Virtual actor

A virtual human, virtual persona, or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using and sound, that is often indistinguishable from the real actor. The idea of a virtual actor was first portrayed in the 1981 film Looker, wherein models had their bodies scanned digitally to create 3D computer generated images of the models, and then animating said images for use in TV commercials. Two 1992 books used this concept: Fools by Pat Cadigan, and Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. In general, virtual humans employed in movies are known as synthespians, virtual actors, vactors, cyberstars, or "silicentric" actors. There are several legal ramifications for the digital cloning of human actors, relating to copyright and personality rights. People who have already been digitally cloned as simulations include Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ed Sullivan, Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Marie Goddard, and George Burns. By 2002, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Kate Mulgrew, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny had all had their heads laser scanned to create digital computer models thereof. Early computer-generated animated faces include the 1985 film Tony de Peltrie and the music video for Mick Jagger's song "Hard Woman" (from She's the Boss). The first actual human beings to be digitally duplicated were Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in a March 1987 film "Rendez-vous in Montreal" created by Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann for the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Institute of Canada. The film was created by six people over a year, and had Monroe and Bogart meeting in a café in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The characters were rendered in three dimensions, and were capable of speaking, showing emotion, and shaking hands. In 1987, the Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company (now Synthespian Studios), founded by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak coined the term "synthespian" and began its Synthespian ("synthetic thespian") Project, with the aim of creating "life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models".