I always wanted to be more animated…

You’ve probably seen a lot of these Voki animations around… more frivolous stuff, driven by advertising, right?

Well… yes.

But in defence of the 15 minutes I just blew away by making my own talking cartoon self… let us not forget that a clever educator can find all sorts of ways to make a teaching experience out of this sort of thing.

Anyway, the animated characters also come in dog, cat, celebrity, alien, and anime styles, as well as the “classic” bland cartoon face style I’ve used here. (And believe me, I was sooo tempted to go all talking poodle on this!)

You can pick the clothing, hairstyle, background, etc., of course. Sliders and a color-picker let you refine the appearance of your Voki in some fairly entertaining ways, more than I’d expected would be possible, so there’s fun to be had in that.

The service does give you the option to upload an actual sound file, or to record your voice by phone or microphone… but the text-to-speech thing is good enough for this talking avatar, thank you very much.

So, there you have it — that’s Voki.

Have at it, if you’ve got a few minutes to spare or maybe an 11-year-old visitor to entertain on a rainy afternoon!