Virtual actor

A virtual human or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using computer-generated imagery and sound, that is often indistinguishable from the real actor. This idea was first portrayed in the 1981 film Looker, wherein models had their bodies scanned digitally to create 3D computer generated images of the models, and then animating said images for use in TV commercials. Two 1992 books used this concept: 'Fools' by Pat Cadigan, and Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. A virtual human or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using computer-generated imagery and sound, that is often indistinguishable from the real actor. This idea was first portrayed in the 1981 film Looker, wherein models had their bodies scanned digitally to create 3D computer generated images of the models, and then animating said images for use in TV commercials. Two 1992 books used this concept: 'Fools' by Pat Cadigan, and Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. In general, virtual humans employed in movies are known as synthespians, virtual actors, vactors, cyberstars, or 'silicentric' actors. There are several legal ramifications for the digital cloning of human actors, relating to copyright and personality rights. People who have already been digitally cloned as simulations include Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ed Sullivan, Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Marie Goddard, and George Burns. Ironically, data sets of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the creation of a virtual Arnold (head, at least) have already been made. The name 'Schwarzeneggerization' comes from the 1992 book Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. In one scene, on pages 50–51, a character asks the shop assistant at a video store to have Arnold Schwarzenegger digitally substituted for existing actors into various works, including (amongst others) Rain Man (to replace both Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman), My Fair Lady (to replace Rex Harrison), Amadeus (to replace F. Murray Abraham), The Diary of Anne Frank (as Anne Frank), Gandhi (to replace Ben Kingsley), and It's a Wonderful Life (to replace James Stewart). Schwarzeneggerization is the name that Leyner gives to this process. Only 10 years later, Schwarzeneggerization was close to being reality. By 2002, Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Kate Mulgrew, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny had all had their heads laser scanned to create digital computer models thereof. Early computer-generated animated faces include the 1985 film Tony de Peltrie and the music video for Mick Jagger's song 'Hard Woman' (from She's the Boss). The first actual human beings to be digitally duplicated were Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in a March 1987 film 'Rendez-vous in Montreal' created by Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann for the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Institute of Canada. The film was created by six people over a year, and had Monroe and Bogart meeting in a café in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The characters were rendered in three dimensions, and were capable of speaking, showing emotion, and shaking hands. In 1987, the Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company (now Synthespian Studios), founded by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak coined the term 'synthespian' and began its Synthespian ('synthetic thespian') Project, with the aim of creating 'life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models'. In 1988, Tin Toy was the first entirely computer-generated movie to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Short Film). In the same year, Mike the Talking Head, an animated head whose facial expression and head posture were controlled in real time by a puppeteer using a custom-built controller, was developed by Silicon Graphics, and performed live at SIGGRAPH. In 1989, The Abyss, directed by James Cameron included a computer-generated face placed onto a watery pseudopod. In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, also directed by Cameron, confident in the abilities of computer-generated effects from his experience with The Abyss, included a mixture of synthetic actors with live animation, including computer models of Robert Patrick's face. The Abyss contained just one scene with photo-realistic computer graphics. Terminator 2: Judgment Day contained over forty shots throughout the film. In 1997, Industrial Light & Magic worked on creating a virtual actor that was a composite of the bodily parts of several real actors.