You have probably seen some of these animated characters before, while you were visiting corporate websites. I remember to have stumbled on some but upon closer inspection they were only available with a monthly subscription.

Since I wasn’t too bothered about really having them, I let it be. Until I found Voki. Now for those of you who want this type of animation for their blogs, websites, or even on social networking profiles, Voki is your answer.

Voki is free.

The Voki design process

On the Voki website can play around and design your own character. You can even personalize it as much as to upload your own voice to make the character your own. You can give your Voki eyes, hair color, bling, glasses, clothes and whole range of other paraphernalia.

In the worst case, Voki is just a bit of fun, but could turn into something practical altogether. Just imagine if you manage to entice your visitors through your Voki to sign up to your RSS feed.

I could imagine that fun would do the trick. Performers have long known that if you make your audience laugh, you have them in the bag.

Just for fun I have created this character below. Granted, the voice sucks, but like I said, if you used your own it would be all the more authentic – and no, I didn’t want to shock you with my voice, too much of an accent. LOL.

Vokis could be used for:

• Corporate business
• Freelancers
• Bloggers
• Service providers
• Web workers
• Social networking enthusiasts

Why is Voki free?

If you can bear a little advertising on your Voki (see below the actual video), then the free use is all you need. To create this Voki I didn’t even have to sign up. I just by-passed the sign up process.

There are also paid version for corporate companies, but I couldn’t see any specifics in regards to pricing. For big corporations who are interested in branding their Voki with their own logo, this is also possible. You can even insert your own ads and Vokis should work with any web environment via their API’s.

What do you think? Is Voki for you, or do you think they are just a waste of time?

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