We already thought that FaceTime was pretty cool but now that we've used Dave's service to get a FaceTime Portrait, it's moved into to "beyond cool" category.
Dave is a designer at the Iconfactory and responsible for the ultimate Twitter icon, Ollie the Twitterrific bird, but he broke his foot while playing soccer over the Fourth of July. That means that the poor guy is relegated to staying off his feet at home. Rather than wallow in self-pity, he decided to use the opportunity to keep himself from going completely Rear Window and offer up his design skills to the Internet public.
After reading about Dave's offer in Wired, I had to reach out and get my own FaceTime Portrait made. Not only was I a huge fan of Lanham's work (and seriously, check out his website, his stuff is incredible), I really needed a new avatar.
This is the result:
I'm pretty psyched to see myself as a cartoon. You can see other examples of completed works on Dave's Flickr gallery. He's received a ton of offers but has been keeping at it at a pretty steady pace. Lanham says that it takes about an hour total to do the portrait. The sketching aspect via FaceTime only takes about 10 minutes and he'll snap a screenshot so he can reference it if he needs to later on.
This is a great example of ingenuity on several levels. First, what a great way to deal with being stuck at home and in a chair. Second, what a great way to use technology to connect with people all over the globe to create totally original artwork.