Wednesday, February 18, 2015

I'm Not Much For Selfies, But Come On, This Is Pretty Cool

Of course it's from Wired:
We love looking at images of ourselves. First there were Olan Mills portraits. Nowadays there are selfies and selfie-stick selfies and drone selfies.

If you’re wondering what comes next, Dusseldorf-based DOOB 3D thinks it has the answer—and contrary to what the company’s name suggests, it doesn’t involve getting high and watching Avatar.

DOOB 3D can produce a detailed, four-inch figurine of your body—yes, a 3-D selfie. Making one of these figurines requires a massive pile of hardware and software: 54 DSLRs, 54 lenses, a complex 3-D modeling pipeline, and an $80,000 full-color 3-D printer, not to mention a room-size scanning booth.

Factor that all in and the $95 asking price for a replica of yourself that’s roughly the size of most classic Star Wars action figures doesn’t seem so bad. A Barbie-esque 10-inch model goes for $395, while a 14-inch figure that’s more along the lines of an old-school G.I. Joe doll costs $695.

The company has eight 3-D scanning booths (called “Doob-licators”) scattered in strategic locations throughout the world. There’s one in Dusseldorf, one in Tokyo, one at Santa Monica Place in Los Angeles, and one in New York City’s Chelsea Market. The company also says they’re set to add more U.S. locations soon, although details aren’t public yet.
I once worked with a woman whose husband was a "naval aviator".  When he deployed she glued a picture of him onto a piece of paperboard, cut it out, made a small stand behind it, and put it on her desk.  She called it "Stand-up Andy".  DOOB is just the next generation of that.

1 comment:

Auntie Ann said...

A friend of my dad's was into making wooden figurines of his friends. He made one of dad, and it's a great memento. It's of dad the way his friend knew him: in his athletic clothes, headband, with a squash racquet in hand. It's great, but it's a piece of art, not a 3-d selfie.