Create a Yahoo! Avatar

Create a Yahoo! Avatar

Make a custom caricature of yourself and watch it smile or cry along with you as you chat through Yahoo! Instant Messenger.

Having an instant messaging conversation on the computer is a bit like having a conversation with a blindfold on. You can "hear" what the other person is saying clearly by reading what he types, but other cues, such as facial expressions, are completely absent. Without seeing and hearing the person you're chatting with, it's hard to pick up on emotional overtones such as humor, sadness, or sarcasm. This is exactly why we've developed text shortcuts to convey emotions over the Internetfor example, using an emoticon to indicate smiling, or using an abbreviation such as LOL to indicate that you're laughing out loud.

Yahoo! has taken this idea of conveying emotion a step beyond such text shortcuts by creating cartoon-like characters called avatars to stand in for some of these emotional cues during Yahoo! Instant Messenger conversations. With a little work, you can create your own avatar that's unique to your personality and let it stand in for you as you chat with people online.

Your Digital Double

To create the Internet representation of you, browse to the Yahoo! Avatars site (http://avatars.yahoo.com). (You'll need to be at a Windows computer and have the Flash plug-in installed for your browser.) Once you're there, log in and choose the gender of your avatar (male or female); all other options will flow from this choice. You can then go on a virtual shopping spree to change the look of your avatar in a number of ways:

Appearance

Match your skin color, face shape, eye color, or hairstyle.

Apparel

Dress your avatar up in different tops and bottoms.

Extras

Give your avatar bags, jewelry, scarves, sports items, pets, hats, or holiday-specific items.

Backgrounds

Put your avatar in a specific location, such as a school or vacation spot.

Branded

Give your avatar the latest brand-name apparel.

As you go from section to section changing your avatar, you can keep track of your changes on the Previewing Changes panel on the left side of the page, as shown in Figure.

As you click different apparel items or extras, you'll find them listed under the "What I'm trying on" box below the preview panel. When you find a combination you like, click Save to move the list of items to the "What I'm wearing" box. If you ever find that you've accidentally added a ski outfit and your avatar is in a beach scene, click the Clear button to revert to your last saved avatar.

There are quite a few customizations to click through, and if you ever spot something you'd like to come back to, you can add an outfit or scene to your Favorites section to keep them just a click away. (You can see your favorites at any time by clicking the My Favorites link from the Yahoo! Avatars toolbar.) You can also save entire avatars to your Favorites list, giving you quick access to fairly complex combinations quickly. But keep in mind that if you ever decide to change genders, you'll lose all of your previously saved avatars!

Dressing up a Yahoo! avatar

Getting Moody

Just as your avatar can reflect your physical appearance to some degree, your avatar can also reflect your mood. At the top of the preview panel in Figure, you can see five face icons that represent different moods. Clicking on each face changes your avatar to display a different emotion, such as happy, excited, sad, or angry. Figure shows the whole range of available emotions.

A Yahoo! avatar showing its emotions

There's also a special mood that changes based on the selections you've made for your avatar's facial appearance. If you don't set a specific mood for your avatar when you're in the designing process, you avatar will still emote while you're chatting.

Once your avatar is set, start Yahoo! Instant Messenger and log in. Double-click an ID in your friends list to bring up a chat window, and click the small head icon next to the Send button. This will make your avatar visible to you while you're chatting with others. If your friend on the other end is also using the Windows version of Yahoo! Instant Messenger, she'll see your avatar as well.

As you're chatting, you might notice that your avatar changes expression from time to time. For example, if you type LOL in a conversation, your avatar will have a big smile for a moment and return to its normal expression. There is a whole series of words and emoticons that will change the expression of your avatar. Here are a few of the most common expressions that avatars can display, along with different strings you can type to trigger each one:

Neutral

happy, nice, or :) (the standard smiling emoticon)

Excited

hehe, haha, rotf (for "rolling on the floor"), lol, or excited

Sad

boo, hoo, or :( (the frowning face emoticon)

Angry

hmmph, grr, or angry

To trigger the special mood for a specific avatar, you can type (*). A complete list of avatar-altering words is available at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/avatar/avatar-14.html.

You can also change the mood of your avatar by clicking the avatar within Yahoo! Instant Messenger and choosing Set Avatar Mood To. This option allows you change between the five basic moods shown in Figure.

While using an avatar can never replace face-to-face communication, Yahoo! Instant Messenger avatars communicate some extra information about identity and emotions as you're communicating in an environment that's largely limited to text.