Custom Avatars: What They Are and How to Create One

As generative AI continues to revolutionize the way we create video content, many teams are looking for more ways to keep their content feeling personalized and engaging. 

One of the best ways to ensure your AI video content feels authentic and forges meaningful connections with your audience is by using custom avatars. 

In this blog, we’ll cover what a custom avatar is, their benefits, and how to make an AI avatar of yourself. 

What is a custom avatar? 

A custom avatar is a digital character created by artificial intelligence to look and act like a real person. They’re typically used in videos, presentations, and other virtual environments to deliver messages in a personalized and engaging way. 

Custom avatars are usually created based on a photo or video of a real person, and are then programmed to lip sync to various scripts, speak different languages, or convey body language. 

For those who create a lot of video content, a custom avatar is helpful because it can “speak” to an audience without requiring you to manually record footage every time. Instead, you can just update your avatar’s script and generate a new video.

Benefits of custom avatars 

Many AI video tools – including Colossyan – offer a large library of stock AI avatars, which serve as ready-to-use premade avatars that don’t require any customization. 

You might be wondering, why create a custom avatar when you could use a stock avatar instead? 

Well, there are many benefits that come with the added personalization that crafting your own avatar brings. Here are a few of the benefits. 

1. Improves personalization

Generic video presenters might get the job done, but they certainly aren’t the most engaging hosts for your content. 

Instead, custom avatars allow you to make your videos less generic. For example, a custom avatar of your company’s CEO will allow you to relay internal communications from a familiar face rather than a complete stranger. 

Plus, custom avatars allow this personalization to transcend language barriers. If your CEO clones their voice, their custom avatar can be used to communicate in over 30 languages – meaning you can create personalized videos for all employees, even if they don’t speak English. 

Also read: 5 Ways to Personalize Your Video Content for Better Results

2. Makes content production more scalable 

Traditional video production is not scalable for many teams. Not only does filming take a long time, but you’re also forced to rely on your actor’s availability and ability to memorize lines in order to create videos. 

Instead, when you create a custom avatar, you only need to record them once, and you can then have their text-to-speech custom avatar recite any script you choose. The custom avatar will be properly lip synced to the script to ensure a realistic result. 

A video that used to take weeks of scripting, filming, and editing can now be completed in minutes with the help of a custom avatar – making content significantly more scalable. 

3. Ensures consistent messaging 

Maintaining consistency in branded content is a top priority for many teams. Custom AI avatars are a great way to ensure consistency, as you can use the same avatars in all of your content without having to refilm them every time. 

When to use a custom avatar

The benefits of custom avatars are clear. So, when should you use a custom avatar? 

There are several use cases that work best for personalized avatars. Let’s take a look: 

eLearning content 

Custom AI avatars are a great fit for eLearning videos, as they’re easy to update as your material evolves. 

Additionally, the credibility of your eLearning content might depend on the likeness of a certain instructor, so creating an AI avatar of that instructor is a great way for them to easily scale their content creation process. 

Internal communications 

Messages from company leadership feel more personal as videos rather than a dull email. However, recording a new video every time you have a message or update to share can take a lot of time. 

Instead, creating an AI avatar of your CEO or other company leader will allow them to create corporate video communications effortlessly. Simply add a new script and generate your avatar video. 

Sales demos 

Personalized sales messages tend to resonate better with prospects. With Colossyan’s instant avatar feature, your sales representatives can create an AI avatar of themselves and tailor their script to the needs of their top prospects in seconds. 

Marketing campaigns 

Creating new marketing assets for every campaign can be time consuming. Instead, leveraging custom AI avatars in your video content allows you to speed up the creation process and deliver promotional messages that feel both personal and human. 

How to create a custom avatar in less than 5 minutes 

Custom avatar technology is continuously evolving. Using Colossyan’s new Instant Avatar feature, you can now create a custom avatar instantly, using just your phone camera and 20 seconds of input footage. 

Here’s how it works. 

1. Record a short video clip of yourself 
2. Upload it to Colossyan 
3. Clone your voice
4. Preview your avatar and add it to a scene
5. Generate your video 

1. Record a short video clip of yourself 

In order to create a high-quality custom avatar, you’ll need to start with good input footage. 

Start by recording a short 20 second to 1 minute video of yourself. Keep in mind that your background, clothing, hand movements, and facial expressions will all be reflected in your final avatar. 

A few things to keep in mind for the best results: 

• Check your phone or camera settings: You’ll want to record at 1080p, 30fps, with HDR turned off for the highest-quality avatar result. 
• Check your lighting and video background: Choose a clean, uncluttered background for your video. Your video background will be visible behind your final avatar, so it’s important you record in the right setting. 
• Act naturally: The body language and hand gestures you record in this video will be reflected in your avatar. Switch your position every 10 seconds for the most natural-looking result. 
• Keep your mouth closed: Your lips will be synced with your script, so keep your mouth closed during your initial filming. 

2. Upload it to Colossyan 

When you’re happy with your video clip, upload it to Colossyan. Remember that your custom avatar will look just like the footage you upload, including the background and body movements. 

Colossyan’s custom instant avatar feature also supports photo uploads, meaning you can also create a custom avatar by uploading an image. 

Keep in mind that photo avatars will have head movement, blinking, and realistic lip sync, but their body will remain static.  

3. Clone your voice

If you’d like your custom avatar to both look and sound like you, you’ll need to clone your voice. 

To do so, upload a one minute voice recording of yourself to Colossyan. You can say anything in your voice recording – just try to make sure there’s no background noise, and that you’re speaking in the same tone you want your custom avatar to speak in. 

Your custom avatar will be able to speak more than 30 languages using your cloned voice. Alternatively, Colossyan offers hundreds of different stock voices you can choose from instead, which can be translated to 70+ different languages and accents. 

4. Preview your avatar and add it to a scene

Once you’ve uploaded the video or photo file as well as the voice recording, you’ll be directed to Colossyan’s video editing suite. 

From here, you can preview your custom avatar to ensure you’re happy with the results. This preview will appear in less than 60 seconds. 

If it looks as expected, you can then add it to your desired video scene in Colossyan.  

5. Generate your video

Once you’ve added your script and any other scenes or elements your video requires, the last step is to generate it. The generation time will depend on the length of your video, but it will usually take just a few minutes. 

Ensuring the ethical use of custom AI avatars 

Preventing the misuse of AI avatar generators is absolutely paramount. 

Colossyan’s new custom instant avatar feature includes age detection to prevent the creation of avatars of minors, a celebrity security filter to block the creation of avatars of public figures, and script moderation to prevent the use of avatars for violent or otherwise inappropriate content. 

Additionally, users are only allowed to create a personal avatar of themselves or of those who have given explicit consent. Your personal avatar will remain in your account alone – it will not be shared with any other Colossyan users. 

Create your own custom avatar for free today 

The best part about creating a custom avatar with Colossyan? It’s completely free. 

‍Sign up for Colossyan today to try it for yourself, or speak to a representative to learn more about our enterprise plan. Have fun creating!