**How to be an avatar, but believable? Union Avatars uses the selfie to be real**
*The Catalan Union Avatars is the only company in all of Spain dedicated to making avatars and through a selfie*
The Mobile World Congress avatars have names and surnames : Union Avatars, the Catalan company based in the Barcelona Activa incubator, in the 22@ district, which is in charge of offering these virtual people to all attendees who pass through the MWC this week, including the highest authorities such as King Felipe VI himself. The importance of having an avatar is greater than what the general public imagines. The metaverse, the space through which these animated beings that we end up being ourselves circulate, will be in five years the place where we will spend the most time of our lives… As long as we are connected to the Internet. For this reason, the need to create a credible avatar arises,away from robotized faces or more similar to cartoons.
face only selfie
Jordi Conejero, Union Avatars marketing manager, explains how to achieve it: through a selfie or a photograph. This is synchronized with the rest of the body, for which we can choose the model that suits us best: “Our differential point is the selfie, we make realistic avatars through a selfie. You have an avatar, you go to a virtual event and you are recognizable with the rest of the users, that is very important “, emphasizes Conejero. With the covid pandemic, many events were held virtual in order to have the office spaces themselves in 3D.
The vicissitudes of the pandemic
Then, just over two years ago, avatars would ask you for the length of your hair, the color of your eyes, or the shape of your mouth. Result? Not very practical and too artificial: “You spent about 15 minutes and they were not credible. The companies met workers, men and women in their 50s or 60s who had to do all that and ended up arriving late for the presentation, we saw this need of market”. Union Avatars emphasizes that an avatar has to guarantee an immersive experience, it is much closer to reality in a space like this and you can see it through the screen or with virtual reality glasses. The immersion is greater this way because you enter it and you can recognize the people with whom you want to go to work.
Unique in the Spanish State
Here, this company is unique, from the Catalan market, but also from Spain. And they find their customers, above all, in the United States and later the United Kingdom and the European market. The growth of Union Avatars has been spectacular. Last 2022 there were six people and now 22 already work. Although they registered in 2020, it was now when they see the results. In the beginning, they created the virtual world and explored the market, seeing that there were companies like Microsoft or Facebook with their own virtual world, but the one that had less was the representation of users and doing it easily and quickly because it did not exist at that time. . They found the answer very soon in this need to represent people in the virtual world.
An avatar interests fashion
Union Avatars has three clearly differentiated customer profiles that make up an increasingly diverse business universe around this tool. From large companies looking for virtual event platform developers, to virtual fashion or communication agencies looking to give their clients metaverse experiences. And they have their own names: ” Accentur, when a worker enters, they are given a pack with virtual reality glasses, they have to create their own avatar and they can go through the different rooms to meet those responsible,” explains Conejero. . And in the case of fashion, we find Claro or Teresa Helbig. “In the last Fashion Week in Madrid, Claro presented its physical collection and its first digital dress. For the month of March we will already have the entire collection, also in this format, and when a user buys the digital dress, they will have a discount for the physical one and when you purchase physical clothing, you will be given the digital one for free,” adds Conejero. Each time, the representation of our person in the digital world is more important because it defines us better.
And where is the data processing?
They currently opened a first round of financing in June 2022 and plan to do another in October that will be around 2 to 3 million euros . The trend is clear: increasingly photorealistic avatars, unlike the hyperrealism of recent times. Union Avatars has 30,000 users, what protection do all of them have at the data level? Conejero insists that “all the photographs are deleted, we don’t keep any of them.” But he does admit that with an avatar you can know the behavior of the user, if he has used an avatar with one platform or another, if he has bought clothes from one brand or another, among others. “We have not yet received offers, but we do anticipate it, we take it into account. It is not an asset of our business, but we do value it,” concludes Conejero.
https://www.elnacional.cat/oneconomia/es/economia/como-ser-avatar-creible-union-avatars-selfie-real_978633_102.html
https://www.elnacional.cat/oneconomia/es/economia/como-ser-avatar-creible-union-avatars-selfie-real_978633_102.html