Before I begin this post a couple of small notes first if you don’t mind. I would like to apologize for the lack of posts. I have been sick and am now playing catch up. Also I thought I should mention a birthday. Growing up I had several people I looked up to, but this person was one of the tops. Today is (would have been) the 103rd birthday of Curly Howard. So to Curly we can only wish him a happy "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!". Now onto the post. Recently I was on a message board reading other peoples thoughts and I started looking on the left hand side of the screen at the avatars. Avatars are the small pictures we choose to represent us when we step into a forum or a virtual social group. As I looked at them I noticed many that were left blank. I thought this was so strange. It would be like talking to someone at a party who is faceless, kinda creepy. So where does one get an avatar? Well there are tons of places on the net that have every style you can imagine. However for today I choose to highlight Meez. They have been around for a while allowing you to create static (non moving) or animated avatars. It is free. But if you want certain special extras, you can pay for them. Essentially you register an account on Meez and then go into creative mode. You can choose pretty much every part of your character down to the eyebrows. I think my favorite part is the animation that you can choose from. They have stuff like dance moves or expressions or foods for your virtual character to eat. Once you create your character they will give you a bit of code to paste into your registration page of the forum your in. If you are confused, they have a decent help page as well. Give yourself some style and give it a try.
After the post about creating your own
avatars I received emails telling me how much they liked the site (*cough* no comments though *cough*) and so I thought I would mention one with even more functionality. Gizmoz is an avatar site that really allows a lot of design possibilities plus a whole lot more. You can choose from a list of people or creatures that you can dress up. This stuff is the regular on almost any of this type. Some of the extras that make this worth it are the animations and the ability to add your text to its speech or, even better, your voice. If you have a microphone attached to your computer you can speak and it will be added to the avatar. This makes is perfect for adding to a website or blog. Oh did I forget to mention that you can also add your face to it as well? If you have a picture of yourself you can upload it to the site. They will animate the whole business for you. It does take several minutes to render and figure out your face from the photo. This part can be kind of creepy when it is recreating a digital you. My recommendation is use a picture of just you and not many other distractions. If you want a bit more style to your online representation give this one a try. 
