The future of real people?

McDonalds Poser

I’ve long held the belief that as time goes by, and it gets easier and easier to create realistic looking 3D people, we’ll see more and more of them used in media in place of a real person. I see this happening in all media… print, TV, film, etc…

I had a minor affirmation of this belief today. I had lunch at McDonalds. When I sat down at a table to eat my meal, I noticed this card. At first I didn’t give it a second thought, but after a quick double-take, I noticed this is not a real woman. “She” is a 3D fabrication.

Instead of this being an expensive photo-shoot with a real model, photographer, and a half dozen assistants, it was probably one lone-designer sitting in his home office (in his underwear) with a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite and Poser.

Mark my words, this is only the beginning. Some day soon you’ll have to look twice at that Victory Secrets catalog you have hidden in your night stand.

Thursday, April 27th, 2006 Music, Art, & Design, Technology

3 Comments to The future of real people?

  1. I came across this only a few days ago, perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not!

    http://games.teamxbox.com/xbox/982/YourselfFitness/

    But all of this reminds me of the uncanny valley:

    http://www.robotjohnny.com/archives/2004/10/pixar_and_the_u.php

    …where people look so real that they lapse into freaky unreal land.

    2. Steven C. Brown on April 28th, 2006

  2. Thanks for the links, Steven.

    Ya, after I wrote this post I noticed that the “girl”, known as Maya, is a virtual fitness instructor… so it makes sense now why she is on this card. I almost updated the post, but I think the argument still holds true, as they chose to use a virtual fitness instructor instead of live people to keep costs down. Now that I see your first link, I’m betting some company made Maya, and sells her to anyone who wants her. Since she’s not real they have the ability to customize her for any company or situation.

    side-note: the second link should have underscores (_) between ‘pixar’, ‘and’ & ‘the’. For some strange reason Wordpress sometimes drops underscores out of comments. It’s very annoying.

    3. paul on April 28th, 2006

  3. How did you know about that Victoria’s Secret catalog in my nightstand?!

    4. john on June 22nd, 2006

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The Author

Paul Burd is a multimedia designer, and amateur photographer, living in San Francisco. More...

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