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-Zanika quote: "Are you ready?"-

Had a dream I was playing a MMORPG with my brother, and a more experienced player was frying his character. I mean, literally torching it, not just walloping it.

I was going to continue with boring vacation stories today, except that I discovered possibly the most hilarious little program bundled in my new computer.

Namely, Live! Cam Avatar Creator.

The general purpose of the software is apparently to enable the user to take a picture of a face (theirs or more likely someone else's), mark the locations of the eyes, nose, and lips, and the program will animate it so that it looks like some sort of really low-budget CGI android. I mean, what more can you expect, considering all it has to work with is one frame -- which it valiantly muscles into blinking and moving its mouth and head. In the interests of simplicity, there are only four points to line up along the mouth, often leading to parts of lips or teeth (depending on how large and cheesy a grin the subject of the portrait had to begin with) splitting and going their merry ways when the mouth is "opened".

Shall I even mention that the calibration of the face occurs to a female voice with a prerecorded message? Oh, the juvenile amusement in picking the most manly-man pic you can find, then going through the sequence. [in female voice] "And some natural movement" [inside animated picture, which is currently stretching around side to side in a decidedly unnatural manner] "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What happened to my throat?!"

I think after I post this, I will embark on an internet scavanger hunt for the perfect face to subject to this treatment.

Reality check. If you see one of these avatars heading toward you, don't reality check. Just run.