It's a Cartoon! It's an Avatar - Full Article

ARTICLE BY GWYNETH JONES - THE DARING LIBRARIANIt’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 Consider creating avatars for students who areschool community in a hip happening animated way? Channel blogging or contributing to wiki discussions.your inner super hero with easy and fun character creators! Having an icon to speak from sometimes freesHere’s a list of more than 20 websites that you can use to create students, especially the more shy or reticent, tofun avatars. really express themselves without restraint.Creating a signature avatar is also a fun way to create a brand This concept can work for shy grown-ups, too!image. Though this article is aimed at teacher librarians Either way, having a fun signature avatar is great tocreating avatars for themselves and not with classrooms of use with Twitter, blogging, commenting, Slideshare,students, there are several sites here that kids would dig and business cards, and a whole host all of social mediawould also be appropriate to use with them. communications. Super hero cape optional!1. Ultimate Flash Face v0.42b 5. WeeMeehttp://flashface.ctapt.de/ http://www.weeworld.com/Channel your inner CSI detective with this site, which is quite Use this site to create a weelike a police photofit – very sketchy! mini version of yourself plus you can add all kinds of fun (and geeky!) accessories.2. Make yourself in Lego There’s plenty of scope forhttp://reasonablyclever.com/mini/flash/minifig.swf customization of your avatar. Hint: Use the dropdown to select categories and browseProduce a Lego character that looks like you. through your options and screenshot when you’re happy.3. Mr. Picassohead 6. Mii Avatar Generatorhttp://www.picassohead.com/ http://www.wiiplayable.com/playgame.php?gameid=157create.html Like WeeMee (mentioned above) this is an easy way to create aBecome an abstract work of Mii style characters as found on the Wii computer console.art in the style of Picasso withMr. Picassohead. Put your eyes,nose, and ears wherever you 7. South Park studiowant! http://www.sp-studio.de/ Even if you’re a soulless ginger like me, you too can4. Simpsons Movie have your own South Parkhttp://www.simpsonsmovie. avatar! You can choosecom/main.html your clothes, jewellery, hair, expression, and background.Ever want to be a Simpsons Hint: Make sure to savecharacter? Now you can create one cartoon without ayour own Simpsons-style background for photo fundoppelganger in the style of inserting “yourself” into other pictures. With Photoshop go tothe Simpsons. It’s pretty easy Magic Eraser and take out background and save as a .PNG. Nowand fun to choose the clothes, you can insert your cartoon into any background!hair, etc, but do note that thesaving feature didn’t work forme the two times I tried it sowhen you get your characterthe way you want it – take ascreenshot! www.sybasigns.com.au

8. WimpYourself 15. ToonDoohttp://www.wimpyourself. http://www.toondoo.com/com/ Very easy to do and superCartoon yourself in the fun site to create your ownpopular style of Diary of a comic strips! From the helpfulWimpy Kid book series! 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 the9. HeroMachine 2.5 ability to choose from a vast variety of characters, props andhttp://www.ugo.com/games/superhero-generator- backgrounds categorized into specific galleries.heromachine-2-5Turn yourself into a super hero character. This would also be 16. Toonletgreat as a part of a digital storytelling resource or story starter. http://toonlet.com/ Allows students to create their own comic strips populated by10. Marvel’s Superhero Avatar Maker their own characters. They can choose how many frames theyhttp://marvel.com/games/play/31/create_your_own_superhero want for their cartoon, and the simple editor makes it easy to drop their characters into a story.11. Design a Marvel Superhero Comic Striphttp://marvelkids.marvel.com/shows/122/the_super_hero_ 17. Clay Yourselfsquad_show http://clayyourself.com/ Sponsored by Hotels.com12. Design Superhero Speech bubbles and Text Clay Yourself lets you createhttp://www.superlame.com/ a version of yourself in modeling clay. You can start with the given facial frames and then customize other13. Hero Factory features. These featureshttp://cpbherofactory.com/ include hairstyle, eyes, eyebrows, glasses, eyeballs, nose, and mouth. When you are done with your customization you canUse this as an alternative to share your character on Facebook or Twitter. You can alsoHero Machine. download your character in JPG format or take a screenshot. It’s Claytastic! 18. ArtisanCam14. BuiLD YouR WiLD http://www.artisancam.SeLF org.uk/flashapps/http://www.buildyourwildself. exploreselfportraits/com/ A quick way of producing aFrom the Wildlife sketch version of yourself.Conservation Society: Create Limited choices, for examplean avatar out of bits and I couldn’t get my red hair –pieces of humans and other had to settle for pink!animals – head, arms, legs, clothes, eyes, mouth, tail,wings, shells … just pick the parts you like and assemble themtogether, choose a background, and at the end you’ll getanimorphtastic name and description! www.sybasigns.com.au

19. Mad Men Yourself 20. Go!Animatehttp://www.amctv.com/ http://goanimate.com/madmenyourself/ videomakerNOT for the students. Finally, my favourite, andFans of the TV show Mad the site that has the comicMen can create a sharp chops to make the mostdressed 60s-style avatar of customized avatars is thethemselves. 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.Whatever site or style you choose, have fun and let yourimagination go when it comes to creating your super heroanimated avatar!Some sites allow you to save the finished creation as a jpg. Ifnot, then take a screenshot, paste into a paint program, cropand save as a JPG. One of my favourite new free digital imagemanipulation sites is picmonkey.com. If one of these avatarcreation sites is blocked by your district filter or firewall, go onto the next one ... OR ... do this at home! Be an Avatar Ninja!Active links and more information to all these sites can befound 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

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It's a Cartoon! It's an Avatar - Full Article

by gwyneth jones on Jul 19, 2012

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