Last week the news went pretty wide on the net that Daz Productions had released their most versatile 3D Anime/Manga product yet, Aiko 3.0. The product is heralded as the first and most extensive 3D Anime/Manga product being released to the masses. ANS got a few words with Chris Creek who is Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of DAZ Productions:
Anime News Service: For our readers unfamiliar with DAZ, could you give us a brief history of your anime modeling program? How did the idea start within your company and what steps did you take to execute the final product.
Chris Creek: DAZ originally came out with Aiko 1.0 in 2002. This year we decided that we wanted to have the most versatile figure on the market. We felt like giving away the Aiko 3.0 basic anime figure along with our free DAZ Studio would make it very easy for people to get into 3D for the first time. The fact that several of our employees have lived in Japan and we recently sent three company representatives to meet with some of our Japanese artists in April, made it an easy decision to move forward with the project.
ANS: Is this the first version of the software publicly released and do you plan on issuing updates in the future?
CC: The new version of DAZ|Studio has been publicly released and has been available to the general public as a Beta for about 9 months. We will be aggressively releasing new versions every month or two with a range of new features.
ANS: Are you open to taking in suggestions from animators and fans out there as far as further features to include?
CC: Absolutely. We have a very active DAZ|Studio section on our forum and the customers have been instrumental in driving the feature set. This is consistent with all of the product development at DAZ. We build what our customers want.
ANS: Are any members of your creation or programming staff anime / manga fans and if so can you tell us their favorite titles perhaps used as inspiration with this product? Did you have any non fans on the staff that became converted fans over the process of this project's development?
CC: That’s a great question. A number of our artists have anime/manga art, books and collectibles at their desks. Some titles include “Ghost in the Shell”, “Cowboy Bebop”, “Art of Shirow Masamune” as well as the classic, “How to Draw Manga”. The character figure is an important foundation of the DAZ business and we have artists and modelers that love what they do. It wasn’t very hard getting people working on the Aiko project. And you’re right, pretty much across the board, those that were not Manga fans at the start of the project became converts.
ANS: Was DAZ designed to be accessible to the animator with absolutely no experience with a product of this type or are you gearing for the experienced computer animator here?
CC: The DAZ slogan is “Unleash the Artist Within”. We want to make 3D accessible and playful for beginning artists. If you’ve used Studio, you know that it doesn’t take long before you’re making beautiful art. It’s not as simple as operating a microwave, but we’ve been told by our customers that DAZ|Studio is one of the easiest programs out there to use. But professionals love our products as well. That’s why they show up in movies like the Matrix, Spiderman and lately Alexander.
ANS: The software has been available for just a few days now, how has the preliminary reaction been?
CC: We track our success at Alexa.com. When we released Aiko 3.0 we went from having 10,555 websites more popular than us to 5062 at the peak period. Our traffic basically tripled and we’ve had significantly over 10,000 copies of Aiko and DAZ|Studio downloaded so far and many more visitors that came and looked and signed up for the DAZ newsletter. We’re very pleased with the world’s reaction to Aiko and the DAZ|Studio software. It’s one of the best free offerings on the Internet in our opinion. And of course we won’t stay in business if nobody buys anything but that hasn’t been a problem. We will continue to make the highest quality programs out there.
ANS: Will you be showing off DAZ at any coming trade shows?
CC: Yes. DAZ has been in a partnership with NVIDIA and Newtek. In 2004, we shared booths with NVIDIA at Digital Life, the Popular Science Expo and will be with them at the Consumer Electronic Show. We shared a booth with Newtek at SIGGRAPH and NAB (National Association of Broadcasters). We’ll be doing a number of other shows later in 2005.
Thanks for the opportunity and the interview.
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