NEWTON, Massachusetts (March 6, 2002) Zoesis Studios today launched Mr. Bubb in Space, featuring an advanced, limbed interactive character. Mr. Bubb, who can be seen at www.MrBubb.com, is a major leap forward in character animation's century-long dream of creating "the illusion of life." Zoesis Studios is an award-winning high-tech studio dedicated to giving interactive characters functioning minds of their own, for application in entertainment and advertising.

Pattie Maes, professor at the MIT Media Lab and an expert in artificial intelligence and interactive characters, says, "Mr. Bubb is the most engaging interactive personality I have ever seen on the Internet. Zoesis has an original and powerful approach that's enabling them to get closer and closer to fulfilling the dream of making a convincingly living, interactive animated character."

In Mr. Bubb in Space, the user and Mr. Bubb engage in cooperative play. The unique element is Mr. Bubb's emotional life: his feelings about the game and his social interaction with the user. He appears intensely aware of the user, the game, and the score, and he expresses his feelings through his movements and facial expressions.

www.MrBubb.com requires a Windows system with a Pentium 200MHz or better. No special hardware or plug-ins are needed.

About Zoesis Studios
The company was launched in Pittsburgh in 1996 when Joseph Bates, a professor of Computer Science and Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University, and Bryan Loyall, Scott Neal Reilly, and Peter Weyhrauch, leading Ph.D. researchers in this field, founded the company along with several key artists. The company moved to Boston in 1997, where it continues to advance and roll out its unique art/technology for interactive advertising and entertainment. The company received financial backing as well as technical collaboration from Fujitsu Limited, one of the largest computer corporations in the world.