Next Tuesday, as millions of sober-minded US citizens tune in to listen to their leaders' State of the Union Address, a more disaffected portion of the population will be watching a decidedly different Bill Clinton debut on MTV. Virtual Bill, a 3-D animated character based on the president, is the latest creation from 3-D character studio Protozoa, parody paper The Onion, and MTV. And according to Protozoa, he's also one of the first in a new wave of real-time live 3-D characters soon to grace your TV.
Virtual Bill, airing the night of 27 January, will consist of an hours' worth of music videos introduced by a quasi-realistic digital Bill Clinton, under-eye bags and all, who will regale the audience from the "Oval Office" with wannabe-hip slang and commentary about the state of the universe. Instead of making fun of the president via Paula Jones jokes and Whitewater jabs, the show is more of a parody of Bill's mannerisms and attempts to seem "cool" to younger generations.
"It's a great way to do political satire. Really mean, really subversive, and really funny," says Scott Dikkers, editor in chief of The Onion and also the co-developer, script-writer, and voice of Virtual Bill. "You have this digital approximation of Clinton that's been programmed to appeal to young people. That's something Clinton would do - he's so programmed anyway. This is just a person who's been calculated to care about something because of poll results."
MTV tapped writers at The Onion, a parody newspaper out of Madison, Wisconsin, that now draws 150,000 people a week to its Web site, because of the music station's satirical brand of media subversion. For the creation of the actual character Virtual Bill, MTV used Protozoa, a San Francisco-based animation company that deals solely with the creation of live, real-time digital characters.
"The real magic about this is that it's got the best of live action, puppetry, and animation," says Brad de Graf, CEO of Protozoa. "There's a certain amount of gee-whiz to [these characters], but that will wear off, and successes that will rise to the top will be good characters."
Protozoa sprang out of Colossal Pictures animation studio three years ago. Using that combination of techniques de Graf mentions, Protozoa now has a whole zoo of strange creatures than can be controlled, in real time, by a human in a motion capture suit.
The system allows users to create animations quickly - the 20-minute Virtual Bill episode took only a few weeks to create. Protozoa is working with other companies to create characters that interact with live audiences for broadcast on TV and over the Web using VRML. The focus is on character development rather than gee-whiz special effects.
"It's more like muppets than 3-D animation that's preplanned, where in frame 122 you know that there's going to be a big eyebrow movement," explains Steve Rein, Protozoa's creative director. "It's more like live action, based on actors and characters that you've developed. It's really the emotion of the character you've developed, rather than 'how detailed can you make a dinosaur.'"
Diligent cable-TV watchers may already have seen some of Protozoa's creations: Dev.Null, the irritating "geek" who bantered with Soledad O'Brien on MSNBC's defunct show The Site, and Moxy, the Cartoon Network mascot. VRML enthusiasts have likely seen the animated Floops character on SGI's site, and two VRML Mediadome episodes, Dilbert and Driftwood; the Dilbert episode is now being spun out into a series of VRML Dilbert cartoons.
With a Disney cartoon in the works as well as a series of shorter animations, more Protozoa characters will be showing up on TV soon. They'll also be seen in live venues, where 3-D characters will be able to interact with an audience, pairing a person's image on a TV screen with a 3-D character that would talk to them directly (via a hidden human in a motion capture suit). Think Roger Rabbit, but in real time and in 3-D.
Although the premiere of Virtual Bill was also created using Protozoa's motion capture/puppetry techniques, the show itself won't be live. However, if the show is popular, Virtual Bill or a similar character could show up on MTV in the future, bantering live with VJs in the studio, or interacting with audiences.
Of course, a Virtual Bill regularly introducing Notorious B.I.G. videos might not be met with as much amusement from the White House. As Dikker says, "Bill Clinton is in no way endorsing this. But I hope he watches it."
