I’ve found out that artists can have more than one artist’s name and avatar. In today’s digital creative environment where many artists do not perform live, or appear as themselves in their music videos, they are identified by a name and an image. I thought I knew “who” the people that I associate with are. I thought I was dealing with the minds and personalities of one person at a time, the person who would be sitting at the other end of a Zoom or a Whatsapp video call. Nope. I was merely looking at one version of that person.
I am Marthe. Because my legal name is actually not glam and hard to pronounce, and because I will always be behind the scenes, not in front, I created Cōdae, which is now my copyrighted trademark. Great. What you see with me, that one concept, is what you get.
Who are you again?
Not so my associates. They have a persona, or avatar, for each different type of creative pursuit that they do. One example is “whoisbbcooper“. “BB Cooper” – a pun on D.B. Cooper – even has his IG name as a question, and in his videos he appears in shadow and wearing dark glasses. There is no disguising his voice though. I know who he is because of how he sounds. And his 500+ followers and 700k+ listeners also know that he is, in fact, Ben Botfield. Sorry, Ben – you’ve been caught out.
Other associates have two, three, even four different identities. So, with each identity comes a lot of work to develop the brand and the promotional materials. The name, and image, will be everywhere. It took so long to establish Cōdae, that I trademarked it.
How to create an avatar
Artists and their publishers now have many platforms to use to develop and expand those virtual humans that represent the artist. The virtual human can look more, or less, realistic. The image can be obviously graphic – an art work – or it can be as close as dammit to real life.
We have seen improved A.I.-generated video and images that are now so realistic that some platforms, such as Vimeo, give publishers the option of marking the video as containing A.I. performers. So you know what you’re looking at. But in the case of music videos, the listener or viewer does not really care about whether the image on screen is the actual artist or not. The audio is the main thing. The video just serves to support the feeling and meaning. In fact, doing too much, in terms of graphics, can distract from the audio and impede the listener from appreciating the song.
So, at least, I’ve been told. The music video of “Perfect You”, which started my search for a perfect human image, ended up being quite neutral. Just a spinning LP with lyrics. The Spotify canvas, below, is a bit sexier.
With this rider: people, being people, still need a human to look at. They still want to see a person on screen. Abstract images just don’t cut it. So, thank goodness for meta-humans and A.I.-generated humans. What used to be the norm in gaming has now become real useful in the music industry.
A Perfect human for “Perfect You”
For the single,”Perfect You”, I went through a long process of creating a male meta-human – the first of a few other characters. Starting with a basic graphic that I’d drawn, the portrait went through many, many iterations of rendering and animation, becoming more human-like, but also more generic, with every prompt and output. In between stages, I had to redraw most of the image, from the nose, to the skin, hair, eyes, hands…you name it. At 300% + magnification, pixel by pixel. I imported my own artwork into and out of EPIC Games‘ Meta-Human creator, and Dream by Wombo. The images were animated in Runway.
Over a three-month period, the “man”, who started out as looking young and aggro, ended up as older, chill and muscled. His posture changed from leaning forward, to slouching, to standing up straight. He went from plain to heavily tattooed, brush cut to long, thick hair. He went from shaven to bearded.
He went from an average-looking guy who could well be the person singing the song, to a Perfect Meta-Human. Perfect, to the last pore on his perfect complexion. Here he is, in different stages. Isn’t he gorgeous?
Male Meta-human “speaking” lyrics
Here is a clip generated on Runway, with the image “singing” (moving the lips and face) to the vocals of the chorus of “Perfect You”.