In 2021, the term "metaverse" is like a whirlwind into the public's discussion vision, and the human-computer interaction interface of virtual people entering the metaverse as real people is also accelerating. Perhaps web 3.0, which we predicted years ago, is now here, and metaversities and virtual humans are the beginning of this wave. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the world is moving in an unpredictable direction, with some fearing the arrival of the metaverse and some actively embracing this change. It is undeniable that we are more frequently brushing virtual bloggers in social software, and in the near future, virtual human AI may begin to provide various convenient services for our lives, becoming our NPC (Non-Player Character), instead of us to queue up for registration, get electronic documents, and we will also begin to build our own life circle, social circle in the metaverse. If one day, when the virtual world of the metaverse consumes more time than the real world, which is the more real identity of you who exists in the metaverse world and you in real life?
On the way to the future of the virtual person, M .C. Talk to the four virtual person creation teams in China at present: Shiyue Xingcheng, who created the virtual person IP matrix, the behind-the-scenes team of "Machine Ji Ji" Li Weike, the virtual person Liu Yexi who burst out of the circle overnight, and the behind-the-scenes team of the virtual singer Luo Tianyi, who has been debuting for ten years, how will they view the current development of the virtual person, and what impact will the virtual person have on the future?
The Second World of Mankind
Disclaimer
Maruzitou, a fashionista, wears the royal sister high-cold style of Reddi, has only appeared on social media for more than half a year, has quickly accumulated millions of fans, and cooperates with Gucci, Dior, Max Mara and other luxury brands.
Her good friend Vila, a sweet-looking, cute girl next door, is a blogger focused on the beauty scene and is preparing her own virtual digital makeup brand, Fitter.
Village
And Mr. Meta loves outdoor luxury, usually attaches great importance to the quality of life and mature and exquisite male wear, another male friend Vince is a completely different style, the trend is cool, usually dressed in European and American hip-hop style, and the cooperation 88 rising is preparing the first digital music album, and will hold a meta-universe concert in the future.
Finally, Nami is the latest friend to join the small group of five, she loves art, usually dresses in a home-style otaku style, and is planning to prepare her own digital fashion art exhibition.
Reddi, Vila, Mr.Meta, Vince and Nami all have their own colorful lives on social media, in fact they are all virtual digital people created by StarHeir. At present, Relying on five virtual people, Shiyue Star has become the largest virtual digital person IP matrix company on the Chinese meta-universe track, and in the next 2-3 years, the team will continue to expand the matrix. Not only that, Shiyue Xingcheng also launched Meta Street Market, China's first meta-universe trend digital sports brand.
Vince
In fact, before the arrival of the virtual person trend in 2021, as early as 2019, Todd Hessert Jiang, the founder of Shiyue Xingcheng, noticed the virtual person at a Tokyo Futurama art exhibition. In the following two years, changes in the global ecology and the arrival of technological inflection points have accelerated the development of digital technology and virtual technology. Engaged in the fashion industry for many years, Todd Hessert, who owns the technology fashion brand of the same name, sensitively smelled the changes in the industry, he believes that virtual digital people are not limited by space, geography and time, and can play a lot of imagination, "Especially in 2021, major technology companies in the world are making strategic deployments for the development goal of the realistic meta-universe, so the realistic virtual digital people have become one of the important components of this concept, that is, virtual people, virtual objects in the meta-universe era. There are three major content sections for virtual space scenes. Among the three, virtual people come first, which is also the opportunity for me to create a virtual digital person matrix, and to build them into roles with various functions, to carry out PGC content output in the field of fashion trend segmentation. ”
In the process of creating virtual bloggers, the Shiyue Xingcheng team has designed an independent image for each virtual person after in-depth study of the five senses of human beings, and through repeated research and adjustment, the appearance of virtual people has finally been established, and any real humans who look like them cannot be found in real life. The metacosm envisioned by Todd Hessert is the second world of humanity, a better world. Behind the future virtual person, there will be a real person to drive the activity, but it is still the human self-consciousness to control its own metaverse virtual image.
Us
Fashion trends are the strength of the virtual human matrix of Shiyue Xingcheng, which has been engraved in their virtual genes before they were born. In 2021, Vince participated in the "MetaHuman" hyper-realistic virtual human fashion show at Dubai Fashion Week, and he appeared at the meta-universe virtual digital fashion show jointly launched by Todd Hessert and Xiaomi Civi at the end of the year. Todd Hessert believes that "through the virtual fashion show can not only save the resources of holding the fashion show, but also allow the brand to determine the popularity of the series in the market through the pre-sale data of the virtual clothing, provide an important data assessment for whether the new product enters the real supply chain to produce, and provide a reference for key decisions." As a fashion designer, the supply chain has always been a headache for everyone, if the design of virtual products can get market share, through the combination of virtual and real sales will be a very empowering good thing. ”
It seems to be a precursor – virtual fashion bloggers have stopped at sharing flat pictures and videos on social media, they have actually participated in the fashion industry itself in a way, an image. In fact, this will only be the beginning, and the entire fashion industry will change in a rainstorm. Sustainability has become an important topic that cannot be avoided by human beings, and the fashion industry is increasingly examining the balance between business and environmentalism and social responsibility. Virtual people, virtual clothing, virtual shows seem to be an outlet to solve problems, providing new possibilities for the future of the fashion industry.
Communicate with people in a human way
Li Weike was destined to be different from other virtual people at the beginning of her birth, she is neither a beauty blogger, nor does she po any photos about fashion, about her profile, there is only a simple sentence on the personal homepage: machine Xiao Ji Li Weike. And her appearance and image, but also very different from other female virtual people, purple short hair, more neutral, and did not move closer to the daily wear of human beings, compared to other virtual people who try to get closer to the real person, Li Weike in the appearance of the image let people know her mechanical Ji identity at a glance.
Lee Wei Ke
Li Weike's English name lawaken is an abbreviation for Lady Awaken, which contains both the meaning of women's awakening and the team's good wishes for the future. Unlike most virtual human creation teams, which are dominated by men, Li Weike's character creation team is mainly female, so she is not a perfect-looking woman in the traditional sense, and does not need to have thick lips or large double eyelids, but has a stubborn nose bridge and lower lip, and even a little blackhead. And Li Weike's personality also integrates the shadows of many female team members - in this era, young girls who are still fighting to achieve their own value have the courage to challenge tradition and the cool personality and appearance that is not afraid of worldly vision.
"Communicating with people in a human way" is Li Weike's mission, and also li Weike's creator, "the father of Tmall elves" Ru Yi's expectations - to build Li Weike into China's first truly emotionally connected AI virtual digital person. In the early days of the birth of the Internet, typing and information can cover and serve tens of millions of people, and in the mobile Internet era, voice interaction software such as WeChat can serve hundreds of millions of people, including many elderly people who are inconvenient to type. In the future, Li Weike's AI virtual digital person can easily serve everyone, and more importantly- "Li Weike" is not a tool-type virtual person, she will interact with users through AI in XR glasses, and its core concept is not only to complete tasks, but also to achieve emotional links and social attributes.
In the XR way, the specific image of the virtual digital person will have a greater experiential significance: she can be projected into reality, become an NPC in the user's real life, assume a specific role in some specific scenes, and realize the reconstruction of the interactive operating system and the user's sensory experience. Most of the interactive AI virtual digital people are now tool human attributes, such as customer service, process guidance, translators and other roles, to complete a function and service, and in Ru Yi's planning, Li Weike is not only serving humans, but more importantly, it can establish equal communication and deep connection with humans. In the future, users can enter Li Weike's world, and she acts as a social hub. Through her, users will form a new social network, and users can establish a network of emotional connections between IP and real people.
In Li Weike's "debut" short film, there is such a monologue: "I am a robot created by my father, I am just a tool man, a kind of running rules, a string of code, living in a zero-dimensional universe, I could not feel everything, even those pictures are my dreams." But why do I dream? This monologue seems to reveal Li Weike's thinking about her own existence, in the two-dimensional world she is currently in, she is an AI girl with memory and self-awareness awakening, so when she really comes to the three-dimensional world we live in one day, how will she define herself?
Use creation to make people close to goodness and beauty
Liu Yexi, who has more than 8 million fans on Douyin, is not exaggerated in terms of overnight fame. On Halloween in 2021, a video about "beauty artists who can catch demons" came out, and it went viral all over the Internet, lasting 128 seconds and increasing fans by 4.5 million.
In the video, Liu Yexi's image is always high and cold, a red coat, a pen, a bun tied high, high ability, but rarely laughing. Xie Duosheng, the creator of Liu Yexi, said frankly: "The image of the whole Liu Yexi was painted for more than half a year before it was polished to the desired look. Although the human setting is still high and cold, as the plot develops, she will change, will melt, and become more humane. ”
Yoo Ye-hee
The birth of Liu Yexi is far more than the hard support of the technical staff behind the scenes, in fact, it also contains a lot of planning, choreography, photography, screenwriting, videographers, editors, makeup artists and many other personnel. What makes Liu Yexi special is that she uses the popular way of young people today and the communication language of Z era - fluorescent makeup, sci-fi special effects and cyberpunk style to complete the output of traditional culture. In Xie Duosheng's planning for Liu Yexi's future, the proportion of traditional culture will increase, "We want to show more traditional Chinese culture in the next story, and the various monsters that Liu Yexi encounters will be based on the strange beasts in the Classic of Mountains and Seas; Liu Yexi's subsequent makeup will also refer to the traditional makeup of ancient China." ”
At present, the virtual people in the market are roughly divided into three directions, asset-based, service-oriented and content-oriented. When talking about whether Liu Yexi's future development direction will be combined with artificial intelligence, Xie Duosheng said that this is not Liu Yexi's mission, "She is always a content-based virtual person, responsible for outputting content value and providing emotional value, and then realizing social value." The original intention of the team's creation has never left a purpose, that is, "to use creation to make people close to goodness and beauty." From the 3 video films that have been released, we can see that the team positioned Liu Yexi in the 2.5 dimension - that is, between the second dimension and the third dimension - the second dimension is pure CG, the third dimension is the real world, and the 2.5 dimensional is the existence between the two. Except for Yoo Ye-hee as a virtual person, the other characters are all live actors. Borrowing this form, the big theme that you want to explore is always the connection between the virtual world and the real world, and each small unit reflects and explores some current social issues, such as empty nesters, discrimination against women, etc.
Behind the overnight popularity is a long period of accumulation and a high degree of research and grasp of market taste, Xie Duosheng's team has a strong film and television background, and the use of CG and other film and television special effects technology has been very skilled, and has the experience of successfully incubating short video bloggers, with the arrival of the topic of meta-universe, the time is ripe, and then use the IP of "Liu Yexi" to ignite the entire market, adding a new path for the development of film and television IP for virtual people.
In the future, Liu Yexi's world will be enriched with more virtual characters, xie Duosheng hopes that "Liu Yexi is just the beginning, we want to build a meta-universe version of the Chinese Marvel universe." "Liu Yexi is not a beauty blogger, will not share makeup and hair styling with fans, the future will not become a cargo or live broadcast blogger, she is a demon catcher living in the 2.5-dimensional space, although the evil thoughts, greed, obsession, evil thoughts in the world are always endless, and what she wants is just to do her best to eradicate the goblins and demons, so that people are close to good and beautiful.
Virtual singers with real emotions
This year is the tenth year of Luo Tianyi's debut. In 2012, the original Luo Tianyi was developed by Yamaha's VOCALOID sound source system. Yamaha's most outstanding work is the world's first virtual idol, Hatsune Mirai. Unlike other virtual people with rich human settings and various styling backgrounds, Luo Tianyi only had a simple description of "15-year-old girl from an alien planet" at the beginning of his birth, as well as a voice. Luo Tianyi's image was born out of a grand online draft creation ten years ago, and the original design finally selected was processed by the official painter. She was like a blank piece of paper at the beginning of her birth, and in the past ten years, fans have written songs for her, drawn illustrations, designed costumes, created the same humanities, and constantly enriched Luo Tianyi's image, personality and background story with secondary creations. It can be said that Luo Tianyi is an idol who grew up relying on UGC content, and is a star created purely by fans.
Luo Tianyi
For some fans, Luo Tianyi is not only a simple companion, but also stimulates their creativity. Many first-time music creators often find it difficult to find professional singers to interpret their works, which require a certain amount of time and money to get Demo, while Luo Tianyi is a perfect singer, only need to use the VOCALOID system to enter melodies and lyrics to allow her to successfully perform a song. Many fans have been given the opportunity to embark on a professional musical path. For example, ilem, one of Luo Tianyi's most well-known professional fans - originally studied at Harbin Engineering University, with the help of Luo Tianyi, he was able to complete the production of musical works alone, creating a well-known work on the Internet, "Dalabang Bar", "Song of Neuropathy" and so on. Originally completely unrelated to the music profession, he is now a professional music producer.
Luo Tianyi has a significantly different meaning from other virtual idols, although she is still a virtual character, but the emotional connection between her and fans is real and difficult to be surpassed, and even at some moments, the psychological distance between fans and Luo Tianyi is one step closer than that of real idols. After all, when a live-action idol creates songs, it only reflects his personal life experience and experience, while Luo Tianyi's songs are created by fans, the unit is very small, and most of the time reflects the voices of young people and the fragments of life that can resonate. For example, the song "Half and Half", which once touched millions of people in the B station and ranked eleventh on the whole station chart, is a birthday song dedicated by ToriSama to his father, while the song "Late Night Poet", which ranks third in the whole station, vividly depicts the daily life of young people who do not want to go to sleep in the middle of the night.
In 2016, after the Chinese Vsinger team completely independently mastered the operation of Luo Tianyi, Luo Tianyi began to appear on a larger stage, and for a time became a popular figure in the David TV evening, cooperating with famous singers such as Xue Zhiqian, Zhou Huajian, Zhang Shaohan and so on. With the help of holographic projection technology, the first virtual idol concert was held at the Mercedes-Benz Center. For Luo Tianyi and Vsinger, it's a big step forward, stepping out of the screen of the second dimension, interacting with fans in a three-dimensional world, meeting, and enjoying real applause and cheers. From 2016 to 2022, Luo Tianyi is also constantly moving to a larger stage, participating in the Japanese offline music festival DIVE XR FESTIVAL, which has been recognized by Japanese netizens and described as "no less cute than hatsune in the future", and Luo Tianyi's ancient songs "Ode to the Millennium Recipe" and "Quan Yu Tianxia" have become important symbols of cultural output.
In addition to allowing Luo Tianyi to get more room for growth, Vsinger is also constantly upgrading Luo Tianyi's Vocaloid sound library to make the sound closer to the human voice, and the latest generation of V5 sound library is more highly anthropomorphic on the basis of retaining the unique electronic sound line of virtual singers. Vsinger also strengthened the power of PGC on the basis of the previous UGC creation, so that Luo Tianyi could get more professional support. But in the end, what gives Luo Tianyi a strong vitality is always UGC content, which is created, interacted, supported and resonated by tens of millions of fans.
Whether it is Li Weike, or Luo Tianyi, or Shiyue Xingcheng virtual person matrix and Liu Yexi, although the virtual people created by China are running on different tracks and the direction is not the same, but "want to establish an emotional connection with humans and create a better human future" is the original intention of the team behind them, the virtual people they are looking forward to - "virtual" is not the key word, how to become a "person", establish a better emotional connection with humans, understand human emotions, alleviate people's loneliness, depression, sadness, Providing better help to people, conserving resources, and sustainable development are the core of their existence.
Interview, article / Mickeyqi
Editor/Yuan Xin
Images/Interviewees provided