Jan 21, 2011

Avatar....NOT the Blue People.....

Creating Avatars...not the blue peeps from the hellishly long movie, but your image for use on blogs and other places on the web to show who you are.
I have used a variety of Avatars over the years such as: my minimee by Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in London [the POME in me], my wee mouse with his cheese [to depict my last name], me with Johnny Depp [need I say more?] and my minimee South Park pirate. All these Avatars depict something about me.

I got my class to create avatars one year [2010] when we tackled a world blogging exchange for the football world cup in South Africa. They needed avatars to comment and design posts on our page using Wordpress [also new to me].

One of my goals this year is to get my year 4's to have their own avatar. So for this we will be experimenting with a few avatar creators and possibly rating their effectiveness as well.

So lets experiment with a few of these avatar creators then.
Rating: 1 = nah, 2 = it's ok, 3 = not bad, 4 = worth a go, 5 = whoop whoop!

  1. The wee lego dudes - easy to use, fast loading,  child friendly, only minus is can't be saved except screen dump it.  4
  2. Talking voki - slow loading each section, needs fast connection, good fun, has adverts, will be slow creating with ch'n - vast amounts of choices 4   see below for this one
  3. Picasso style - easy to use, not so much fun as others, loads fast 3
  4. Weemee - easy to use, similar styles, plenty of choices 5
  5. Doppleme - easy to use, basic choices, simple user interface, groups can be created [might be useful for classes] many options available for logon [suggest a generic class login rather than ch'n having own logins] 4
  6. My Avatar creator  - very simple to use, fast loading, variety of choice, screen capture [purple bodied chick, plain background] another bonus is the programme can be downloaded and used directly from the computer 
  7. Awesome child friendly site called MEMAKER for creating an amazing simple avatar image including your likes food and activity wise 5
  8. Build your wildself - awesome cartoon effect, heaps of choices, fast loading, child friendly, gives you animal info as well. Printable and email-able 5
  9. Avatar creator
    Doppleme
Wildself
MeMaker
It's also worth mentioning that even the static avatars can be given voices using BLABBERIZE! A very funky website used to make static images make sounds



Click here to comment on this Voki.
Get a Voki now!

8 comments:

  1. Hi!
    I really like how you tested out and then ranked out some of the avatar creation sites. I created a wildself when I started my blog last year. Until now, haven't thought much about changing or having my kids (grade 2) create one to represent themselves. Depending on how easy the site is to navigate, I think my kids would really have fun doing this!
    I would be interested in seeing you your kids ranked these sites and how they compared to your scores.
    Carrie

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like your rating system. I tried the Picasso one. I also like photofunia to play around with real photos.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the great list of avatar creators. I will be bookmarking this post so that I can come back for the links when I get the opportunity to do some avatar creating.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent post. I love how you have ranked the avatar creators.

    ReplyDelete
  5. How old are your Year 4 students? Have you tried illustmaker (http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml)? I like that you don't have to log into the site and your avatar is easily downloaded when finished. I love your minimee avatars - what is the address of that site?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for all the comments

    I will try Illustmaker - my year 4's are 8 and 9 years old - first time I have taught year 4's so it will be a big learning curve for me.
    Minimee's can be found at http://www.weeworld.com/

    ReplyDelete
  7. I like hearing both your POME and kiwi accents come through in your writing. Thanks for rating the different avatar creator sites, so useful.
    I have to laugh, we look very similar in our picassoheads. Here's mine if you want to have a look.
    Cheers,
    Tam

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks for all the clear info about avatar building programs!

    ReplyDelete