How do you make an avatar?

Does anyone know any websites that I can make cool avatars for free? I want to make something but I don't know what to use.
Also,I would like to know how you get a picture on top of a background?

Feel free to post any suggestions

is gimp 2.6 a free download?

Yes, you can download it for free on their website. (:

can you create buildabear avatars on it?

yes.^^ also, if your looking for something cheap and easy, try BeFunky.com -its not like super pro, but its soo easy and you can make decent avatars. as long as you have a picture of your BV avatar zoomed in to 300+

Yes it's very easy to create graphics on GIMP.
Gimp, IMO, is the closet thing to Photoshop that you can have for free.

thanks so much for the help

To make an avatar, here are some known sites:

If you are a fast learner, then Photoshop would be good but it is not free.

For beginners, I would recommend Gimp 2.6, Gimp is free (that's the one I am using)

There are lots of videos on Youtube to help you to learn the basic things you have to know to begin making graphics, like making things transparent, adding text with a background, adding a background to a graphic, ETC.
If you don't really feel like using those sites, I also recommend Pixlr.com which gives you choices of fonts and overlays to put on the file you chose

Hope this helps!

To make any graphics, if you can't work out tricky sites, then download paint.net (its free)
Also if you want a good site, which is slightly harder to use, download Gimp 2.8 c:
Then if you're very serious about graphic making and want to pay for it, buy photoshop cs5
Once you've downloaded the site, pm me which one, and I can give you some tips and help to make avatars (:
Hope this helped:D

Paint.NET- You have to download (free)
BeFunky.com- Online (free)
Blingee.com- Online (free)

pizap (ONLINE)
splash up (online)
(do not know any download ones cause i always use online

is gimp 2.6 a free download that is safe for the computer? I am downloading it now but I don't know if it is safe.

Yes, it's safe!(:

I downloaded it but how do you add a background and put an image on top of it?

Yes gimp 2.6 is a free download or you could also get gimp 2.8. You can use the lasso tool or the scissors in gimp to take away the original background of a picture and then post it to you own background.

Pizap blurs your character and makes the graphic really large, so it would cut off.