Steven Stahlberg was born in Australia and raised in Sweden. He worked for ten years as a freelancing illustrator, most of it in Hong Kong, and now works in computer graphics. He says of his work, "People often ask how or why I got started with computer graphics. Computers have fascinated me since I was a kid. Not unusual today, but this was the 60's, in a very small town. I read about computers in science fiction and creating things in a computer was one of my dreams. In 1990 I bought a PC with AutoCad. Then I found Silicon Graphics in a murky crowded office in Hong Kong. I bought a used 4D20 'Personal Iris', with a 200 Mb harddisk and some free demo software. It was a brown box the size of a suitcase, most laptops today can run rings around it, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world.
"In Hong Kong I lived on an island much larger than Hong Kong island itself, but with only a few small towns on it: mine was Discovery Bay, population about 15,000. No cars allowed, only buses and golf carts. 50% foreigners made it very cosmopolitan. I had a huge home studio in Hong Kong - one corner of our living room. (And my wife ran a kindergarten in the house every day from 9 to 12).
"In late 97 I was offered a job with Digital Anvil, Austin, Texas, based on my web page. But it took over a year to get the visa papers. We moved in April 99. Austin is the Capital of Texas, with the largest university in the country, but still a fairly small city, with water and grass and trees all over the place, and known as the live music capital of the world. Ironically, after at first feeling relieved, I missed Hong Kong (and Asia in general).
"Since 1996 I'd been working on a realistic female character. The years 2000 and 2001 saw an explosion of great work in this field. Where before there was nothing except a few so-so corporate projects, now suddenly all these single artists' wonderful work came out. But even though I've largely given up the pursuit of a perfect virtual actress, I like to remember the fact that I was first in the world to have a virtual character sponsored by a major modeling agency (Elite) back in 99, and presented to the world in a press conference, appearing on ABC, BBC, and many other tv channels, as well as in over twenty magazines and newspapers that I know of - including NYT, Financial Times, WSJ... lots more. It's just a fun memory now, since the dot-com bust and other factors caused the shelving of the project."
