The Creative Design Blog

Animated talking avatars, Virtual representatives and Web Characters are growing dramatically in popularity because they work! It’s no accident.

It so much easier to put over complex product and service information using the spoken word, a thirty second narration is infinitely more effective and memorable than 2 pages of text and images. it’s what the media industry calls “lean back marketing”, where the viewer or visitor just relaxes and absorbs the information. Not only does the visitor get a concise and exacting media narration but it helps your site stand out from the crowd, become more memorable.

Training and educational establishments have demonstrated and proven that compelling media content used within the delivery of information gives great results, information retention is dramatically improved and its easier for the participant to concentrate on the information being presented. When it comes down to choosing your ideal animated web character there are a number of areas you should consider.

The Avatar Look: Is your talking web characters “attractive”, or does it look as though it has fallen out of the ugly tree, is it well crafted and generally compelling, or amateurish and poorly animated. Does it suit your image … is the quality something you are comfortable associating with.

Web Compare Lip-Syncing: Does the avatar lip-sync accurately, or does it resemble a badly dubbed movie, this is critical, our brains react in micro-seconds when faced with something that doesn’t look right! Many animated talking characters have less than convincing lip-syncing to say the least. Does the virtual representatives lips stop moving when silent, does it shape the phonemes correctly or is it just a random selection of blah! blah! blah!

Virtual Character Ambient animation: Does the talking character have an ambient animation, is it subtle, or over-the-top, does it exhibit gimmicks like eyes following the mouse or strange head rotations, does it look as though it is chewing a wasp. Subtle animations are more convincing to the watcher, at the end of the day it is the content being delivered by the speaking avatar, and all animations should be kept to a minimum to avoid distraction.

Virtual Spokesperson – The Voice: Text to speech may seem convenient but it has a tendency to sound really bad. Remember! this is a virtual representative, your own animated web or media compare it is an extension of your image, unless you sound like a robot steer clear of synthesized voices. Use your own voice, or a friends, or shell out for a professional voice over artist, they are not as expensive as you think! In the future TTS will probably improve but at the present it should only be used if you have no other option.

Modifying the look of your Virtual Representative: You want your visitors and users to build a rapport with your virtual representative, so changing its looks continually does not offer continuity to the visitor,, most of us like familiarity. Having a Virtual representative that the visitor can mess with only detracts from the message your Web compare is trying to put over.

Integration and Hosting your Talking Avatar: Give a great deal of thought to this area as its rife with potential additional charges and risks. If you are on a Pay-for-view contract, a contract that charges you a monthly fee for so many streams, the risk is your growth in visitation, you end up with one of two potential problems; you have to pay more because you had a higher visitation as your site grows in popularity, or, you can’t afford to pay more, so your talking avatar disappears and leaves a block with the suppliers logo in place. The same goes for supplier hosting, you have no control over their hosting facility, if you rely on your web compare and your service suppliers servers go down you have lost your “voice”. If you own internet service goes down at least the whole site is no longer visible. Always try and use a solution that will give you total control, create your composition in your time, generate industry standard output (Flash, Flash Video or conventional Video ) and have total flexibility when it comes to integration.

Flexibility gives your choice: Is flexibility important, would it be nice to have access to the native output of your efforts in an industry standard format such as Flash, Flash Video, AVI etc so you could integrate your work into other environments such as Powerpoint, Camtasia, youTube, eBay etc. Are there any other services that can assist you from the supplier such as Voice-Overs, integration and bespoke services. Can your composition work off-line, can you create them off-line. Flexibility adds to the return on your investment.

Summary: Don’t fall into the trap of believing that by integrating any old talking web character or avatar into your page will help your cause, on the contrary, if you integrate a bad one, it could reflect dramatically on your business, it’s your future.

Education & Training the compelling way: Imagine a PowerPoint presentation, facts, figures, graphs and images and there delivering the presentation, embedded within the screen a virtual tutor, available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. CBT has a new face, virtual assistants and guides integrate seamlessly into presentation media. Many formal education and training environments from the junior and pre-school nursery to the marble corridors of the corporate giants have seen the power of compelling media delivery. Literature assignment can be delivered in context and even brain teasing science and math education can become more precise when you have the help of a virtual tutor that has the power of “voice”. Un-attended education across the web or operated locally makes virtual education delivery highly effective and manageable. We know that retention is improved, we know that “lean back” education can be effortlessly absorbed and we know that there is nothing more powerful when it comes to delivering complex ideas or facts than the spoken word. The flexibility is endless. Education creators can concentrate on the subject matter and choose the ideal Virtual Tutor to assist in the process. Virtual Teachers can be available in different forms. Technology at its best, with a face and a purpose.