Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

There seems to be an ecosystem growing around creating, customizing, and developing animated avatars. Avatars are virtual characters either posted to a web site or used in virtual worlds like Second Life.

I spoke a few weeks ago to Dan Lejerskar of EON Reality about a tool they’ve created which creates a 3D face based on a single photograph; yesterday and today, TechCrunch has run reviews of Gizmoz–an Israeli firm that creates animated avatars based on a photo;  and Fix8, a Sherman Oaks company which uses webcams to create animated characters which track your facial movement and expressions. They’re not the only companies who seem to think the avatar business is interesting; there’s Clone Interactive, a stealthy, venture-backed Los Angeles-based firm developing 3D avatar technology spun out of USC; Oddcast, a New York-based firm with animated talking avatars; not to mention Malibu’s Conversive, and it’s Verbots animated avatars.

Gizmoz and Fix8 are squarely consumer focused; Oddcast and Conversive have taken the corporate route.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 9:29 am and is filed under Virtual Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.