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There are 7 posts tagged avatar (this is page 1 of 2).

My Idea – Build A Lot More Gamification into Online Shopping

Why don’t stores, with online shopping, use more gamification?

Games online use it, but they don’t have the merchandise to take it farther. I think an online shopping retail outlet, like Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Etsy, etc should combine with an existing game site. Or go on their own with a game developer of their choosing. But, it would be simpler, cost effective, to work with an existing game and merge together.

Set up an account and create a character (your personal avatar won’t start with much, features can be earned) – you get a permanent 5% discount on anything you buy, as long as you keep that account. This could be limited to early adopters, which of course, could last an entire year. After that they would have to spend X amount of money to get the permanent 5% discount.

Use your character to battle the mighty monster and get 10% off your purchase. This carries on with different discounts as they level up. If they want to buy books have them fight a library related monster – get a discount and a badge (level one). If they buy electronics they battle something related, with levelling up, discounts for successfully defeating the monster. When they get to level ten in defeating that particular monster they get another reward, a feature.

Features can be unlocked. People can spend X amount, level up, post to social media, to earn a garden, a farm, a house, different outfits for their character, more and better weapons, seasonal and holiday stuff to decorate their house and character. It can go on forever. Once someone has everything there are better everything, deluxe this and premium that, for them to work towards.

People won’t want to shop somewhere else and miss out on points and rewards for their character.

Of course, characters can be posted to social media, with branding for the store. A mobile application which they can take with them anywhere and show off to friends. Bragging rights for who has the most, gets the best, etc.

Rewards can include branded merchandise too. Send them a ‘store name’ Christmas t-shirt as a reward they can wear outside of the game. Also merchandise which proclaims their status as a big winner, a home owner, etc at the ‘store name’ online shop.

Bring in guilds so people can meet at the online shop and get together to buy more. Let them pool their resources to make big purchases together. Sell them credit cards to build up more online shopping points with the store.

People who level up and have lots of rewards can be featured on the site. A reward for being such a loyal shopper and an example/ showcase of what others can achieve with store loyalty and frequent shopping.

Be Creative with Hand-Drawn Images and Scanner Art

Draw and Scan

Start with a scanner. From that one little flat box with a glass screen you can create web graphics from your own freehand drawings and even take it farther and make scanner art.
scannedart
One of the best geekery tools I have bought myself is the small (photo-sized) HP scanner. I splurged on it when I was having a tough day and wanted a pick-me-up, retail therapy. I love the scanner. I knew it would be a great thing for making art. but It’s even better than I expected. You can do more with a scanner than just scan photos.

I’m an amateur when it comes to drawing. I’m not far beyond the whole ASCII art and stick figure stage. However, there are so many things you can do with coloured pencils, gel pens, and different kinds of paper too. You don’t have to draw like an expert to create something unique, colourful and usable. Practice drawing, study some how-to guides for techniques and you will get better at it.

I always draw freehand. People who draw better than I do will start with shapes and sketches, the way most drawing guides and tutorials will show you. I don’t know why I’m so stubborn about sticking to freehand. But, I do like it.

Making Scanner Art

I also clip things out of magazines, sales flyers and the newspaper. The trick with using something you have cut out is to give it a white background. If you add a plain white sheet of paper behind the clipped out picture you will have a much easier time making use of it later. Plus, fewer of your jagged/ cut edges show.

Try placing more than one image (hand drawn and/ or clipped images) on the scanner, like a collage. Experiment and put them in different order, overlap some of them. You can always re-scan the image if you don’t like the first results.

You can add more to your scan than flat paper. I’ve taken everything out of my purse and put that on the scanner, artfully arranged and mildly edited. Have a look at the links to scanner art for some really unique ideas. Real scanner art doesn’t use a camera but often looks that good. It should be right off the scanner too, not touched up with the extra effects which I do when I turn my scans into web graphics.

Keep the window of your scanner clean. Check it for spots of dust or ink from your pens. Anything on that glass will show up on your scan. I use a soft cloth, the microfibre type made for dusting computer screens, so it won’t scratch the glass on my photo scanner.

Resize your Image and Add Text and Special Effects

Once you have your picture or drawing scanned you need to open it in a graphic program to finish it off. Mainly you will want to re-size it and save it to a file type that will work on the web. You can also add text to turn your image into a button, icon or blog header. If you really want to get into designing look at the special effects and other options included with your graphic software.

I used to like the graphic program that came with MS FrontPage, it was simple and straight forward. Now I run Ubuntu Linux (instead of Windows). I’ve started using Gimp and trying various web image editors. Most of the web image editors will give you the basic features you need to turn your image into a web graphic.

Now that your image is scanned and resized, and you have saved it to an image file (.png, .jpg or .gif), it is now an official image. You can load it to anything you like: your blog, your personal site, an email signature, an avatar for your profile, a blog header, any where you can use an image. Images can be tiled for a background or wallpaper. The trick is to measure your image so the pattern matches up.

So, there’s the story of my web graphic ability.

Scanner Art (Scanography)

Avatar-Making for your Online Profile

avatar makingAn avatar gives you a face when you fill out a profile online. There are endless places you can use an avatar on the web: email signatures, blog comments, forum profiles, HubPages or any other site you create an account on.

For this post I am focusing on sites which let you create the avatar online, from start to finish. You may need a screen capture software to save your finished avatar in an image file on your own computer. Go to the home site for your web browser and look up the add-ons. I use Chrome and Firefox (at different times) both of those have simple add-ons which let you use screen capture right from your web browser.

Many online game sites will give you an avatar when you sign up to play their game. This is another way to create an avatar, but it requires you to register for the site and have an account first. If you are not interested in playing the game you can still create an avatar and save it on your own computer, but you will have to take the time to register for the site, first.

Creating an Avatar with Your Own Art

The avatar can be an image of your own choosing. Use a photo you have taken. Your own art/ drawings in an image file (png, jpg or gif files) are great as avatars too.

Modify the image to fit the size you need. Most profiles will have a size limit. Some will have a limit for the pixels/ bandwidth of the image as well. There are web graphic programs which can resize an image. Some have features which let you add text, change colours and change the shape of the image, give it a different background and so on. You can use software such as Gimp, for image editing.

Globally Recognized Avatar

Once you have your avatar go to Gravatar and set up an account. This is a free online service which gives you a globally recognized avatar which will automatically show up when you comment on WordPress blogs or use various comment services and forums online.

  • Creating Avatar in GIMP (Illustrated)

Try Making Your Own Web Avatar (last updated on March 18, 2012).

Luv Your Blog Lately?

Have you visited Blogs We Luv? I was interviewed at Blogs We Luv for my personal blog, back in 2008.

Put together your own answers to the ten questions and send it in for your own interview. Here are the questions so you can get thinking right away:

  • Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
  • Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
  • What sets you apart from other bloggers?
  • When and how did you first discover blogging?
  • What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
  • Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
  • If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
  • How has blogging made you a better person?
  • What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
  • Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?

Here are my answers:

Ten Questions with Laura of That Grrl

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
A scrapbook/ junk drawer of things I create, write, think or just find interesting. Rural exploration photos when I have been out taking photos. Cartoon drawings to illustrate the blog mostly every day. Basically it is things I think of when I’m in the shower. Conversations I have with myself. Ideas I find somewhere else and want to keep track of to explore further. It’s made of stuff I love, stuff that bothers me and just stuff in general. Kind of like life.

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
Love the World – Doesn’t define who I am. There is no one post that does that. But it has some of the elements of who I am. I think there is too much in my head for any one post to contain it all.

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
I don’t especially want to be set apart from other bloggers. With all the other bloggers out there I’m sure there are several doing the same stuff I am. I post for myself. I still feel the passion for web publishing that I first did over ten years ago when I began my first weblog. I like the ideas of diy web publishing, free journalism, creative CSS and HTML and having the freedom to do it all my way.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
Over ten years ago. I almost remember some of the first blogs I read. They were still new in 1996, most people had a webpage up if anything. Blogs were software which made keeping a site updated easier as your newest work would show up on top of the older work. They weren’t all journal-like then either. People who knew code were doing wonders. The rest were trying to learn from the best of them. I remember being awed and amazed by those who created blogs back then, they really were feats of artistic and geeky genius. I was working more on ASCII art, newsgroups and IRC than blogging. My first blog was on Blogger though, I liked it even way back then.

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Biggest peeve are the ads (and splogs which followed the ads). If anything is killing blogs it is monetizing and seo obsessed people who don’t really create anything. All too often it is recycled, stolen or mass contributed content which lacks anything personal at that point. Splogs are like a huge clog in the drain of the kitchen sink and they spoil blogging by making it harder to find real blogs that would awe and amaze as they did once upon a time.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
Nothing is coming to mind. But it’s always the widget that you don’t even think about which is most essential and taken for granted. I couldn’t live without Blogger itself. I love finding good avatar making sites, Blessthischick.com is my favourite at the moment. I like Firefox though lately it hasn’t been keeping me logged in anywhere as it used to do. I like StumbleUpon and Flickr too, both services.

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
No one. What would be the point of having someone else write a post? It’s a personal blog, a way for me to hear myself think as much as a way to create something for others to view. To have someone else post would turn it into something else and then it wouldn’t be me writing for me any more. I’d have to start another new one. 🙂

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
That’s easy. Blogging kept me from going insane when I was alone in a foreign country and getting divorced. Not sure if it really made me a better person but it really did keep me from feeling completely alone and isolated with just all kinds of thoughts and feelings spinning in my head. It gave me focus and a place to put my feelings out there and get feedback from a few blog friends so that I felt someone was listening to me even if I was still in a room all by myself.

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
That depends if you really are a blogger or someone using blog software. If you really have the genuine interest in creating something go for it. Try new things and don’t worry about the opinions of others. You should be doing this for yourself. Making your own footsteps into the virtual world. Don’t go too far into the idea of writing for an audience, write for yourself or it soon becomes meaningless. You get burnt out when you really don’t have anything of yourself there any more. If you focus on traffic and link backs to your blog instead of adding colour, ideas and thoughts you won’t have anything of your real self invested in it any more. Readers won’t find that interesting either.

Work on keeping your blog easy to navigate, organized, not too cluttered and keep it to a simple, clean layout. Also, make sure your colours and the font size don’t strain your reader’s eyeballs right out of their sockets. If you want to post every day but feel stuck a few days try a new way of expressing yourself: draw something, post a photo, a poem, write about a new hobby you are interested in, take a day off and do something new to write about, anything else you can think of that will fit into a blog post. Just like the old days when I wrote penpal letters and would think of new things you could fit into an envelope and mail acros the oceans, a blog is a format you can fit a lot of things into if you put your mind to it.

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Had to think about it for a bit. It’s a tie between The Useless Men and Blog U now. The Useless Men are fun to read but Blog U has been a great source for blog innovations especially when there was something specific I wanted to change or fix.