If you participate in any online forum, blog, messaging service or group chances are you have a avatar.

An avatar is a small, sometimes computer generated image of oneself placed next to your online profile.  It helps other users identify you amongst the community you’re participating in.

Most people use a very small photograph of themselves as their avatar.

The truly courageous create a Mangatar.

A Mangatar is like a cartoon image of yourself that you create online.

The first step in creating your own Mangatar is to head to FaceYourMangatar.com

Once there you’ll want to choose the FACEYOURMANGA option.

The very easy to follow set up guides you through the process of creating your computer likeness.

First you select Male or Female.

Then the possibilities are almost endless.

You can change your face, eyes, hair, nose, ears, color, clothing and more.

Once you’re satisfied with your new Mangatar you simply click the finish button.

A message warns that you’ll be finishing the process and there’s no going back.

If you’re absolutely sure you simply click OK and enter your e-mail address.

Your finished Mangatar arrives in your Inbox as a .jpg file a short time later.

Once you’ve registered on the site you’ll be able to go back at a later date to see any of the avatars you’ve created.

For the purpose of this review I decided to create Magnatars for the other Gear Diary Editors.

I present Senior Editor Wayne Schulz.

Editor Dan Cohen.

Yours truly, LarryG.

And of course, the one and only Judie.

FaceYourManga is totally free and you can create as many avatars as you like.

Making the avatars is a ton of fun.  Dan and I even got our spouses involved in advising which features best represented us.  We got a laugh out of playing around with some of the more humorous props available to  add.

Check it all out at FaceYourManga.