Big Stage goes public with 3D interactive avatars
Big Stage, a startup that gives people the ability to create avatars based on pictures of their own face, has released a public beta — and it’s pretty interesting.
When we covered the company before, it was working on the technology, which makes a three dimensional avatar using three different pictures of your face. Once you’ve got the avatar, you can accessorize it with different hair, glasses, hats, expressions, and so forth.
That was back in February. I compared it to JibJab, a humor site on which users upload still photos of themselves into silly animated videos. But it’s not really a fair comparison, because neither site is trying to be the other. JibJab goes for a quick, fun experience, where Big Stage is obviously looking for longer-term engagement from its users.
That’s because a Big Stage avatar is dynamic — it can change expressions and angles with ease. Watching one move is about the same watching one of today’s video game avatars, except that it’s supposed to look like you. (Whether it’s a dead-on representation is debatable. I’ve included an expressionless shot of myself and my Big Stage avatar so you can judge for yourself.
The drawback is that it requires an ActiveX download to use in either Firefox or Internet Explorer (I had to install it for both, after having some problems in Firefox). The experience of downloading, taking photos and then uploading them to the site requires some time and effort, and is bound to turn some users off. However, Big Stage’s VP of marketing, Jonas Gray, tells me the download is necessary to show the avatar in real-time.
The payoff will be when the company goes into its next phase: Partnerships with virtual worlds, gaming companies, social networks and other companies. The plan is to eventually make your avatar ubiquitous, so that you can use it anytime you want.
Big Stage’s full commercial launch is slated for the fourth quarter of this year. The company, based in Pasadena, Calif., also finished raising a round of funding in June.
Next Story: Good news: Mozilla’s Camino Project lead is hard at work on Google Chrome for Mac
Previous Story: The new iPod touch and iPod nano schematics?
About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.