Put Them IN the Game
We’ve all seen some of the fun paste up systems on the web where you slap a cut out of your face on an elf or some other character and it moves around. The huge viral impact of these animated paper dolls is amazing in and of itself. But what if it didn’t have to be so flat? No more Jib-jab mouths and clunky motion. What if you could really animate people, move their mouth, wink, nod, and more? That’s where we started working with Digimask…
Choosing your Showgirl Options
These guys are great and we have had a blast working on projects with them. The base concept is simple. What is more fun than a good app, game or widget? One that you can put yourself (or unsuspecting friends) into. We first worked with them a few years ago on a simple prototype:
* People go to Vegas and want to spend money.
* Everyone fantasizes of being a showgirl.
* How fun is it to stick your buddy in a show girl body and laugh at how silly (and realistic) he looks?
And so the fun began. Showgirl was a demonstration that you can take a realistic 3d animated dancer and put your face into a custom 3d head that can smile, wink, and more. Once converted we can become the ultimate puppet masters and make someone do just about anything. So where to go next.
To Disney of course. So apparently not everyone wants to be a Showgirl (or at least will admit to it) but who doesn’t want to be a pirate? Am I right? I mean seriously, eye patches, wooden legs, swords. (Well there is the ninja crowd, but that’s another story). So the Disney Pirates experience was born. Upload your photo and you are sent back a custom 3d avatar of yourself that you can customize as you see fit. Be captain Jack, Barbosa, or your own custom pirate. What is even more fun, you can make them talk. Yes full lip sync with lines from the movie.
Select Your Pirate Accessories
So what else can you do? Well Disney provided a few more opportunities. How would you like to be in “Enchanted” or maybe Peter pan? Want your face on Mt Rushmore (National Treasure II)? We’ll we can do you one better. Lets get you in the “game!” The next step was to roll the user directly into Narnia. With the launch of Prince Caspian we were able to integrate the user’s 3d avatar into a fully playable game, complete with transformations info a Faun, Centaur, Giant, or Dwarf. Users show emotion as the character moves around the board and are rewarded with custom download-ables like a personalized wanted poster, ID card, wallpaper and more.
This is not all just a showcase of previous projects. The bottom line here is that people really flock to customized experiences. Nifty web gadgets are fun, but we are all a bit ego centric at some level. Put the user IN the experience and you just connected with them on a whole new level. Customization can come in many forms, but with some of the amazing innovations in technology lately are leaving the door wide open to some very cool possibilities. The future of the web definitely lies in the user being part of the experience, not just a spectator.
Venture through Narnia as the character of your choice in this game. Click the image above to try it for yourself.
