VentureBeat

Next month, personalized video-mashup site Big Stage will launch its public beta. The site lets you upload three high-resolution photos of yourself. It then stitches those photos into a 3-D avatar. You can accessorize your avatar and put your avatar into videos and amusing scenery. You can then share it with your friends.

The company got to show off its 3-D avatar technology to the world during Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January. During the keynote, Jonathan Streitzel, chief creative officer of Big Stage, scanned three digital images of himself into the Big Stage site, which constructed a lifelike 3-D avatar of Streitzel. Then Streitzel inserted his avatar, dubbed an @ctor, into a bunch of funny scenes for laughs. He showed how you can insert the avatar into emails, instant messages, and other digital communications.

Now, just ahead of its beta launch, the company is closing an extension to its first round of venture funding, Streitzel said in an interview. The South Pasadena, Calif. company previously raised $4.3 million, however further details on the new funding aren’t available.

The company hopes to make money through advertising, sponsorships, and technology licensing. Streitzel said he also hopes to make 3-D scanning technology a useful consumer tool. It is the result of nine years’ worth of research into stereoscopic reconstruction at the University of Southern California.  The research was aimed at security, but Big Stage owns the rights to the technology outside of that field. Streitzel said that his company is negotiating deals with portals, entertainment companies, social networks, movie studios, and other companies.

Big Stage has 25 employees and was founded in February, 2007. Its initial round of funding came from Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures and Tech Coast Angels.

We’ll see how far it can go with its gag videos and portraits. I always wondered how I would look with a mohawk hair-do. Now I can find out. (I already know what I look like with Jessica Simpson’s hair, thanks to a story I did on HairMixer, which only does hair-morphing).