Basically, an avatar is a small image of you, or something representative of you. Often times people use avatars as an iconic representation of how they manifest themselves in reality. However, regardless of how you see yourself, often the forum or the environment will control what type of avatar is appropriate. If you are on a business forum, perhaps an image of yourself, or professional photo is appropriate, but if you are on a social forum a little more creativity would be acceptable.

Here are a few examples of avatars I found on the internet.

Real Cartoon Characters	Fantasy Cartoon Characters	Provocative Image Avatar	Funny Animated Gifs	Strange Animated Gifs	Text Based Avatar

As you can see there is a large variety of avatars you can use for your forum or blog image. The important point is to be creative, and do not take yourself to serious.

Once you find the image you want to use, the hardest part is getting it re-sized to the dimensions set by the website. Using an image resizing tool can easily help you do just that. I recommend the image resizer found on the ProFusion Products website as it makes life far easier to re-size your avatar image.