BigStage

Every PepCom event brings out a surprise player, and this week it was BigStage, a Web-based application that allows you to make an online avatar of yourself. Your avatar can be customized with a litany of hairstyles, bodies and accessories, and tossed into an ever-growing amount of content: movie trailers, photos, video games, and the like.

This doesn't sound like a big deal until you actually see it work. From three digital photos that Founder Jonathan Strietzel snapped of me on his point-and-shoot camera, a frighteningly realistic and 3-dimensional model of my head appeared on the screen in minutes, ready to be altered with any expression – that's right, it can change your facial expressions – that I saw fit. He gave me an afro, then a monkey body; made me look sad, then surprised; had me speak dialogue with a realistically-moving mouth, and inhabit a number of characters. This isn't the flat-face photo technology you see in sports games, where your player has a passing, pixelated resemblance to a real pro. No, no. It's your face. BigStage is opening itself up to any company that wants to port their avatars, so you may see these things appearing everywhere from Xbox to Facebook before too long.