I am becoming my avatar (2): Big Stage

Last month I wrote an article on the Philips Design probes, titled I am becoming my avatar, in which I said:

In Second Life we often see people trying to shape their avatar as much as possible to their Real Life appearance -kinda counts for beach babes and sixpack Joe's I guess - or the other way around, people shaping their avatar in their ideal sort of way and then try to become like this ultimate adonis in real life too. With this combined technology Philips will provide the change to bring this a step closer. Soon we will be able to project those textures and skins from Second Life on our own skins and clothing.

In this article I focussed on the way we take virtual stuff and try to add them to our real life selves, but the other way around works as well of course, which I tried in June last year at Avatar Island in which I did a testdrive of the CyberExtruder software.

The avatarisation has a new chapter though, which is called Big Stage. Mashable did an excellent report on them:

Big Stage, a personal avatar virtualization service introduced in beta form earlier this year, has its official launch today. The company has marked the moment with more choices for use of their own unique “@ctor,” as well as an updated media player and social sharing functions.

The so-called “@ctor” is a user’s 3D facial representation, which the company calls “The Digital You.” The user can subsequently insert this representation into a myriad of places, like still imagery, social networks, video games, virtual worlds, music videos, TV clips, and even advertisements. An @ctor can be animated through the Big Stage Media Player.

Since launch, the founders of Big Stage have made it a point to emphasize the backend power that goes into the making of an @ctor. The process involves up to three digital photographs taken from different angles of your face, which must be uploaded and put through what the Big Stage team regards as “advanced stereo reconstruction.”

Read Full article at Mashable.

My personal assitant: Voki

I ran into Voki, a nice little app to make an avatar which you can put up on your website to welcome viewers. Avatar based assistance on websites is one of the simplest uses of 3D applications, yet rapidly gaining interest with companies to guide their customers through the process to get a higher conversion rate.

Let Obama welcome you to the blog, don't bailout.

Get a Voki now!

Greenies out, purrsnickety in

A few months back we saw the alien arrival of the Greenies in Second Life, which was a very cool experience by Rezzable. One of the strong points about the Greenies is the avatar marketing bit. Avatar Marketing is mobile marketing as the avatars spread around the grid bringing your brand to the community instead of you having to organize event that will bring the community to your sim. Another cool MDC (Metaverse Development Company) which understands the value of this is the V3 group which brought us the hovering Orb and the Transformer avatars.

Avatar marketing is one, lifestyle is another. We've got some pretty weird people walking the face of the grid. Many subcultures like Goths and punks are present in Second Life and then there's the furries. Furries are animalish avatars, often furry skinned with long tails. These might be rather funny and adorable to the general public, but gets a little twist if you know there's quite a bunch of people out there in the Real World that have a furry fetishism too.

The Second Life Herald reports a new race has entered Second Life; the Purrsnickety's. Here's the SLH report:

"Yesterday Second Life witnessed the birth of a new race of virtual critters – Purrsnicketys. Their basic design is due to Phoenixxx Dragonash, who in RL is Ashley Speranzella-Evans, a free-lance fantasy artist.

They are built and scripted by our good friend and uber-elf Wayfinder Wishbringer. Below the fold are some screenshots and the purrsnickety propaganda."

(Pictures also from SLH)

From the purrsnickety note card...

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PURRSNICKETYS!

(To give a Purrsnickety as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)

In a world that has forgotten magic and rushes time, they live above the clouds. Dragon-kitties once chosen to be Guardians of the Earth and magic, they failed to protect it from man. They have become jaded and skeptical, and definitely have attitude. But they have not given up! They have returned to the earth to try one last time to bring back what has lost. Are they the scourge of the skies... or destined to become heroes? Purrsnicketys... adorably wicked.

Purrsnicketys are some of the most complex, heavily-scripted (but very low-lag), fun, tiny avatars ever!

INCLUDED:

• Purrsnickety Avatar (copy/nomod/notrans... copyable so you can pull a new one out of the box in case of inventory loss!)(To give a Purrsnickety
  as a gift, please read at the bottom of this notecard)



• A special Purrsnickety toy (an extra item specific to your Purrsnickety)



• Scripted wings open when flying



• Swishing tail* 72-function HUD, including...



• 68 custom sounds (no freebie sounds here!)



• 14 all-original animations (even the "tiny" animations themselves are new and tweeked), including:* Scripted tongue for cleaning



• Cat-like "run"* Fun "jump"



• Improved "sit" and "groundsit"



• Dance synchronizer (dance in time with your Purrsnickety friends!)* Cute. Real cute. (never underestimate the power of cute. Fells strong dragons and ogres and melts the hearts of warriors).

PURRSNICKETY CHARACTER INFORMATION:

PURRSNICKITY STORIES:

1. Baby Ree: Calico, curious, and pudgy.
   Don’t be fooled by the cuteness of this little baby she will sneeze fire on you
   if you aren’t careful. Likes buttercups and fireflies and her stuffed toy “Remmy”.



2. Bitters: Black, skinny and Melancholy. Always seems to have a rain cloud over his head. Loves,well he dosent’t love anything.. except for a rainy
   day and only because it spoils everyone else’s fun, maybe mud puddles. Older
   brother of Chitters.



3. Chitters: Pink, happy and talks a lot, though only the other purrsnicketys can tell what she is saying. Loves lollypops and unicorns and baking pies for the gang. Kid sister of Bitters and has a crush on Jeepers (but don’t tell him).



4. Creepers: Large, green and agitated. Loves dark damp places and mushrooms. Oldest and Leader of the Purrsnicketys, big brother to
   Jeepers. Arch nemesis: Mr. Wiggles the very elusive and clever mouse dragon whom Creepers can never catch.



5. Critters: Brown, sweet and earthy. He loves all kinds of creatures and can often be seen playing with the mice in the castle (in a friendly way) Likes walking in the clouds and strawberries.



6. Flitters: Yellow, scattered and artistic. He creates beautiful rainbows in the sky and paintings for the castle. Constantly looses everything because he is so focused on his art. He can be seen covered in paint muttering to himself in his room. Likes new paint brushes and dragon flies.

Virtual Feyenoord

Soccer is big business (probably everywhere in the world except for the USA). Millions of fans worldwide go to see their heroes battle on the pitch each weekend. Everyone has an opinion about soccer, in the Netherlands we've got a saying; "we've got 16 million national team coaches" everyone knows how to play the game and thinks he can do better. No wonder that soccer games and soccer management games have been extremely popular for years.

In the recent boom of virtual worlds, it's no wonder we're seeing virtual soccerworlds arrive, such as World of Soccer and Football Superstars. In Second Life we've also seen the first signs of football / soccer clubs appear in the past year. We've had the Amsterdam ArenA, home of AFC Ajax and AC Milan's San Siro stadium which we're nice builds, but no more than that.

These two builds didn't originate from the clubs though and Rotterdam based Feyenoord is the first club that actually enters Second Life officially, though not with a virtual representation of their stadium, they're a lot smarter (mind you, I'm no fan)

Soccerfans are loyal customers. It's an almost certain guarantee they'll stick to your brand and spend their money on the latest clubshirts and other club memorabilia, and they're great brand promotors as they'll wear your brand everywhere they go, even in Second Life. has seen that clothes are one of the key assets in virtual worlds and that mobile branding / avatar marketing is the fastest way to get your name around. Feyenoord has contracted Dutch content creators SLionhead to establish their virtual foothold in Second Life. The build is what appears to be a virtual club home; tv-screens, historic matches, live matches, virtual goodies and so on. I say appear to be as I haven't seen it with my own eyes. I've seen bits and peaces on the small vid from Feyenoord.tv posted on the SLionhead blog here.