Hasta La Ideas

The first batch of Mixees arrive from the printer. All images courtesy of MixeeMe.

Custom avatars have always been an addicting form of participatory making. From the famous Nintendo Miis to Mad Men Yourself and South Park Avatar Creator, avatar-making has proven to be a popular practice online time and time again.

But while we ourselves wander around a three dimensional wonderland, our avatars remain stuck in the second dimension. Even if, like Miis, they seem to be free, they can never quite leap from the screen and into our hands, at least not without considerable effort.

For all those avatars itching for entree into the real world, we now have MixeeMe, a new startup that allows you to create a cute, custom avatar of yourself, your friends, your nemeses or anyone else you know and get a real live 3D printed version in the mail a few days later. It’s the brainchild of designers Nancy Liang and Aaron Barnet, two Yale grads who wanted to make a dream into reality.

“When I was little had this idea that if you could become an action figure you’re successful, you made it in the world,” explained Liang in a Skype interview with Core77. “I sat down at Google Sketchup, figured out how to make circles and cubes and put them together. After 5 hours, I uploaded my character model to Shapeways, and found that it would be too expensive to print. The modeling process was a shit show, basically.”

Frustrated with the options for designing simple 3D objects, Liang took to the web and worked with Barnet to research and develop simple 3D tools. “I decided that only do I want to make action figures, I want to make it easy for others to make action figures of themselves or their friends,” she noted. After exploring the different options, they decided on a simple interface that let customers focus on creating, rather than the technical specifics.

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