Virtual Actress/Singer signs a deal.
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Posts: 3,818
CAA has signed Lil Miquela, a CGI character who also acts.
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the future. CAA has signed Lil Miquela, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, musical artist, and influencer with over a million Instagram followers. Oh, and she's completely computer-generated.
Yes, you read that right.
She's not "real."
She is an avatar puppeteered by Brud, an L.A.-based start-up of “engineers, storytellers, and dreamers” who specialize in artificial intelligence and robotics. She was launched on Instagram in April 2016 and today she has 2.2 million followers, plus almost 550,000 on TikTok.
And now, their creation has top-tier representation at CAA.
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Comments
The character's head is obviously superimposed onto a real person's body for that music video. It's pretty cool though - I actually like to see creators pushing the envelope like that. The only downside is that the inevitable shift of some human jobs being taken over by CGI is happening more and more. However, this can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. On the one side, if a character that's made and maintained by a group of people can get signed for a modelling job, it's pretty much employing that entire group of people. If it was just a single model, it would be just that modelling being employed. A single job vs several jobs. There was an interesting discussion on the subject here last summer: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/347726/will-3d-characters-ever-replace-live-models
They've done just fine without CAA so far. Sounds more like a publicity stunt by an agency trying to get on the digital bandwagon and recover from the bad publicity they got for their part in the Harvey Weinstein cover-up than anything else. Besides, they don't have a whole lot else to announce these days.
Google : death stranding, control human, Unreal engine
To see a glimpse of where we are likely heading.
I'm sorry, but what is "CAA" supposed to be? Am I supposed to know what that is?
Tells you all you need to know about the smartphone generation, when a CGI "person" has the power to "influence" them... Of course companies will love the chance to use these "CGI person influencers" to do advertising for them...
Humans, ey?
I had to Google it as an Australian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency
It happens, but so far, more jobs have appeared than have been lost.
IMO
Even though singers previously have been real, they have also been virtual; just a marketting representation. People expect the actors and singers portrayed by characters they play (in song, film and other medium) to actually be what the person is liike; that isn't true.
... They've been sold a dream - a polite term for it.
Creative Artist Agency. It's one of the top entertainment industry agencies handling actors, directors, producers, writers, etc.., Live people.
Google : death stranding,
Oh, I'm on STEAM so I've seen that game. It's been hailed as a walking simulator.
Looks great.
I know the whole virtual singer thing is big in Japan.
I mean, this one doesn't look that great. Not enough....to like really get into it.
The CGI (splicing) parts were cool before the face reveal and not-so-great-looking singing animations.
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I think the face-plant from Star Wars Rogue One was a better idea.
The young..Jeff Bridges in Tron- we should do more of that.
It grabs headlines. "A rawbawt now advertises our clothing, we are so futuristic!"
It's interesting, but at the same time you know it's just a marketing campaign to get some attention, they might drop it again if it's not generating enough attention. Handy during corona.
OK was the guy in the video also CG? I was kind of geting an uncanny valley feel from him as well. Also the car driver seemed to have the same digital DNA as Miquela.
I, for one, embrace the new technology.
The new post Covid-19 world will have an even greater demand for home delivered visual entertainment IMHO.
Not particulary concerned about "undue influence" as long as there is full disclosure about the identity of the people writing narratives being delivered by the CG "personalities"
With real life "Celebrities" people are too often blinded by their Idol worship ,of some Film/TV Character that they have portrayed, to even ask if that person really beleives in this or that cause or are they representing someones elses interests for money.
With a Digital human, the first question is typically :who made/owns that CG Character??
And it is not likely that you will turn on the news and find that your popular, celebrated ,Digital NETFLIX actor has been accused solicting sex from underage boys.
And in a world of digital actors there is less chance of a Harvey Wienstein weilding so much abusive power over real life women.
Also with the technology being accessable to the tech savvy masses ,with free products Like UE4 ,there is more opportunity for broader representation by the ...well... Not so tall
not so slim
Not so nordic.
I wouldn't mind CGI characters in films.
Walking simulator?!? We need walking simulators now?
I remember back in the day when games were about killing things, blowing up things... empire building...
I feel old, being one of those people that still uses their feet to walk on actual sidewalks...
On a related note, this scene from WALL-E somehow seems much more relevant now...
I could get into a discussion of how COVID19 is accelerating the automation of various jobs, hence eliminating said jobs from the workforce, but that's a hot potato so I'll just lament that I miss real people sometimes...
When I first got a smartphone, one of my favorite things to do was get on Google Maps Streetview. I'd search for places like Taj Mahal and Tour de Eiffel and look at them from all the different angles and scroll down the streets and stuff. I think that is a very good alternative for people who can't go to the real places. It would be even better if I could do a virtual reality walk through scenes created from stuff in my DAZ library. But not the platinum club free items. I don't want to walk through that.
I think her bleach blond boyfriend looks more realistic than her but I think that's largely because of the hair they used on her wasn't really typical but chosen more to avoid animating her hair.
I don't care that there will probably be full length movies make 100% with CGI realistic people and animals superimposed on shoots of real locations by big studios within 10 years. It's a bit unrealistic to expect that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (or whoever their modern equivalents are) are plausible as so many different people in movies. As far as the argument that it's nice to look at those pretty people on the screen, well there are a lot more pretty people than those two although a lot of the scripts seem to support the argument that's what a lot of people are going to see. I 'm not sure preople will go to see a good script with entirely realistic CGI characters if "human movie stars" are really the prime motive for people going to the theatre. Mostly, I don't like almost any of the movie stories and just watch them for the people, the accents (when the accents are real which almost never happens because they use the same actors over & over), the clothing, the buildings, and the scenery. It will be interesting to find out eventually I guess.
It's not as well known outside Japan, but the poser figure Terai Yuki 2 is actually a professional "virtual model" who'd appeared on hundreds of magazine covers, commercials, product endorsements beginning in 1997, long before she was licensed for home use. Even at that, though, she wasn't the first CG figure working as a professional model for hire. That credit goes to Kyoto Date, who started working as a cover girl/singer/model a year earlier in 1996.
Seriously, did anyone think that the Japanese wouldn't be the first here?
Also they tried this in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimi_Eguchi
This was inevitable to happen sooner or later as technology evolves.
Now its interesting (and maybe a little disturbing) how some sci-fi subjects get close to happen in real life. Thinking on celebrities like Eliza in Deus Ex or Eve in Megazone23.
I do agree in that the signing with CAA seems just publicity, similar to give citizenship to a robot (yes, that happend too).
Agree with both. Those will be big advantages and i hope this to the point where we can see those benefits. But there also a couple things that may potentially create other problems. Following wolf comment about the technology. Today is relative accesible for individuals or startups. But as technology evolves more, will the availability be the same or will bigger companies start to close things so they have more control? Think for example of bitcoin, easy to get at first but mining tech evolved and was not easy accesible to public.
Yes i know, i'm just using the same page as distopian futures of science fiction like the ones i mentioned. But imagine if the next big change in hardware render tech is developed by for example Amazon. Will they sell it to you so you are to free to do whatever you want without any outside influence? No, they will rent you the service where you will experience what you think is freedom. But they control the service, so in case your celebrity gives an opinion they don't like you may encouter that your renders will have glitches, your celebrity will loose followers and its "career" will flop. They could make sure their celebrities (or the ones they want) get the best.
But what i actually find potentially more disturbing? That distopian futures with "fake" celebrities usually need the public to ignore they are not real. But current human society shows that they don't care, will even follow a CGI avatar and consider it an influencer.
And i will leave it at that.... sci-fi fan mode off.
You, me and a lot more people. But sadly, that's how it works, and has been for a lot of time. "Influencers" is a relative new form to call it as some people even consider it a career, but its something celebrities/famous people have donde for a lot of time.
...back in the Daz 2.3 days I once spliced Sadie's head on A3's body.
The SUV driver was definitely CG. The male lead gave me "uncanny" too, so his face, or part of it definitely could be CG.
Anyone else remember Bratz dolls?
The clothing, is, so, horrendous...
It looks like someone who goes out cycling accidentally wore the lower half of a child's banana sailor suit...
google maps has a VR app and it's freakin cool in VR. I agree, I would kill for a VR option for DS. for now we have to use Unity or Unreal
These have probably been mentioned before: https://www.thediigitals.com/
Hatsuni Miku asks "Am I a joke to you people?"
Yeah. I find the tech behind Hatsumi a lot more exciting than what's done with Miquela. It combines stylized figures with live music to create a sort of nerd Cirque du Soleil experience. And what's important to remember is than the social aspect, the being part of the audience sharing a common experience is a central part of the spectacle. There's a lot of unexplored potential here, too.
Hatsune Miku is not CG with live music.
The voices are keyed to notes so that anyone with the Vocaloid software can use her as a singer. There are more vocaloid voices than Miku; she was just the first.
The 3d models of Miku and the others came later, as did MMD (Miku-Miku Dance).
The point is that computer-generated celebrities are nothing new.