Are you kind of wondering what happens when you combine Manga with Web 2.0? Eh, probably not and if you’re anything like me, you probably hadn’t really given it much thought. I certainly didn’t until I had been doing some “link-hoping” on Deviant Art and came across a website called FaceYourManga.com. The website is a Flash-based generator site, one of many that have cropped over the past few years since the Web 2.0 explosion. What probably makes FaceYourManga.com so unique is that it seems to be the only one of its kind—meaning Flash-based vector-type (for right now).

Example of a FaceYourManga.com-generated avatar

As far as manga avatar generators go, it’s not really the first or only one in the genre. While searching for other examples, I came across a bitmap avatar generator for the online community Gaia Online. You can find it at www.tektek.org/dream. I’ve never been a huge fan of Gaia Online mostly because I sort of outgrew sites like Gaia in my early 20s (frankly, Gaia is aimed more at the 13-17 age group, with the occasional 18-to-24-something thrown in).

Example of tektek.org Gaia Dream Avatar generator

Honestly, though. The Tektek.org generator doesn’t really qualify as “Web 2.0″ if you get my meaning. As near as I can tell from a simple Google search using the keywords “manga avatar generator”, FaceYourManga.com is the only one that crops up the most; the above-mentioned Gaia Dream Avatar maybe only popping up once.

Whichever you chose to play with, all I can say is: “Have fun!”