Nothing cures a case of the “Mondays” like doing something thoroughly unproductive for half an hour, right? Here’s an idea…

I love playing with avatar creators, because I’m no good at drawing, and I’m too cheap to hire someone to make me a custom caricature. Now that WordPress has built-in gravatar support, you might be looking for a new image to use when you’re out and about in the bloggy neighborhood.

Here’s one for you to try, from gamedition. It doesn’t build a whole body for you, but you can customize a cartoon head for yourself. There are even some cute and quirky accessories, like a pirate eye patch and 3-D glasses. [EDIT: I had initially linked this post directly to the flash file for the avatar creator, but GamEdition has redirected that to the main page, which contains thumbnails to games that are not G-rated. Just thought you should know before you click.]

Here’s what I came up with after about 30 minutes of messing around with it. I think I like it!

I’m not really a fan of South Park. (If you’ve never heard of it, it’s an animated television program with mature language and politically incorrect storylines.) However, I am a fan of cute cartoon avatars. And since I cannot draw anything myself, I love finding places online that will let me play around and create my own cartoons!

Planearium.de has a fun South Park avatar maker. You choose your skin tone, eyes, hairstyle, clothing, and facial expression. Plus, you can customize it quite a bit, by choosing various accessories, weapons, and a background color or scene. Do a screen capture to save your creation, and there you are! You have your very own South Park-ish cartoon avatar.

Here is one I made to represent myself. I decided to go with the Jedi look, complete with light saber, because I love Star Wars, and I’m about the same height as Yoda. “Do, or do not. There is no try.”