Avatars: Big Blue Creatures or Picassoheads?

Avatars. What are they? I had never given much thought to them until 2009 when the movie Avatar came out. I thought avatars were the little pictures we use to represent us on webpages, but then I saw that they were big blue critters. I was confused for a time, as I often am these days learning a new digital language. This post is about the little pictures I use to represent myself, not the James Cameron avatar.

I have one colorful picture that I use as an avatar for everything.

My Picture
My Picture

I do like that I have a familiar web presence. When I search for my username, I see much evidence that I am out there. Even on a Google image search, my colorful picture comes up–along with dozens of other unrelated images, of course.

For my colorful photo avatar I used Photo Booth on my MacBook. I do prefer a photo because I like to be a “real” person commenting on others’ posts. However, I like this playful image because it doesn’t look too stark or exactly like me, with all my middle age imperfections.

Just for fun, for this blog challenge I did create a new avatar. It was made on Picassohead.com. What fun to create! It is just another reminder to me that the world is having so much fun creating and using all these cool sites.

The Picassohead resembles me, with the one green eye and crooked lips. Not really :).  Actually, my hair is about the same length and color as on my Picassohead.

Every time I do something new on my blog,  my students have fun looking up the new websites and trying for themselves. I’m sure they will certainly want to check out the new ways listed below to create their own avatars.

Picassohead

Voki

Lego Avatar

Portrait Illustration Maker

Picassohead
Picassohead

5 thoughts on “Avatars: Big Blue Creatures or Picassoheads?

  1. I am very much like you in that I like my real photo to accompany my online presence. However, I do have a voki and I enjoyed using picassahead as it was quick, easy and gave a modernistic and clean style. Thanks for sharing this great post and how wonderful that Angela Maiers mentioned the Blogging Challenge. Did you tell her that you were part of it?

  2. Hi
    I’m curious about why that particular picture represents you — I’m thinking in terms of visual representation. Did you think much about it or was it just something you created, liked and used? (That’s often how we do it, I think).
    Thanks for sharing
    Kevin

    1. Hi Kevin, I’m afraid I didn’t give it too much thought! It was fun creating it and part of the Edublogs teacher challenge, so I used it. I did try to make it look like me, as much as that was possible. Thanks for asking.

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