Avatars Everywhere: 27 of the Best Avatar Makers

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Avatar creator Meez is back in the news this week, but there are dozens more avatar creation tools gunning for this market. Today we attempt an overview of that market: please add more suggestions in the comment section.

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Weblin- Create an avatar and use it as your virtual self within web pages in real-time, interacting with other Weblin users who share the same interests.

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Meez.com- Create a 3D animated avatar for export directly to most web profiles, blogs, etc.

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Second Life- Use this extremely popular virtual world to do just about anything, but first, you have to create your avatar. Here, avatars can be customized almost entirely, with plenty of room to create a most accurate likeness of yourself.

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Mypictr- Use any image and resize, crop, customize, and export it to many other web 2.0 social networking sites and profiles, like Facebook, and Digg.

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Gizmoz- Create, animate, and share photorealistic, great looking avatars, and even video clips featuring them. The animation and overall look of the avatar is sourced from a real picture, actually ending up almost like a personal CGI generator.

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Mii Editor- Create your own "Mii", the avatars characteristic of the Nintendo Wii.

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Simpsons Avatar Maker- "Simpsonize yourself" by creating an avatar in the classic style of the Simpsons.

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Gickr- Instantaneously create an animate gif file by either uploading your own pictures, or sourcing from Flickr.

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Gravatar- Create an 80x80 pixel avatar by uploading an image which is then associated with your email address, appearing on Gravatar enabled websites and blogs without additional effort.

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IMVU- Create and dress up your personal avatar which can then be used in their virtual chat-rooms or with their visual messenger client.

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fix8- Create, animate, and dress up your avatar primarily through interfacing with your webcam in order to capture real movement and look.

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Zwinky- Customize your personal cartoon avatar and share it across the web.

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Digibody's Caricature Maker- Use the components of a caricature to create your unique caricature avatar.

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Faketown- A pixel-art, avatar based, MMORPG, similar to second life, but much less realistically.

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DoppelMe- Simply assemble an apparently "hand drawn" avatar image for use anywhere.

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SitePal- A pay-based 3D, animated avatar creation service aimed towards business looking to create a personal presence on their website.

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Gaia- Another avatar-based MMORPG, this one, anime-styled.

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imbee- The social network for young people includes an avatar creator featuring images of animals from the National Geographic Kids library.

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Myrl- A social network based on avatars in the "metaverse", supposedly using avatars to connect with the web by virtue of collaboration. Close to it's beta launch, this definitely looks like something to keep an eye out for.

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Kaneva- Yet another avatar-based virtual world, Kaneva looks like a valid Second Life alternative.

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Blogscoped- Chat with others in this virtual, visual, chatroom, which makes efficient use of user avatars. While it may not appear to be that "web 2.0" it uses PHP, MySQL, Ajax, and the Google API, which effectively categorize it as so.

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MojiKan- A somewhat odd MMORPG for customizable 3D pet avatars.

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Frenzoo- Customize and use one of their well-designed avatars in chats as well as a variety of other environments.

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Clickbeurs (Dutch)- Create an avatar and apply for a job through virtually chatting with potential employers, a somewhat odd idea.

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Mr. Picassohead- Create stunning, Picasso-like paintings which are easily transformed into avatars.

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Whyrobbierocks- Create a "stereotypical" avatar for use on various social networking sites, IMs, etc.

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Weeworld- Interact with some quite uniquely designed avatars in a virtual world primarily based on chats and mini-games.

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Voki- Create an avatar, record your voice, and share. A possible alternative to something like Sitepal, but geared more towards a less-business-oriented audience.

Honorable Mention

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While all of the sites (except for a couple, added for their significantly customizable avatars and creation engines) above are primarily based upon the principle of avatar creation and customization, I'd like to quickly mention the importance of your "avatar", or probably more aptly named character in many popular MMORPGs. The likes of which are probably most easily recognized in games like World of Warcraft.