If you are playing Ultima or another quest game you will find that the hero is refered to as "the Avatar". This is because he or she (depending what character you chose to create) has performed a number of outstanding deeds and is of apocalyptic signifigance to the Ultima world.However, if you join some online communities, the word "avatar" is used to refer to the face that you show to the world on your profile. The programme offers the user a number of alternatives in creating their public face or "avatar".
1) The first is to load a presentable picture of yourself. This is okay if you are not shy and you know that your friends are part of that community and want to interact with the real you. It may also be useful if you are a business person communicating and advertising on-line.
Theoretically, there are safeguards preventing your contact details and full name being broadcast to everyone. You can use a screen name, but your email has to be available to the administrators of the site. The profiles of persons under the age of 18 are supposed to enjoy special protection and display less identifiable information, which is very responsible of site administration.
2) The second way you can create a public face or avatar is to load a picture of your pet, own creative art or craft. This is a good way of expressing yourself personally and retaining a certain amount of privacy.
3) The third method of creating a public face is to utilise a generic avatar available from the social networking site or use a "customise avatar" function. I activated this on one site and found I entered a whole new world of creative options. There were a multitude of selections of backgrounds and skins available. I settled upon a certain face and was then able to dress the figure in a number of different costumes and alter the figure's hairstyle. I could also choose backgrounds to give the avatar additional personality.
The program allowed the user to save faviourite "items" and up to 12 favourite complete avatars. I enjoyed creating avatars so much that I exceeeded my 12, upon which I took screenshots of a selection of my avatars and loaded them back in as "photos". I noticed that if you do this, you lose animations in the background and special features such as blinking eyes, but it is still your picture and I guess it protects the sites intellectual property. A picture has to be cropped, so I found I lost the feet and lower legs of my custom avatars doing this. I guess I could spend time scientifically reducing the dimensions of my saved file to advoid this loss, but the time involved would probably not be worth it.
The avatar creates your online presence in the community and can be adjusted according to the season as there are New Year, Prom and other special occasion items. It can also be adjusted according to mood. I am not sure that I recommend a bikini clad avatar for a female for purposes of personal safety as online abuse can occur, but if you do receive annoying unsolicited comments they can be reported to the site administration.
Link to Yahoo Avatars: http://au.avatars.yahoo.com/
Cecelia
