Avatar+Links

 Here are links to avatar-creation sites. These are all child-friendly unless otherwise noted.



[|Lego Heads]

[|Create My Picture]

[|Digibody] Black and white caricature sketches.





[|Build Your Wild Self]

Once students had created their “wild self”, they saved it > as a Wild Desktop > then right clicked >Save Image As> and we had a copy of the avatar. Kids LOVED it. It was a lot of fun, in addition to learning animal facts from the different body parts they chose.

[|Lego People] This site has great, kid-friendly options for movie characters (Harry Potter, Star Wars), book characters (Dr. Suess) and many others, as well as more traditional choices.

[|Create Mii]

This site creates Wii-like avatars: [|Bless This Chick] As the name implies, this only makes female avatars. Not as easy to navigate as some sites, but cuter.

[|Osoq] Cute cartoon-style avatars, with big heads and small bodies. These start in bathing suits. Some of the accessories and body parts are moving, so some of the finished products are gifs. When you are done and click on "save", the website provides an embed code.

[|Designher Gals] This site is not actually created for designing avatars, but rather for personalized stationary. I love their avatars - very lifelike and customizable. They have women, men, and little girls (no boys).

[|Elouai] This site creates little cartoon-style avatars, with many options, including a Harry-Potter-characters-theme. Appropriate for all ages.



[|Wimp Yourself] Created in the style of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid illustrations. Black and white "stick people" style with limited choices, but very popular with elementary students. [|Simpsons avatars]



[|Voki]

Crazy Talk - This is an AMAZING program, suitable for secondary students - it's pretty complicated to set up. It costs around $50 to purchase, but it allows you to animate photos of people, photos of animals, drawings of stick people, etc, etc, and have them "talk". media type="custom" key="9752460"

GoAnimate - This site allows students to animate cartoon characters, with a focus on creating movies with them, but they can also be used as talking avatars. However, this site allows comments in a scrolling box down the side, and some of the comments are inappropriate. [|GoAnimate]

[|Oddcast]is an advanced technology that allows users to upload an image of their face and have it map automatically onto any existing scene - from a movie, sporting event, TV commercial, and more. The program opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities. Now, users can actually put themselves into famous clips they already know and love: they can participate as actors in actual television commercials, appear next to celebrities, jump out of airplanes, perform superhuman feats or star on the court with professional athletes. (This is a blurb from their website). This is a for-purchase program, with price quotes available upon request at their site. This screenshot shows the spectrum of their program offers:

[|Doppel Me] [|Messdudes & Messdolls] [|WiiWorld] - when you start your avatar, they are covered with "Adam and Eve" style leaves in the appropriate places.

[|Mad Men avatars]

Miscellaneous [|Loogix] - turns images into moving, morphing icons, and provides an embed code. This site asks you to upload a picture (or two, or three, depending on the type of animation you are choosing). For students, they might want to choose images of objects, rather than of their own faces, for this site. media type="custom" key="9763688"

[|Hero Factory]: This is a fun site for creating your own personalized super hero. This would make a great writing prompt, as well! It even gives you a superhero name after you have made all of your choices!





Avatar Wiki "The Toolbox" [|Avatar blog post] [|Avatar LiveBinder] - links to all of the avatar sites and the blogs/wikis discussed in the iCiL June 2011 Buhler session. During the school year, this LiveBinder is elementary-student friendly (it's what I use for my 4th grade class). There are some links currently available on the LiveBinder that will be removed in August. Feel free to use this LiveBinder as a resource for your students!