Guest Lecturer Brittany here, your friendly ambassador of the internets.  Today, dear community, we will focus on online avatars and how you can use them to supplement your Firstgiving page.   By now, quite a few of you have a few
different online profiles, I mean even Firstgiving has accounts on  MySpace,  Facebook, Zaadz, etc!   If you take a look at all of our accounts you can see that we use the same image because we connect all of our accounts with a single (the beautiful andvisually stunning "FG") image and obviously the Firstgiving name.  We think that the online avatars are really a fun and easy way to connect your blog, social networking pages and a funny way to create a recognizable image of yourself. 

Using
an image that identifies
you is pretty important when you start fundraising.  Using a personal
photo helps your supporters recognize your page and reassures them that
they are at the right place.  Today, I’ve been playing around with
online avatars and have had a pretty good laugh over it, and as you
will see below I came up with three very unique results!  I took a look
at Meez, WeeMe’s, and South Park studio characters!   

Meez are awesome because – beyond dressing them in spiffy little outfits – you can animate them to do all sorts of cool stuff like kicking a copier machine, skiing downhill in the office, riding a horse sidesaddle, etc! Also that means you can sometimes customize your Meez to do an activity that relates to your fundraising campaign!   

WeeMe’s are also adorable and  if you already have one for your Windows Live  Messenger or your AIM
profile you can grab a snapshot of it  on WeeWorld.  Another option is creating a little South Park image that you can use.  I know tht I used to use it on my Facebook profile and it always got a few laughs!

The idea here is that you should use something that people recognize and something that you can use in a bunch of different places! Enjoy!   

If you have a Meez or want a Meez (note: she is not animated, but if you click on her she will pop-up animated!):

• Go to Meez.com
• Click on Meezmaker
  • Personalize your Meez

    Make sure you look around there are a ton of choices at-shirts and even some charities are featured!

  • Find an animation that suits you or your fundraising campaign!
• Then go to Export
  • To keep your Meez animated make sure you pick "bodyshot 175X233 (animated)" from the drop down menu.
    • this will save it as an animated GIF
  • From there just save it and you can upload your Meez on your fundraising page
• My Firstgiving Meez Example

If you have a WeeMe or want a WeeMe:

• Go to WeeWorld
• Cick, "Wee to Go"
  • Click Other for the "where"
    • download the snapshot! (jpeg style)
• My Firstgiving WeeMe example

If you want a South Park character:

• Go to SP Studio
• Create your character
• Press the "print" key on your keyboard (nothing happens)
• Open MS Paint, MS Word or a program like Photoshop
• Click "edit", "paste"
  The picture will appear and you can save or edit it
• To put it in your FG page make sure you save it as a jpeg!
• On a Mac you can hit command-shift-4 to select the picture and make a screenshot.
• Make sure you give the creator credit by including a link to http://www.sp-studio.de/!
• My South Park Firstgiving example!