It is clear that animation has a big future…just look at the success of Shrek2 and Madagascar. On the new media side, I think people forget how popular programmes like MSN messenger are…there around 140 million users worldwide.
Now look what one company has done to combine the emoticons used to convey emotion in messages with one of the world’s best graphics engines used for broadcast television. The Israeli company of Gizmoz has worked with the graphics company VIZRT to produce a production tool allowing you to make your own version of spitting image - in a matter of minutes. They took two shots of my face, one from the front, the other from the side. From that they generate a 3D image and put this into the VIZRT graphics engine. The next thing you know you're in a panel game with George Bush, Elvis or whoever.
The same company is beta testing an add-on to Yahoo!, ICQ, AOL AIM, MSN and Skype Instant Messenger users to animate emoticons.
