SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Leading animation technology company Image Metrics Inc. (OTCBB:IMGX) and multimedia entertainment developer Funrika today announced the integration of Image Metrics’ PortableYou™ 3D personal avatar creation platform in Funrika’s first gaming platform, iStar. The new collaboration will expand iStar’s interactive capabilities to deliver a unique and more personalized social experience for gamers.
“Empowering consumers to create high-quality, personalized interactive entertainment content for social networks reveals incredible new possibilities for digital media,” said Robert Gehorsam, CEO at Image Metrics. “PortableYou and other Image Metrics technologies are opening the door for gamers and other entertainment consumers to generate compelling 3D stories, and Funrika is breaking new ground in this area.”
Funrika’s iStar is an innovative “digivision” channel – a digital online television channel – that merges media and gaming to deliver more engaging content and a new level of interactive user experience. iStar enables users to not only watch content, but also interact with it. Through the integration of PortableYou, gamers can simply transform a photograph of themselves into a photorealistic and customizable 3D character and have it instantly inserted into iStar’s video clips for selected game chapters. Players can choose to appear as both lead and supporting characters. These clips can then be shared with friends on various social networks.
“iStar serves as a personal stage for users to display customized content, but there was a missing piece in delivering a certain level of engagement and interaction among users,” said Cem Nahit Köne, CEO at Funrika. “PortableYou fills that gap by allowing users to personalize and share their experiences and performances with their online social networks. The technology enables users to easily create unique identities for themselves and generate personal content in exciting and meaningful ways.”
PortableYou is a revolutionary technology from Image Metrics that enables consumers to instantly generate high-quality, customizable 3D avatars from photographs, which can then be added and shared seamlessly across enabled applications such as social and mobile games, social networks and other connected platforms.
“PortableYou provides us with the tools and flexibility needed to support the iStar business model,” added Mehmet Öykü Bilgiseren, vice president of business development and strategy at Funrika. “It integrates easily into the existing iStar infrastructure, making PortableYou the obvious platform of choice.”
Funrika’s iStar platform featuring PortableYou will launch early 2012.
For more information on PortableYou, visit www.image-metrics.com/portable-you.
About Funrika
Funrika “Fun Factory” was founded in late 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey, as a gaming company with the vision of bringing innovative ideas into gaming world to create unique user experience and next generation social gaming to reach larger crowds besides core gamers and sharing such “Fun.” Funrika presents its first interactive gaming platform “iStar” by the beginning of 2012 with a unique concept. For more information, please visit www.funrika.com.
About Image Metrics, Inc.
Founded in 2000, Image Metrics (OTCBB: IMGX) is revolutionizing 3D character animation through award-winning technologies such as Faceware™ and PortableYou™. The company provides complete solutions for the film, television, interactive entertainment and commercial markets, and its new PortableYou platform enables online consumers to produce highly personalized immersive experiences in digital media through the instant creation of customizable 3D avatars. Image Metrics is the go-to leader for facial animation technology with a client roster that includes such industry-leading companies as Activision-Blizzard, Rockstar, Microsoft, 2K Sports, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sega, Sony, Bethesda, Double Negative, Motion Theory and Moving Picture Company. Image Metrics is headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., with its R&D center located in Manchester, UK. For more information, please visit www.Image-Metrics.com.