248 layers · 286,720 characters
Character creator
Every head here is generated, not drawn — twelve measurements of a skull, and hair that reads the same measurements so it fits whatever it grows on.
oval-light-receding-dark-brown-none-charcoal
That line is the whole avatar. Storing it stores the picture — it redraws at any size and never needs an upload.
Why a code and not a file
Pre-rendering every character would be 286,720 images. Rendering the 248 layers instead and stacking them turns that multiplication into an addition, and it means a saved character is a line of text — cheap to store, redrawable at any size, and nothing to upload.