Honey, I Shrunk the Crunchies Monkey

Last May we wrote about a virtual world called MyMiniLife where you can construct and furnish virtual homes that look like those you’d find in The Sims, except smaller and more pixelated.

If this is your cup of tea, then perhaps you’ll be interested in a new MyMiniLife tool for importing real life objects into cyberspace. These items can be added to your own homes or shared with (i.e. sold to) other users. I’ve used it to import the Crunchies Award, shrinking it and yet making it life-size at the same time.

All that’s needed to import an object is a camera for taking four isometric shots, and a moderately functional photo editing application. A green screen is recommended, but who has one of those lying around? I found that you can do just fine without one if you have decent Photoshop skills. See the video demonstration at the bottom of this post to get an idea of the process.

MyMiniLife has been testing this feature for two months with beta users who have already uploaded 9,000 items. The company, which operates on angel funding, claims 750,000 users total and 9M page views per month.