About Avatar StudioIntroduction A few years ago a group of talented artists and creative people banded together to pursue a lofty ambition. The collective dream was to create an environment where a person of nearly any age could safely become part of their favorite fantasy, tale or historic era. To accomplish this vision it was decided that only high resolution, high quality 3 D scenes depicting the defining moments of various stories, fables and periods of history could adequately force an avatar voyager to suspend his or her disbelief long enough to be catapulted into the desired role. To accomplish this magic a photograph of the face of the avatar candidate would be utilized to fashion a 3 dimensional likeness of the participant. This likeness would then be inserted into the appropriate scene or scenes after which high resolution illustrations would be rendered and then printed on a variety of media including wall hangings, tee shirts, sweat shirts, desk top images etc. The final products would of course then be delivered to the avatar voyager in question. At Avatar Studio we firmly believe that any individual’s unique avatar fantasies are a cherished and positive part of that person’s core personality and spirit. Because of this, the staff at Avatar Studio, has poured a great deal of time, energy, and certainly love into the creation of every scene. All of our scenes are meticulously researched and every effort is made to keep them consistent with the actual stories, fables and myths upon which they are based, if such exists. Our desire is to provide each avatar initiate with an exotic, beautiful and permanent record of his or her journey into the land of dreams.
Site Organization and Structure The primary content of The Avatar Studio is divided into themes. Each theme in turn will have some finite number of scenes which are the actual defining moment images that tell the story of the theme in question. Avatar themes include popular folk and fairy tales from around the world, stories from various mythologies, real and fictional historical accounts, current occupations that have heroic or avatar quality overtones (e.g. Doctor, athlete, popular singer, actor etc.), Holiday themes such as Christmas, Easter and New Year, Horror themes where the avatar participant can become involved with of the Children of the night and finally of course pure fantasy themes where one can enter an alternate world as a cleric, mage, druid or paladin.. The site’s content is organized into various theme categories that will hopefully facilitate an avatar candidate’s search for a suitable fantasy. In the near future Avatar Studio intends to implement The Hall of Avatars where existing Avatar Studio members can house their 3D likeness and can include any personal information that is desired. In the Hall of Avatars visitors will be allowed to receive and leave text messages and if the Avatar member has a cell phone text messages can be relayed to this device if such functionality is desired by the participant. Links between the Hall of Avatars and popular sites like face book will also be provided. Along the same lines An Avatar Mausoleum is also planned for early 2009. In the Avatar Mausoleum one can create a place where friends and family can visit a loved one or family member, leave remembrances and possibly learn what great grandfather actually looked like, what he wore and a bit about his everyday life. A critical feature of the Avatar Studio site is its blog page. To become a participant in this blog one only needs to register (don’t worry its free). After registering everyone is encouraged to frequently express their thoughts and feelings about the site. As you might have guessed by this time the Avatar concept is nearly limitless in its permutations and combinations. This presents the staff at Avatar Studio with a real dilemma. Which themes do we develop and in what order? We are counting on our members to provide a great deal of input into the theme selection process so register and begin to sound off! The themes that are in development here at Avatar Studio reflect treasured accounts from all of the cultures of the world including but not limited to Chinese folk tales, Japanese fairy tales, Russian fables, African stories, Native American legends, Middle Eastern fairy tales and Western European myths and narratives. Our Products and Services Initial Avatar Studio product offerings include tee shirts and sweat shirts in navy blue, black and dark forest green. All clothing is available in both short and long sleeve versions in men’s, women’s and children’s sizes. Each item of clothing will have one high quality, high resolution image printed on it. Keep in mind that it is not necessary for you to “place your face” in a given scene to obtain a tee shirt or sweat shirt with the stock image on it. Actually where else on the web can you buy really gorgeous, 3D, high resolution art on tee shirts and sweat shirts for a nominal price??? The fact is, at this point in time, Avatar Studio is about the only place where you can obtain such fantastic, beautiful, high impact, high resolution images printed on apparel! So if you don’t have a photo of yourself or you really don’t want to place yourself in a given scene don’t let that stop you from ordering that scene which is pulling so hard at your core psyche, just order the image with the stock characters already in the place. In addition to wearing apparel Avatar Studio also offers both desk sized prints and wall hanging sized prints of the scene or scenes of your choice. These prints come already framed and ready for you to display. Just imagine a print on your desk at work commemorating your child’s trip to Candy Land, or capturing your child in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp or as Cinderella or Bell in Beauty and the Beast? For those couples hopelessly in love why not place both your faces in our romantic Romeo and Juliet scenes? In the near future as individual themes become more fully developed we will be offering e-Books wherein you will be able to read such stories as Little Red Riding Hood or The Tale of Saint George and The Dragon from Spenser’s Faerie Queen. Each E-book will contain several illustrations from the story as well as imaginative prose. The written content will be carefully crafted to be faithful to the original story’s text or translation and its intent. If you have created your avatar, you or your child will become the focal point of this story with all illustrations containing the likeness of the avatar(s) you have created. The 3D avatars that are employed in the various scenes will also be available in iconic and reduced complexity formats suitable for use with the web and wireless devices. If you wish you can create your avatar, place it in one or more scenes and at the same time obtain a personalized avatar icon/image or one can simply opt to obtain a free non personalized 3D avatar by choosing from among the stock characters available for immediate download. 3D E-cards should also make their appearance by late summer. The E-cards will be available in two forms, those without an avatar likeness will be free, while those cards containing a specific avatar face will be offered for a nominal price. Finally Avatar Studio offers several unique services including custom avatar generation in either illustrative or true animation form and custom 3D modeling and character generation suitable for video production and game generation. We can work to your spec or provide the concept art ourselves. To obtain further information about our custom services contact us here at Avatar Studio. A Word about Photos Although complete instructions for creating useable photos are available on the Photo Creation and uploading page a few points are worth reinforcing. Please try to keep the expressions on the faces you are photographing very neutral (no smiling, frowning, laughing etc) since this will in turn allow our team to then generate those expressions on your avatar’s face which are appropriate to the scene or scenes that you have selected. Also keep in mind that 3D rendered art is not the same thing as photographic art they do look different and there is not a one to one correspondence between a fully implement 3D head of a person and a photograph of the same person. Certainly both will be instantly recognized as the person in question but they will have different image qualities. Along that same line those 3D faces created by some sites do not have a fully developed 3D mesh underneath the image since they just project the photo onto some stock geometry. This gives the final head more of a photographic look in the view that the photo was taken but does not permit the head to be viewed from any angle which is an absolute necessity when building the complex fully developed 3D themes and scenes that are resident here at Avatar Studio. Final Thoughts The term avatar is defined as the embodiment of a quality or concept in either graphical or physical form. It is often an image that represents an actual person and for most people this private self image usually takes on very special dimensions and unique proportions. Unfortunately our modern world is so filled with negativity, disappointments and the constant barrage of lesser concerns that as we grow older we rarely have time to don the persona of our inner avatar and bathe in it positive, energizing, healing light. It is our earnest aspiration here at Avatar Studio to provide the best vehicle possible for transporting all those who truly wish to reestablish contact with their avatar or the avatar of a loved one or child to their ultimate destination. In truth for this to really happen we desperately need the contribution of all those who participate in this site. So even if you aren’t acquiring your avatar today please take a moment and register and give us the benefit of your thoughts and feelings so that eventually Avatar Studio can become that Ship of Dreams that lightens and inspires your journey here on earth. ‘It is grown people who make the nursery stories and fairy tales; all children do is jealously guard the text.’
Robert Louis Stevenson “Think what you would have been now, (how terribly poor your life would be) if instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood you had been crammed with geography and natural history!’
Charles Lamb to Samuel Coleridge, 23 October 1802 |
About the Avatar Studio 
