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I’m delighted to announce MirrorMe, 4iP’s first health-related product launch under the banner of ‘MOT Your Life’, launching this week. 4iP and Northern Film and Media have invested in an innovative application that demonstrates the effects of smoking, drinking, taking drugs, eating junk food and sun bed usage. Yes, that’s what happens to Digital Commissioners after more than a year of 4iP.
Initially launching as a Facebook app, MirrorMe launches this week and comes out of young North East games development studio Ideonic, from Middlesbrough.
MirrorMe takes advanced Facial Recognition technology, turning it into a fun app available to everyone on the web and, soon, on the iPhone.
Users upload an image of their face or use their Facebook profile pic, and then answer questions relating to their lifestyle and habits. The app then scours for over 86 points on the face, generating a new image of the user’s face based on how they might look in future if they continue in their current lifestyle. These are then used to accurately distort face shapes to show changes with aging and weight variation. By detecting the exact contours of the user’s face, multiple photorealistic overlays can be morphed and blended to the individual’s face to given a unique and scarily accurate facial distortion.
A later version will show a short video of the user’s progression from current day vitality to their last wrinkly days.
Although primarily designed to be fun, the app does take medical factors into account, creating rules that can be applied to each individual user based on factors such as their location and ethnic origin as well as their habits.
The technology behind the app is based on advanced facial recognition technology developed by German face recognition experts BetaFace.
Why 4iP?
This light-hearted way of helping people connect how current day health habits affect their future is pure Channel 4 territory, with obvious connections in content terms to a host of prime time programmes such as Embarrassing Bodies - in fact, last Sunday night we tried out the app on Channel4.com for the Embarrassing Old Bodies Special. It offers an entertaining yet troubling app that shows every user how they can prevent the impending lines, discolouration, bags or spots from happening in the first place.
The app has its viral loops baked in, with users’ curiosity piqued the moment one of their friends shares the gruesome results to their friend feed. It therefore fulfills our public service role in two swipes: it gets people talking about what certain activities could do to their good looks in the long term, and gets them using the app to play around with the effects of different habits.
We’re hoping that the forthcoming iPhone app will ride on the back of a successful implementation on Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, and take the game away from the PC and to the locations where many of the habits begin: the pub. The app also provides one element of the revenue model for the investment.
Importantly, MirrorMe is just one more example of 4iP helping stimulate the creative industries outside the M25. The idea, born out of a 4iP- and Northern Film and Media-supported cross-creative lab earlier this year, uncovers Ideonic, a young, innovative company, to the wider attention of the digital media world and is 4iP’s first investment in the North East of England with Northern Film and Media, who this week announce a new £2.4m content fund to further stimulate the sector.
Visit www.MirrorMeGallery.co.uk to add the app to your Facebook profile, and see how future iterations of the product develop over the next few months.
