has the comic
chops to make the most
customized avatars is the
Go!Animate Comic World Character Creator. Though this takes
the most time to master it has the most potential for avatar
greatness! And it makes those avatars characters in your
own animated cartoons! GoAnimate also has a very helpful
forum for questions and a friendly and responsive community
manager. Check out my wikipage for an animation example,
all the directions, and to get the Comic Tutorial.
http://www.amctv.com/
madmenyourself/
http://goanimate.com/
videomaker
Whatever site or style you choose, have fun and let your
imagination go when it comes to creating your super hero
animated avatar!
Some sites allow you to save the finished creation as a jpg. If
not, then take a screenshot, paste into a paint program, crop
and save as a JPG. One of my favourite new free digital image
manipulation sites is picmonkey.com. If one of these avatar
creation sites is blocked by your district filter or firewall, go on
to the next one ... OR ... do this at home! Be an Avatar Ninja!
Active links and more information to all these sites can be
found on my Daring Tech Character Creator wikipage
(http://thedaringlibrarian.wikispaces.com/Avatar_Generators),
and several postings with even more examples,
how-tos and tech tips can be found on my blog http://www.
thedaringlibrarian.com/
Now go forth and be animated!
Gwyneth Jones, along with colleague Dr Joyce Valenza, will be joining Syba Signs for a series
of seminars in July/August, 2012, in Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. See our website for more
information www.sybasigns.com.au/seminars
www.sybasigns.com.au