As part of a course I’m taking through Carol Tice’s amazing website Make a Living Writing, I received the following homework assignment: put an avatar up on Gravatar to pop up whenever I comment on blogs, etc. Now, I could use a photo, but that would just be no fun, so I decided to create my own Gravatar.

Me, in black and white and nothing on my head to cover my hair. For shame!

I started off by googling “free avatar tools” and discovered a lot of nifty links to different programs to help you make your avatar. The best site I found was Digibody. The results of a picture created with their Avatar-Maker tools look much nicer and more professional than those created with other programs, I found.

However, that left me with a small problem. Or rather three:

1. The pic was black and white. I thought color might be more eye-catching and engaging.
2. I don’t leave my house without a hat or headscarf on my head. There was no way to put a hat or headscarf on the picture using Digibody’s tools.
3. I don’t leave my bed without my glasses. (2 a.m. trips to the bathroom don’t count.) No one would recognize me without some glasses on my face.

Here’s what I did:

Thanks to Microsoft Paint, I added my headscarf, glasses, and a touch of color.

1. I saved the image to as a jpeg onto my computer.
2. Then I pulled it up in Microsoft Paint (how I wish I had Adobe InDesign or something fancier, but alas, no) and started sprucing up my avatar.

This is my DIY avatar. It’s recognizably me.

What do you think of the end product? I’d love some reviews in the comments.