Over the past few years, our technical advancements have led to many breakthroughs and new opportunities - one showing a vibrant breath of fresh air right now is with our Creator Genies and short-form avatar content for Creators. Since 2018, thousands of celebrities have found solace and innovative solutions through their own Genie avatars, seamlessly activating them across all digital platforms. 

INVESTING IN YOUR IP OF THE FUTURE: AVATARS

The value of avatar content extends far beyond being a mere visual piece; it harbors a persistent identity - a valuable piece of IP - that celebrities own and can effortlessly leverage across any experience and moment. Which is why celebrities have utilized their Genies across all social platforms, in virtual performances, XR activations, in multimedia brand campaigns and are even being explored for feature film and video game uses. With the next iteration of the internet becoming more augmented and intelligent, having an avatar persona is becoming a prerequisite for digital interactions and representations. For instance, avatars will be the primary mode of how individuals are perceived in platforms like Apple Vision Pro or autonomous AI experiences. Therefore, investing in your avatar’s IP today, even through short-form content, is essentially sowing the seeds and nurturing the invaluable future of your digital presence. 

The celebrity avatar, therefore, holds immense value as a piece of intellectual property—the more it's utilized, the more it captures the audience's affection and increases in value. This concept of transmedia storytelling underscores the significance of avatar content, which serves not only the celebrity’s goal-at-hand but also as a distribution method for avatars with tangible utility. The greatest source of utility will be coming from Genies Party as well as any other networks that may utilize our Avatar Framework. Which is another reason why our interoperability technology - that ensures the persistence of identities across various platforms - is such a vital piece of our tech stack. 

TECHNICAL ADVANCEMENTS

Initially, our avatars were 2D, and our framework could whip up custom celebrity avatars and content within hours. However, as our company evolved to 3D, we faced significant challenges in building an entirely new avatar framework, systems, tools, and libraries to accommodate the intricacies of this new dimension. Overcoming many hurdles, our advancements now enable us to replicate a 2D timeline, but with the 3D Pixar-quality that people have grown to love and expect from us.

Our advancements in the custom avatar workflow are driven by our core avatar editor and tools, which empower all users to create personalized avatars effortlessly. With our innovative system, we've achieved extreme optionality and flexibility, allowing us to streamline the process and reach the 5-yard line through automated and low-friction methods before adding the finishing touches. Achieving a high degree of likeness and quality is certainly a massive win, but most importantly, this workflow ensures compatibility across our entire ecosystem and product suite - more on this later. 

When it comes to generating custom short-form avatar content, our breakthroughs have again stemmed from leveraging and enhancing our core engine and framework. We've pioneered a proprietary shader that overcomes our engine's limitations, consolidating multiple traditionally time-intensive lighting, compositing and rendering steps. This innovation enables us to achieve near-cinematic experiences in just a few clicks, with the added benefit of being animation-source-agnostic. The efficiency and speed with which we achieve such quality are only part of the advancement; each component again remains compatible with our core engine and ecosystem.

SOUNDS COOL. BUT WHY IS SHORT-FORM AVATAR CONTENT A NEED?

If content is king, then what does that make short-form content? It must be some type of dethroning-powerhouse...of the likes of Julius Caesar, John Snow or perhaps Timothée Chalamet for all of you Dune fanatics. 

Short-form videos and other trends such as relentless scroll culture, the preference for visual communication, the influence of algorithms, diminishing attention spans, and the democratization of creative tools have interwoven to create a complex feedback loop - where each phenomenon influences and reinforces the other, shaping the way we consume and interact with content. However, one thing stands out: the rise of short-form content. It's a phenomenon that feels as big as any we've likely ever seen in digital media. The rise has rattled the creator and entertainment spaces - but none probably more than the music industry.

Platforms like Reels, YouTube Shorts and most notably TikTok have revolutionized the entire process of music promotion and discoverability - not to mention the actual product [music] itself. A Luminate report shows that 64% of Gen Z TikTok users discover new music via Short Form Video clips, making it the #1 source for music discovery in this generation group. The same report found that TikTok users are twice as likely to discover music on SFV platforms than the average user on social media platforms. And when you factor in that TikTok has over 1.6B users (over 1 Billion MAU), it’s easy to understand why the music industry has had to radically change their ways. At simplest terms, the ROI that they see from short-form videos completely trumps that of other long-form and traditional content. Music video budgets are dwindling to the extent that mid-tier artists can barely afford two college kids armed with DSLRs. The new game is calling for artists to post a volume of content at an incredibly high frequency. Strategies based around perfectly curated and planned IG feed posts have evolved into, ‘throw a bunch of things at the wall, and once something sticks, throw as many more as you can.’ 

TACKLING TODAY'S PROBLEMS WITH FUTURE-MINDED APPROACHES

With this paradigm shift, the demand for short-form content and innovative methods to produce it in highly engaging ways intensifies every day. We like to keep an ear to the ground in our partner and creator communities, and as of late, the demand for short-form avatar content has been ringing louder than ever. Instead of creating one-off content that solely caters to immediate needs and neglects consideration for the future, utilizing an avatar enables creators to address current needs while simultaneously investing in their own IP and future. This approach is highly conducive to celebrity needs as it requires zero physical time or effort from their end. Moreover, avatars provide an organic and native way to connect with today's youth, often outperforming the physical person doing something similar. Altogether, using avatars for short-form content needs is likely the easiest, most effective, and most value-driving solution.

RECENT EXAMPLES:

Quavo “Himothy” Release - Link

Iann Dior “House on Fire” Release - Link

Lil Durk “Old Days” Release - Link

UNLOCKING THE AVATAR UNIVERSE: WHERE COMPATIBILITY DRIVES UTILITY

Compatibility was stressed above—not just as a means to create high-quality avatars and content quickly, but because the primary arena for these assets is within Genies Party and the associated ecosystem. Culture’s biggest tastemakers have adopted our avatars and off-platform use cases, preemptively accumulating value in their avatar IP, a few steps ahead of Genies Party's rollout. However, the intention has always been for them to live within our ecosystem—offering countless next-gen experiences for users, artists, and developers within our community.

Perhaps the next evolution of a music video is realized as an immersive experience in Genies Party - where our Traits Framework personalizes music consumption to every user. Or picture a listening party hosted by your favorite artist's smart avatar in their own world. Maybe a Thing from a celebrity unlocks special gameplay in your experience - a developer trick to attract new users. The future of co-creation and UGC campaigns may lie in celebrities and our artist community co-creating digital fashion collections, Things or even the avatars themselves. And as a developer, maybe you’d like to seamlessly add a celebrity avatar (NPC) to your mini game to enhance the user experience or promotability of your game. Our intentions and sights are set on limitless opportunities for Creators to reach and engage the next era of consumers and to unlock limitless opportunities for our artists and developers to seamlessly build with culture’s biggest icons and IP.  

GET IN TOUCH

If you're a creator or talent representative intrigued by the potential of our avatars and technology to power your IP development and digital needs, or if you're an artist or developer with an innovative idea or a desire to collaborate within our network of creators, please reach out to our Creator and Partnerships team here.