Junior Members and up can now choose between rank/pool avatars and Custom avatars. The skin feature allows both.
Skin 1-6 uses the system avatars. Skin 7 displays a custom avatar.

your control panel/account options/CustomAvatar
your control panel/personal info/Edit your profile in any skin, scroll down and enter an URL for the picture you like to use.

This option is a bit primitive at the moment, max size is 100 * 100 pixels. Smaller sizes are possible too. Please keep the forumrules and 56k modem users in mind. No sound and max 10 kb. Flash images are supported too.

There's no remove button yet, please type http://www.totalwar.org/None.gif to remove urlavatars.