When developing social online games with avatars, you usually need sprites for character animation. I decided that it would be really cool to have an open service which would allow users from around the world to customize an avatar and use it in different games of different game developers.
The system would be something like OpenId and gravatar combined, but providing sprites of user movements of different sizes from different perspectives.
Players could create their avatars choosing gender, hair, facial features, skin tones, and probably some default clothing. Then they could use that avatar in different social games and probably in forums and blog comments.
The system would generate sprites for default user movements like standing still, talking, going, and running from 8 sides (avatar pointing to North, North-East, East, South-East, South, South-West, West, North-West) and different perspectives like side, isometric (30°, 45°, 60°), and top. There would be APIs to get sprites of defined size in PNG, GIF, or SVG format, then those could be overlayed with different clothing for individual games. Also there would be an API to get the avatar features in JSON format for individual avatars or additional animations. If the customization happens in 3D, then the model of the avatar with it’s textures could be retrieved by a separate API call (that’s useful for custom animations or 3D games).
If the system is centralized under one website like gravatar, the avatar information could be identified by player’s email address. Otherwise, it can be identified by web address like in OpenId.
I know, it’s not trivial to implement this and there are many gotchas with that, for example, the drawing-style should be attractive and animations should be lively; avatars could probably be animals, aliens or other creatures. But still, if you like the idea of such a system, if you know anything about similar systems, or if you would like to develop that or team up for its development, please write a comment. Let’s wave the need of it! Let’s create a movement of open-source game development! 
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