The character that welcomed me on the homepage of  Gizmoz hardly looked handsome. It was more of a cartoon Hulk in his pre-teens. Is that how I will turn out when I put my face through the Gizmoz web app? I wouldn’t mind the muscles, though the face preferably should be my own.

Well, that’s what Gizmoz is. A Web 2.0 3d character maker that lets us create, customize and animate lifelike 3D talking characters and share it on sites like YouTube and Facebook. Yes, your very own talking, blabbering avatar.

The animated online clones are a new “˜breed’ of character-based visual icons. Digital characters that will take over from humdrum photos and dumb avatars. What Gizmoz does is provide a free web service that makes it dead easy to create dead ringers for our online selves. These are embeddable Flash objects with the look of a 3D caricature. It’s a huge lot of fun when you make these characters lip-synch with your own lines on social networking sites or just send it across like a 3D postcard.

There are three ways you can use the Gizmoz 3d character maker to make your own virtual showcase. But first, go through the simple registration and log-in.

Publish 3D Clips

Large repertory of templates to put your face on and publish them or embed them as Flash objects. The templates give you a gallery of choices to make slideshows, 3D greeting cards, animated mini-clips, vacation postcards, commentary clips for any video where you are the speaking critic, 3D avatars, and a new beta product where you get to swap faces with a celebrity.

Print Customized Products

You might not be asked to star in the next Indiana Jones film but you can put your face under his hat with a face swap. That’s the general idea in this section (which is basically the beta face swap option from the earlier section) leading up to the stage where you get to print it on mugs and tees. But the printing isn’t free though it may sound cool. If you don’t want to part with your pennies, share the finished file on your social networks or simply download it to your computer.

Create Cool Profile Pics

We are back to free with this part of the Gizmoz service. Create your own character using provided faces or your own snapped with a webcam or uploaded. You can customize your character by changing the hair, giving it some makeup, accessorizing it or just morphing it into something bizarre. The finished character is yours to download, print or share on social networks like Facebook.

Enter the Gizmoz Studio

The process behind all three options takes you into the Gizmoz Studio interface where you mashup your face on the templates provided, add bells “˜n whistles like graphics, media clips and voice bits to make the animations talk. Gizmoz gives you many tools to do the job. What’s needed is only the face.

Making the character talk is also easy using your own recorded voice or taking the help of the site’s text to speech engine. The steps to follow for each process are clearly outlined.

The Gizmoz site is designed around one concept ““ that it should be easy to make your own animated 3D avatars and share it across the web. Making animated reincarnations of your own self is fun, what’s better is finding out the ways to entertain your friends through it.

I will leave you here now and go make one Clint styled avatar for myself. Always wanted to spout the lines – “Go ahead, make my day!”

Will Gizmoz make yours? Discover it and let us know.