I've finally come to the conclusion (after a bunch of Treehouse courses) that I need to create a gravatar.

For those who are not familiar -- gravatar is short for: ‘globally recognized avatar'.

They are all over anything to do with social media (Facebook, WordPress, etc) and are linked to email addresses (can be more than one).

My main problem - my facial profile is so hideous it could make a half-orc look good.

So I've decided to make a cartoon-ish gravatar.

The only trouble is all my DMV photos are grainy and have terrible image quality.

My Question:

To those who have used any of those "cartoon-izing" apps, which one works the best (or at least have the best adjustment options)?

I've tried all the ones recommended on these pages:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/11-sites-to-create-cartoon-characters-of-yourself/

http://wpaisle.com/inspiration/best-sites-to-create-cartoon-characters-of-yourself/

http://www.joshstauffer.com/cartoon-avatar-generator/

...wasn't really impressed with the results of any of them..

I'm think of just using a selfie (taken off my ASUS transformer tablet), converting it to greyscale and then use CorelTrace to convert it to a line drawing (probably with a lot of manual tweaking involved), unless someone can recommend a really great (but free0 cartoon-izing tool/utility.

Or...and I mentioned some researched links.

Here they are:

Treehouse Gravatar links

Gravatar - Ruby

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-simple-ruby-on-rails-application/deploying/adding-gravatars-2

Gravatar - iPhone:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/implementing-designs-for-iphone/finishing-the-user-interface/getting-gravatar-images-for-users-2

Gravtar - Android

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/implementing-designs-for-android/customizing-a-gridview-for-friends/getting-ready-for-gravatar-images http://teamtreehouse.com/library/implementing-designs-for-android/customizing-a-gridview-for-friends/retrieving-gravatar-images

Gravatar - Treehouse forum threads:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/about-gravatars https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/pro-and-cons-with-gravatar https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravatars-dont-work-for-me https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/just-wanted-to-know https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/how-to-add-your-picture-next-to-your-posts-in-the-forum https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/add-default-profile-pic-instead-of-gravatar https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravatar-are-not-showing-up-in-android-app https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/cant-seem-to-link-my-gravatar-account https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravatar-test-is-not-working-for-me https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/build-a-simple-ruby-on-rails-application-gravatar-help https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/progress-stunted https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/creating-friendships-what-is-a-joint-table-undefined-method-gravatarurl-for-nilnilclass https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/build-a-simple-ruby-on-rails-application-gravatar-help https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/what-value-in-the-hash https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/build-a-simple-ruby-on-rails-problem-solved https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/default-avatar-for-new-users https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/delete-statuses-of-destroyed-user-on-treebook-application https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravatar-are-not-showing-up-in-android-app https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/getting-an-error-on-the-gravatarurl-method-when-testing-statuscontroller https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/importing-gravatars-does-not-work-in-heroku https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/adding-gravatars-code-challenge https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravatar-are-not-showing-up-in-android-app https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/gravtastic-gem https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/how-did-you-achieve-the-circle-styling-of-your-avatar https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/i-have-a-graveter-account-but-i-cant-see-my-logo-to-my-new-word-press-site-any-solution

GravatarUrlBuilder.h file:

https://github.com/tagabek/QuickChat/blob/master/GravatarUrlBuilder.h http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDcQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftreehouse-code-samples.s3.amazonaws.com%2FiPhoneIslands%2FGravatarUrlBuilder.h&ei=M_q6VN6FHcqdygTSk4DQAg&usg=AFQjCNGm3Z8Qej2vdcNkmovEHM8MFsy3NA&sig2=9V9jLhFP0YwT9Iiwyp9iSg

Gravatar - Misc

https://twitter.com/treehouse/status/220091347997175809

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Gravatar - non-Treehouse links:

Main Site:

http://en.gravatar.com/

Developer Resources:

http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/

Gravatar - WordPress related

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars http://css-tricks.com/snippets/php/display-a-user-gravatar-from-email-address/