Peter Facinelli’s IPhone Vampire Transformer App, Interview Part 1

We had the chance to interview Peter Facinelli about his new IPhone Vampire Transformer Application. You can catch what Peter had to say about the app. either by reading below the cut or listening to our audiofile. We’ll also be bringing you two other segments from our Peter interview next week where Peter talks about New Moon, Nurse Jackie, and upcoming projects.

Pel has an IPhone and she volunteered to be vampirized.  You can see the entire Vampire gallery here. The app is currently on sale for .99 and can be found found here or by searching for Vampire Transformer in the IPhone apps.

If you need some tech help using the app, there are really great step-by-step instructional videos on the 211me YouTube channel. Narrated by Rob “bikini dance” De Franco.

Lori: Hi everyone! This is Lori Joffs and Laura Cristiano from the Twilight Lexicon. We’re Talking today with Peter Fachinelli. Wanna say Hi Peter?

Peter: Hi guys!

Lori: There he is! You are in New York taking a break from Nurse Jackie right now?

Peter: Yeah, I just finished work for the day, so I’m back in my apartment right now. It’s cold outside!

Laura (who is in New Jersey and should know!): Yeah, a little snow. Not like in LA.

Peter: I might go home for a few days.

Lori: You get to go home for a few days?

Peter: Yeah, I think I have off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So I might go home for a few days.

Lori: I’ve wondered how you and a couple of the actors who are just so busy keep up with your schedule.

Peter: Yeah, whenever I have a minute off I try to fly home. See the family.

Lori: That is so sweet! That just makes us love you even more. Doesn’t it? Well, let’s talk about these iPhone applications that you’ve been so involved in. How did you get started with iPhone apps. Did they approach you or was it your idea?

Peter: Well, um, everyone involved in that sort of knows the name Rob de Franco as my friend who I made a bet with, who ended up losing the bet and I made dance down Hollywood Blvd. in a bikini. And Rob de Franco makes iPhone apps. So after he lost his bet and he was humiliated he came to me and he said, “Hey do you want to make an iPhone app?” and I said, “Yeah sure.” So he created one which is basically like a website for me with more extensive content and I can reach out and sometimes go into the chat rooms and talk to the fans or answer questions and put videos on there I wouldn’t want massive amounts of people having. So it’s a smaller, more core group that have this application.

Lori: The really dedicated fan.

Peter: Yeah. Exactly. And then that was going well and I thought, “You know what? I’d love to make something for the fans. Like a game or something that would be fun to play.” So we talked about it and I came up with Vampire Transformer, which basically I thought it would be a fun idea to have your own coven of friends where you can download their picture into your app and you can overlay all these vampires and make like an original of art work that you can send back to them. Then you can say, “You’ve been bitten.” And it’s a lot of fun and I’m addicted to it. Every time I meet somebody I’m like, “Can I bite you with my phone?”

Lori: The transformation pictures are just hilarious.

Peter: Yeah, you can take their picture or pull someone’s twitter avatar or you can pull someone’s phone from your photo album and just start creating this fun piece of work. And it’s kind of cool ‘cause once you overlay the vampire face, it’s like a rub system. So you kind of rub their eyes and all of a sudden their eyes will turn red or blue or green or whatever you over laid. So it’s kind of like an Etch-e-sketch with your thumb, you know? So it’s kind of fun. And once you’re done with that art work you can e-mail it to them or you can twitter it or you can facebook it or – we have a vampire gallery website where you can put up your art work and people can rate it and comment on it.

Lori: Now that I did not know about. We’re going to have to find the link to that so that we can share that with everyone.

Peter: Yeah, and everyone I do I put in the Vampire Transformer website so you can go there and check out my transformations or other fans transformations.

Lori: Are you going to be doing some more apps? Do you have any other ideas?

Peter: Right now I’m good with these two. If I come out with some more ideas I might toss them to Rob. I’m having fun with the two I have.

Lori: No werewolf app?

Peter: We’re trying to get awareness of the vampire one. I would love to do a werewolf app if Vampire Transformer is well received, you know? Maybe we could do a werewolf transformer.

Laura: That would be awesome.

Lori: Everyone that I know who has it has a lot of fun with the Vampire Transformer.

Peter: Good, I’m glad! That’s what I want to hear. And I kind of made the vampires generic because I wanted to reach a broad fan base and not just the Twilight fan base. So the vampires that I selected that you can overlay – and you can keep adding different images. So you can have the eyes from one vampire and the mouth of another and the background of another and you can get as creative as you want. But the vampires that I’ve chosen – some of them are really beautiful and some of them are really gory and some of them are really crazy looking. So it’s not like just one type of vampire. You know, you can create whatever.

Laura: Yeah, some of them are really crazy. Like it looks like you can sort of cross the Count from Sesame Street with somebody from Vampire Diaries. Some of it is really cute and some of it is really gory. So some really neat crosses in there.

Peter: You know, I like to make really gory vampires. But some people are like, “I just want to look like a beautiful vampire!” So I have those in there, too. It’s also really cool because you could take two pictures of somebody and you could morph your face onto someone else’s face. So you don’t even have to do it with vampires.

Laura: Oh cool! I didn’t know you could do that.

Peter: You didn’t know that did you?

Laura: No, I didn’t!

Peter: Yeah, if you take a picture of your friend – you could actually probably take pictures of your favorite celebrities and put them on top of your face and see what you would look like if you were …

(Laughing)

Lori: That gives new definition to those scenarios like if this celebrity and that celebrity had a child, what would the child look like?

Peter: Exactly you could totally do that. There’s an option – there’s like a left side and a right side and you could import whatever pictures you want from either side. You can overlay whatever you want.

Lori: Oh now were’ going to have millions of people doing odd things with their friends’ pictures! Even more than just vampire transformations!

Peter: Yeah, you could put your friend’s hair on your face. It’s pretty fun.