I Rebuilt an Old Flash Avatar Maker for the Modern Web

A while ago, I came across a Japanese retro avatar maker with a style I immediately liked. The lines were simple, the colors were restrained, and the whole thing had that unmistakable early-internet charm.

The problem was obvious: it was built in Flash. Today, the only practical way to run it in a browser is through a compatibility layer like Ruffle.

Technically, that works. In practice, it did not feel great. The page would stutter, my laptop fan would spin up, and a couple of times the browser window crashed entirely. What should have been a small, relaxing toy ended up feeling more like a stress test.

So I started wondering: if the core of the tool is just layered assets, option switching, and live preview, why not rebuild it with modern frontend tools?

That eventually became Square Face Generator. It keeps the retro spirit of the original, but the underlying implementation is now fully modern web tech, so it feels much smoother to use.