VentureBeat

Big Stage, a startup that gives people the ability to create avatars based on pictures of their own face, has released a public beta — and it’s pretty interesting.

When we covered the company before, it was working on the technology, which makes a three dimensional avatar using three different pictures of your face. Once you’ve got the avatar, you can accessorize it with different hair, glasses, hats, expressions, and so forth.

That was back in February. I compared it to JibJab, a humor site on which users upload still photos of themselves into silly animated videos. But it’s not really a fair comparison, because neither site is trying to be the other. JibJab goes for a quick, fun experience, where Big Stage is obviously looking for longer-term engagement from its users.

That’s because a Big Stage avatar is dynamic — it can change expressions and angles with ease. Watching one move is about the same watching one of today’s video game avatars, except that it’s supposed to look like you. (Whether it’s a dead-on representation is debatable. I’ve included an expressionless shot of myself and my Big Stage avatar so you can judge for yourself.

The drawback is that it requires an ActiveX download to use in either Firefox or Internet Explorer (I had to install it for both, after having some problems in Firefox). The experience of downloading, taking photos and then uploading them to the site requires some time and effort, and is bound to turn some users off. However, Big Stage’s VP of marketing, Jonas Gray, tells me the download is necessary to show the avatar in real-time.

The payoff will be when the company goes into its next phase: Partnerships with virtual worlds, gaming companies, social networks and other companies. The plan is to eventually make your avatar ubiquitous, so that you can use it anytime you want.

Big Stage’s full commercial launch is slated for the fourth quarter of this year. The company, based in Pasadena, Calif., also finished raising a round of funding in June.

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).

Big Stage wants to popularize 3D avatars based on pictures of your own face, and it looks more likely to do a good job of it than any other startup we’ve seen so far, comparing favorably to JibJab, the most popular site yet to feature animated avatars.

On JibJab, you can paste a picture of your face into a video of, for example, a man who’s disco dancing. It’s silly and fun but has all the artistry of baby Ike in South Park — essentially, your face is just a still cut-out bobbing around the screen. If it were any less ridiculous it would stop being amusing and just be pathetic. (And, to be fair to JibJab, it’s more focused on creating amusing content than technology.)

For Big Stage, imagine much the same thing, but with a face that can move, change expressions and be shown at different angles. Game publishers have specialized methods to do just that, so that they can base their animations on live actors, but achieving the quality they need is prohibitively expensive. Big Stage says it can do the same thing for next to nothing.

For Big Stage to create a 3D model of your face, all it needs are three face shots taken by a standard digital camera, from three slightly different angles. From the pictures, the company’s software can extrapolate a working, moving animation of your face.

From there, it’s easy to imagine the possibilities. Your face could be placed in e-cards as JibJab does, or in longer videos, or in video games. Still shots could be used as avatars on social networks or for other applications yet to be dreamed up by developers. Marketers might also be interested — what better way to advertise than having your target audience inserting pictures of themselves into your ads?

Other startups like BeFunky have tried to make a business out of creating flat 2D avatars, and a competitor to JibJab called Gizmoz tries to make 3D avatars from a single photo, but their attempts generally fall short. “We blow them out of the water on two levels,” says CEO Chuck Huebner, speaking of his own company’s ability to build a full 3D model and make it perform in various scenarios. Huebner himself is obviously bullish on Big Stage’s prospects, having left his position in charge of all game development at Activision to work at the company.

Big Stage hasn’t yet shown its technology fully; it plans on launching in mid-March. It’s so far taken $4.3 million from Mission Ventures and is in the process of raising a second round with a target of $10 million. The company is based in Pasadena, Calif.