Startup Technology – PortableYou

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Strietzel – December 15, 2008 | Jon Snoddy

Startup Life – People who frequent Big Stage Joint tend to dream big. Kind of an unspoken requirement I guess. We started this thing with the vision of digitizing humanity… all of it… everybody. We wanted to create a technology so transformative that it would launch an unstoppable series of domino falls that would result in a planet sized population of digital people, all dressed up and looking for somewhere to go. For this to happen, we knew that the tech would have to be really easy to use. It would have to rely on hardware that everybody has laying around and it would have to happen fast because we are all so crazy busy. We set goals: a standard digital camera, a couple of photos in a couple of minutes, and your friends have to recognize the results, and who would have thought; we’re there, and more. Woo hoo! Let’s go digitize a species.

To entertain the digital us, we took the next step with the launch of our Startup, www.bigstage.com, our social network in which you create and share the digital you in cool digital content. Adding yourself to content you like is great good fun and sharing it is hard to resist, so pretty much everyone gets bigstage.com.

That’s now rolling so we are on to our third act in which
“The Digital You” gets up and walks out the damn door! We call it PortableYou and we are inviting all our friends are to the party. Any web site, video game or virtual world can adopt PortableYou and add instant personalization to their world. They can play, fight, learn, travel in the wonders of cyberspace, with their friends, as themselves. Life is good in Digitalville. You can digitize yourself before breakfast at bigstage.com, dash off to a class at thevenuenetworks.com, then star in the film, The Spirit on your iPhone, and close out the day hanging with the digital star of a hit MTV show. Yes, the digital life is sweet.

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Startup News: Transport yourself from Game-to-Game

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Dean Takahashi | December 11th, 2008 | Repost by Jonathan Strietzel

If your interested in building a 3-D avatar, or virtual character, you might as well spread take it everywhere with you. That’s the point of Big Stage Entertainment’s PortableYou program.

Big Stage uses a highly advanced, facial modeling system to render an amazing digital replica of you in seconds which can be transported into numerous forms of interactive media.

Big Stage allows you then take your avatar from one place to another, as long as each desitination conform to Big Stage’s own applications programming interface, or API. For now, the API is proprietary, but Big Stage hopes to make it a standard.

Creating an avatar is easy.  An avatar can be created in a few seconds using three standard digital camera photos of someone’s face taken with any standard camera with a flash. This amazing process creates an amazingly accurate, high definition avatar in seconds and allows you to transport it into a number of environments.

Still, the idea could catch on because it fits with the theme of personalization that is taking over everything from YouTube personal video channels to social networks, said Phil Ressler, chief executive of Big Stage.

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Big Stage Partners with Splash News and GGL Global Gaming

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Virtual Worlds News/December 11, 2008

Yesterday Big Stage announced  the launch of Portable You, its program to integrate its 3D facial models with third parties or games, virtual worlds, and more as well as an initial partnership with Icarus Studios and The Venue Network. Today it announced two more partnerships, with Splash News, a celebrity photo site, and GGL Global Gaming, a gaming community. With Splash News, users will be able to put their own faces on the latest paparazzi shots, and GGL will promote games and content with still images and movies on Big Stage. The latter partnership will also bring promotional opportunities with one “major video game publisher” launching a partnership in early 2009.

“The popularity of GGL demonstrates how playing videogames online with a community of friends has transformed gaming into a highly social activity,” said Phil Ressler, Big Stage Entertainment CEO. “With the promotional experiences offered on BigStage.com through this partnership, gamers will be able to take their affinity for games one giant step forward by turning themselves into the characters they love to play, with the ability to share these unique experiences with friends, whether they are on MySpace, Facebook or GGL. Until BigStage.com, seeing yourself appear in 3-D animation alongside your favorite game characters would have required the help of an army of developers. BigStage.com is breaking down that barrier for gamers.”

Startup – Big Stage | GGL Partnership

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Strietzel – Posted by Kevin Jenkins in Tech News on 12 11th, 2008

BigStage.com Users Will Be Able to Insert Their 3-D @ctors Into Free Video Game Content, Then Share with Friends and GGL Community Members

LOS ANGELES, Dec 11, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Big Stage Entertainment, Inc., a media technology company founded by Jonathan Strietzel, Jon Kraft and Jon Snoddy, that lets consumers project themselves photo-realistically into the digital realm, is partnering with videogame social networking company GGL Global Gaming (GGL) to promote free game content on BigStage.com. The first promotion rollout with a major video game publisher is scheduled for early 2009. Members of the BigStage.com and GGL communities will soon be able to insert their 3-D @ctor, a realistically animated digital clone quickly created for free from a few photos, into game cinematics, still images and animatics. Users can then share this content with friends and post to GGL community pages and other social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace.

“GGL members love great video games as well as new technology that enhances their gaming experience,” said Ted Owen, Owner/Chairman of GGL. “The @ctor creation technology offered on BigStage.com is a great benefit to our members who are constantly seeking creative new ways to express themselves and their love of videogames to the community. Unlike anything gamers have seen before, putting your own realistically animated face onto videogame characters is an innovation that players will be eager to embrace.”

With 26 million unique visitors per month, the GGL Network serves as a hub for videogame fans worldwide. The vast network of GGL gamers visit the site to find news, information and communities, in addition to competing in online gaming competitions and tournaments.

“The popularity of GGL demonstrates how playing videogames online with a community of friends has transformed gaming into a highly social activity,” said Phil Ressler, Big Stage Entertainment CEO. “With the promotional experiences offered on BigStage.com through this partnership, gamers will be able to take their affinity for games one giant step forward by turning themselves into the characters they love to play, with the ability to share these unique experiences with friends, whether they are on MySpace, Facebook or GGL. Until BigStage.com, seeing yourself appear in 3-D animation alongside your favorite game characters would have required the help of an army of developers. BigStage.com is breaking down that barrier for gamers.”

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