[We are moving closer to a day when not only models, as in this story from Vogue Business, but many people can have (increasingly realistic) ‘digital twins’ made of themselves and send them off to interact with the world, even after they themselves have passed away. The story explores just some of the many questions and issues this raises. See the original story from two more images. –Matthew]
[Image: Credit: Dimension Studios and Unsigned Group]
Brands can now hire supermodel Eva Herzigová’s digital twin
The model has participated in an elaborate process to digitise her likeness and movements, allowing her to extend her career and appear in never-before-possible projects. But, creating a digital twin opens up a world of questions.
By Maghan Mcdowell
April 25, 2023
Supermodel Eva Herzigová has one of the most recognisable faces in the world. She has appeared on runways, ad campaigns and magazine covers around the world during the more than 30 years she has been working as a model. Now, at 50, her likeness has the chance to work in perpetuity thanks to a highly accurate, three-dimensional digital twin of herself that she created with virtual production studio Dimension Studios and agency Unsigned Group.
The “metahuman” will give future developers and creators the opportunity to dress and style her face and body in ad campaigns of the future. She even recorded her runway walk — plus a myriad of facial expressions — to better inform future animations.
Metahumans like Herzigová’s can be used in a range of projects, ranging from lifelike still photography or two-dimensional videos that mimic the types of photoshoots with which Herzigová is familiar. This also extends to use in virtual and mixed reality, including animated videos and content that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, such as appearing in metaverse spaces, games or within other fictional digital landscapes. Characters can be digitally dressed, posed and lit, receive digital hair and makeup styling, and their bodies and facial expressions can be animated. Dimension Studios co-founder and co-CEO Simon Windsor likens it to a high-quality game avatar. Herzigová says the process felt like she was “giving birth to herself”.
The project, in partnership with Herzigová’s agency Unsigned Group, is the first of its kind for its creators, but the plan is to develop a new digital roster of personalities, Windsor says.
It launches at a time when brands are accelerating their explorations of working with digital models — both real people and imagined — and the quality and use-cases for digital, virtual worlds in fashion have proliferated. That exploration also raises questions around representation via digital avatars, how standards around beauty and stigmas around age translate into virtual worlds, and who profits off of a model’s digital likeness. For Herzigová, working with Dimension is a way to expand her career.
“It’s not about freezing my image or trying to be younger — that has never crossed my mind,” Herzigová says, from a hotel room in New York, after a photoshoot. Rather, a key motivation was connecting with a new generation, while being more efficient with her time. “I am still working, but maybe this will permit me to stay home with the kids and not have to travel and be away. But, I really don’t know — it is a big question mark where this is going to go.”
UNDER THE HOOD
Herzigová’s digital avatar was made using Metahuman Creator, a platform from game engine Unreal, created by Epic Games (parent company of Fortnite). Her face was scanned in a 70-camera rig to capture facial data and geometry, and then a team of character artists sculpted her 3D figure, based on photographic reference materials and provided measurements. She then wore a motion capture suit to capture her motion data, including her walk, using Vicon motion capture systems, to create data that can then be animated by a puppeteer. She says it was like working with a green screen. “I was wearing this suit with all these sensors, basically big blue balls, and moving my hands and getting the full spectrum of movement. I had to make so many faces — like surprised, hurt and shocked. It felt like acting class.”
The technical component was the easy part compared to the existential complexities the avatar raises. Who has control over the way the character is used? Should the person’s voice also be captured? When a person becomes famous for how they pose and move for the camera, can that magic be recreated digitally? How is the model, and the team that built it, compensated? And, perhaps most intriguingly, what happens when the originating person dies? Does it enable a person’s estate to still earn revenue from their work, in the way that those of late musical artists do today?
Herzigová, and her team, are still navigating these considerations. “We are asking questions I don’t have an answer to, and it’s an uneasy subject, because it is weird to think that someone else will be in control of ‘you’, because it’s me but not me. I would imagine that eventually, I will — she will — kind of create her own persona,” she says. “Maybe if it lives within a [digital] universe with a persona, I can accept that and she can exist there.”
Unsigned CEO Gavin Myall is still establishing how to bring Herzigová’s avatar to market, including the pricing structure, as it opens up the ability to develop interesting partnerships that are a bit different than a traditional model’s work might entail. He is specifically interested in working with the BFC and emerging digital designers. He says that the agency will charge commission based on joint intellectual property between Herzigová, Unsigned and Dimension.
Consent and control are factors that the partnership with Herzigová gets in front of. A digital version of Marilyn Monroe, which portrayed the icon wearing contemporary pieces of Fendi and Miu, drew some criticisms for using her personhood without her participation. Similarly, film directors have used artificial intelligence to create digital narrations from celebrities who have died, including Anthony Bourdain and Andy Warhol. Photographer Nick Knight has also begun digitising models, and an avatar version of Kendall Jenner modelled in a Burberry ad campaign in 2020.
“It’s important that we have to make these decisions,” Myall says, “because that is one thing that annoys me about fashion. No one has these types of discussions with images, and models don’t own their rights, but the picture will go on forever. People can use it in 150 years’ time. We really think it is so refreshing that we have this conversation from the beginning.”
Some might argue that creating a fictional version of an existing person, with their explicit permission and parameters in place, is a safer approach to digital humans than, for example, creating entirely fictional models, as in the case of Shudu, or the range of models generated by Lalaland.ai for use in Levi’s’ e-commerce imagery. However, some brands, including Nars, LVMH and Coach, have intentionally created fictional personalities to inhabit ad campaigns and projects, because it can be more creative (and controllable) than hiring human personalities.
“It’s interesting to create another stream of what we do and challenge ourselves with talent representation in this new world,” Myall says. “We are all on this journey, and none of us know the answer.”