User-generated animation tools maker FiX8 added $2 million in Series A financing from strategic investor SK Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless communication provider, to a $3 million investment last October from Vickers Financial Group. The company also announced it is working on SKT's own three-dimensional avatar animation products for mobile and online services customers.

The South Korean deal gives the Los Angeles-based unit of multimedia software developer Mobinex Inc. a huge foothold in what is arguably the most advanced telecommunications market for user-generated multimedia. SKT will resell FiX8 content and tools that include virtual communications technology to digitize human expressions via Webcam in real time and animate live video on instant messaging services including MSN, Yahoo!, AIM and Skype.

FiX8's avatar technology allows users to communicate using those creepy or cool -- depending on your perspective -- interactive characters created from Webcam images of their own faces. The technology maps movements and expressions and conveys personal characteristics and emotion in cartoon form. - Clifford Carlsen

See April 3 press release from FiX8
See December 2007 story from Tech Confidential

For more see the FiX8 blog and VirtualWorldsNews