Avatar / Mini Me App

Background

During my Master's studies in Electrical Engineering I took some programming courses. One course that I enjoyed was called, "Visual Interfaces to Computers." It was about the many ways that computers can obtain and use visual data from the real world. Since that time I have had several ideas on novel ways to use visual data.

In a completely unrelated line of thought I often think about pictures that people use to represent themselves in chat windows, gaming icons, Facebook, forums, and the many other virtual worlds. These little self-representations are called avatars. I always have a hard time figuring out what picture to use. I don't like pictures of myself, but I can never think of any one thing I like SO MUCH that I would use that as my avatar.

The Idea

Create a cell phone app (I guess there could be PC / MAC and online options as well) that will take a front and side image of you and create a virtual likeness of yourself. To be clear, this is not a 3D scanning app. This would be something much more rudimentary. The app would identify the location and shape of head, body, arms and legs. It would create a cartoonish figure by matching the shapes from the picture against a database of common shapes. Then it would analyze the head in more detail to get shape and color information on the hair, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. and match those features against the database of features to find matches. The output would be a cartoon, 3D likeness of yourself that could be dressed up, altered, colored, etc. You could rotate and zoom the model and save pictures that could be used as avatars.

The part that makes this idea novel from existing versions is that it creates the avatar based off real-life images.

Progress

12/02/2014 - Some similar ideas already exist, but not in exactly the way I envision.

• Yahoo used to have an avatar generator that was very limited but is no longer supported.
• Nintendo Mii Characters were introduced on the Wii.
• Second Life has the most detailed avatars.
• Awesome 2.5D face from photo at Site Pal.
• Other sites

But I haven't found anything that makes a full 3D avatar from from pictures.