Motion Capture - my thoughts
After reading this post a few months ago. Ward-o-matic I started thinking about motion capture and what else is there that gets me cringing when I see it.
This was also spurred on by two recent commercials I saw on local television, well actually three but Neil Blomkamps C4 commercial actually works, the other two have something wrong with them. I am not going to mention them but just their technique.
Animation is about staging and the silhouette of the character if it reads. Well in the first commercial the motion capture data is placed on the character and made to act. However the character is staged badly towards the camera and the movement cannot be read. The data is perfect, the character is actually doing what a man would do in the crowd etc but we cannot read this because the camera hasn't been taken into effect. The MoCap suite has twelve cameras recording the moves but the director controlling how the MoCap artist moves isn't taking into account that in the end, there will be only one camera. This is the first mistake, staging for MoCAP!
The second one and this comes from me reading Illusion of Life, I always page through a few chapters to study it a bit more when I have the chance.
In chapter 13 Ollie and Frank are talking about Rotoscoping the live action actors from the video reference:
"No one knows for sure why a pencil tracing of a live action figure should look so stiff and unnatural on the screen, unless there simply no reality in a copy. The animators had learned this in art classes, but, somehow, studying film of a moving model made them think that live action was different. The camera certainly records what is there, but it records everything that is there, with an impartial lack of emphasis. On the other hand, an artist shows what he sees is there, especially that which might not be perceived by others..."
And this is so true of MoCap as well. It captures everything that is there and every subtle movement that can actually distract from what the artist wants you to see. Every foot slide, arm move, head shake and shoulder shrug, just for a simple move. So as I watched these commercials, I thought of Ollie and Frank and how true their perception of rotoscoping fits todays Motion Capture debates. I dont think Motion Capture will ever replace animation because as the two best animators put it, there is NO reality in a copy!!
This was also spurred on by two recent commercials I saw on local television, well actually three but Neil Blomkamps C4 commercial actually works, the other two have something wrong with them. I am not going to mention them but just their technique.
Animation is about staging and the silhouette of the character if it reads. Well in the first commercial the motion capture data is placed on the character and made to act. However the character is staged badly towards the camera and the movement cannot be read. The data is perfect, the character is actually doing what a man would do in the crowd etc but we cannot read this because the camera hasn't been taken into effect. The MoCap suite has twelve cameras recording the moves but the director controlling how the MoCap artist moves isn't taking into account that in the end, there will be only one camera. This is the first mistake, staging for MoCAP!
The second one and this comes from me reading Illusion of Life, I always page through a few chapters to study it a bit more when I have the chance.
In chapter 13 Ollie and Frank are talking about Rotoscoping the live action actors from the video reference:
"No one knows for sure why a pencil tracing of a live action figure should look so stiff and unnatural on the screen, unless there simply no reality in a copy. The animators had learned this in art classes, but, somehow, studying film of a moving model made them think that live action was different. The camera certainly records what is there, but it records everything that is there, with an impartial lack of emphasis. On the other hand, an artist shows what he sees is there, especially that which might not be perceived by others..."
And this is so true of MoCap as well. It captures everything that is there and every subtle movement that can actually distract from what the artist wants you to see. Every foot slide, arm move, head shake and shoulder shrug, just for a simple move. So as I watched these commercials, I thought of Ollie and Frank and how true their perception of rotoscoping fits todays Motion Capture debates. I dont think Motion Capture will ever replace animation because as the two best animators put it, there is NO reality in a copy!!
posted by Darrin Hofmeyr @ 4/25/2005 01:49:00 PM
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