What can I use to allow users to create their own avatar character?

Question

How could you give users the ability to create a personalized avatar character, something like Yahoo! Avatars ?

EDIT . Let me clarify what Yahoo! Avatars:
This allows you to create an avatar by choosing a face, hairstyle, eyes, etc.
This is what I am looking for.

I'm interested in:

• Libraries, free or paid
• Outsourcing to an external website, provided that it can be well integrated into our website.
• Any other suggestions

Answer 1

There's also My Avatar Editor , which makes Wii-style (and Wii-compatible) avatars. It is based on Flash and googlecode with a MIT license .

Answer 2

There are many websites that allow users to create a “cartoon character” or 3D character rendering for avatars, but most sites do not allow users to use these avatars on other websites. This does: http://www.moeruavatar.com/index_en.shtml , but it allows the user to save the generated image and upload it to other websites. I do not know any ready-made code libraries that you can install on your server to get such functionality on your own website.

Suggestions for a shared avatar / user image or email:

• Gravatar. http://en.gravatar.com/
• Identicon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon , http://identicon.codeplex.com/
• Wavatar
• Monsterid

Gravatar is a web service. Identicon is an algorithm that you can implement locally on your server if you want. The last two are funny, but I don’t think I have ever used them.

Answer 3

Try the globally recognized Avatar or Gravatar.

http://en.gravatar.com/

Allows users to register and create site developers to access Gravitars.

Answer 4

Gravatar.com deviantart.com MonsterID www.dressupgames.com/avatars

Good luck