Interview: Big Stage's Jonathan Streitzel on Creating Custom Avatars for Everything

When we first saw Big Stage, we noted that the company was taking avatars pretty much everywhere. Or, as Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Jonathan Strietzel  puts it, "Big Stage is a media company that allows people to  create and integrate a lifelike 3D avatar."   Now it's got help from Intel in the form of a prime spot in Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini's keynote at CES. The keynote features Big Stage generated avatars of Smash Mouth in a set environment, but Big Stage also has eyes for virtual worlds."When I first saw this technology-- personally, I'm a gamer--and I knew this would really change the landscape," said Strietzel. "I have a huge place in my heart for anyone in virtual anything."

Strietzel isn't the only one. He says the company is already working with several virtual worlds developers and platforms of all sizes. While he declined to discuss any particulars, he added that virtual worlds were an ongoing focus for the company.

"This is not a research project for us," explained Strietzel. "It's just defining the terms of the deal and doing something really cool. We want consumers to really enjoy it. If they want it in a virtual world, we want to do it. And virtual worlds are up there at the top of the list. They're exploding. We've interviewed a lot of potential customers and everyone loves the idea of putting themselves into a virtual world and doing it quickly. We've heard lots of people say it takes too long if I have to spend an hour to get something kind of like me."

While the technology has other applications, this one cuts to the quick of many issues in virtual worlds. Big Stage creates stereo reconstruction images of people based on three photos. Strietzel says there are other companies doing similar work, some in virtual worlds, but the difference will be apparent to any users. While other companies work with consumers to produce cheap, quick single images that have a disconnect with the avatar or work with Hollywood studios over lengthy periods to produce high quality work, Strietzel's aim is to merge the efficiency of the former with the visual effects of the latter. And then make it transportable.

"Once we have that [image], porting that into various interactive environments is kind of obvious," he explained. "We can port that into a virtual world and down-res the content. We can do cell-shaded versions of you if it's a cell-shaded world. We can do multiple engines. We're compatible with Unreal 3 right now and we're moving across the board. We just make right the translators. We're creating the SDKs that people can use to import our avatars and virtual worlds are an obvious application to create a realistic you."

To make those avatars portable, from a still shot to a piece of video to an array of virtual worlds, Strietzel says all the company will need to do is export its proprietary face rig into a universal format.

"It's not a grueling process to set up the translation between how we make our mouth smile and how you make the Second Life, Kaneva, or Sony Home mouth smile," he said. "The only challenge is defining the business relationship and making sure the consumer has a really enjoyable experience."

Big Stage is currently in pre-beta and is testing internally, but will begin launching campaigns in February and March with an aim for a Q1 roll out.

Comments

[Anne Zieger]

It's my view that not only will guys like Jonathan be needed, at some point every company will need one on staff (see my write-up at http://whatmattersonline.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/hello-world/). What do you think?