mi Face Lets Users Create Personalized Avatars

mi Face - Do you secretly have your crush's phone number saved in your iPhone? And are you too chicken to snap a photo of him or her to assign to their listing in your contacts? Do you wish you had an easy solution?

mi Face, the new application from Mobile App Center, allows users to create cartoon avatars of friends and family (or anyone they want, really), to use in their contact list, as their iPhone wallpaper, or just to email around.

The mi Face application has a fair number of facial features available. Users can choose from eight different face shapes (and six different skin tones), about twenty different hairstyles (and twelve different hair colors), and an assortment of mouths and noses. Unfortunately, most of the noses and mouths are, in my opinion, kind of ugly.

The biggest downside to this application, I think, is that although there are about 20 different eye shapes and styles to choose from, they're all black or black and white, with no option to change the color. When you're working with a head-and-shoulders image like mi Face offers, it seems like eye color should be an adjustable value. A green-eyed friend with black eyes just doesn't seem right, does it? (And by "black eyes", I'm talking the actual eye color, of course, not that they were beaten to a pulp. Although that might be a fun option for creating an avatar of one's nemesis, wouldn't it? Mobile App Center, are you listening? )

Along with the options listed above, mi Face also allows users to add glasses and a limited selection of facial hair to their creations, and you can also change the color of their shirts. The guy I created doesn't look too much like the gentleman I was modeling him after, but he's cute enough, anyway.

Once you've finished a face, you can save it to your phone and do with it whatever you wish. mi Face works well — very stable and it certainly does what it promises. I'd like to see more customization options added to this in the future and I think it'd be a terrific little app.