ILM: Animation and VFX of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Interviews with ILM VFX supervisor Pablo Helman

How To Walk Like an Ape: Motion Capture and Animation

// Andy Serkis interview: 'Audiences are moved by acting, not effects'

“Two things have to be understood: the authorship of a performance happens on set with a director and other actors in a very conventional live action sense. The animation process is what happens afterwards, and the skill and artistry and the brilliant work the animators do in interpolating that performance and manifesting it on screen is an art form which is unparalleled.” Then, almost defiantly, he adds: “Acting is acting and visual effects are visual effects and it’s a marriage, but the authorship of performance - everything you watch on screen that you feel and think about a character - comes from the actor.”



// Andy Serkis Vs. Visual Effects Animators: The Wrong Fight For Both Sides

"And one more thing for vfx artists: You too should stop bickering over who is the author of the performance and work with Andy Serkis — or Zoe Saldana or Jamie Bell or Ray Winstone — to get awards, even if it’s a special achievement award made up for the occasion, for a performance capture role. Because people like winning awards, and helping an actor win an award will make you more desirable for the next film that puts a big actor in a performance capture suit.

 So what if nobody says your name from the podium? At least you’ll have have a great story for bartenders and reporters."


// Where Does Andy Serkis End & Animation Begin?

“It’s a tough question, because obviously Andy gives you the heart and soul of the performance, but we also come at it with creating what you see on top of it. So there’s this hybrid and I think that the Academy… is not quite clear how to honor that combination, because this a new thing where you can take the performance and separate it from the visual image of what you see, but then it all has to come back together again as though they were one and the same to start with.”


// Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: how to act like an ape

"However, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn’t cover motion-capture acting in Screen Actors Guild contracts, classifying it rather as “lower-paying background work”, according to Variety. All that motion capture does, the association says, is assist animators, who ultimately produce the final performance – and there’s no way of telling how closely the final performance matches the actor’s movements. Steven Spielberg wanted his 2011 motion-capture movie The Adventures of Tintin to be considered an animated feature, but equally, when the 2006 movie Happy Feet won the Oscar for best animated feature, having employed motion capture, many animators felt the technique either disempowering or, at worst, a cheat or shortcut."


// Andy Serkis, Star of a Movie Medium That Doesn't Need Stars
'Motion capture has a long history of second-tier kind of acting—or worse, a mere variety of animation'

Gollum Mocap Project by Fabrice Visserot

Here's a really nice face mocap test by Fabrice Visserot.

'This video shows a personal retargeting experiment of facial motion capture. The animation is pure motion capture with no keyframe animation added.' via Vimeo

The Art of Motion Capture

This vid provides a general look at the basics of mocap.

VFX Supervisor Scott Squires on 'Acting and Animation'

VFX Supervisor Scott Squires recently posted an in depth article on his blog  concerning the ongoing debate over the relationship between animation, motion capture and acting/actors. He makes some solid points and adds  great perspective from his extensive career in vfx. It's definitely worth a read.

// Acting and Animation  
via Effects Corner 

Behind the Scenes of 'Tintin'

Here's some detailed footage of the mocap shoot from Tintin.

Motion Capture from Body-Mounted Cameras

Check out this new tech from Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon Graphics that was shown at SIGGRAPH 2011. It's an interesting spin on the method of motion capture because it uses body-mounted cameras instead of markers.

More info here: Motion Capture From Body-Mounted Cameras

Digital Acting Blog

Check out Mincho Marinov's Digital Acting blog. Some interesting articles and perspective from a mocap / performance capture point of view.

The Digital Acting Blog 


thanks Oz for the heads up!

New Oscar Rules 'Mocap Isn't Animation'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oscars open visual-effects prize to 5 nominees

(AP) – 21 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — The visual-effects category has gotten an upgrade at the next Academy Awards ceremony.
The board of governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences increased the number of nominees to five, up from three, at the 83rd awards show next Feb. 27.
The switch brings more awards attention to visual effects, which play a bigger role in Hollywood blockbusters as digital-animation technology continues to advance.
Since 1996, the visual-effects category has featured only three nominees, including last year's winner, the science-fiction blockbuster "Avatar."
The academy also announced Thursday some changes to the feature-animation category, including shortening the minimum running-time for animated contenders to greater than 40 minutes. That's down from the previous minimum of 70 minutes.
The change brings the animation rules in line with the minimum running times in other feature-film categories.
The new rules include language to clarify what constitutes an animated film, stating that "motion capture by itself is not an animation technique."
Motion-capture records performances by live actors wearing special suits covered with sensor dots that are read by digital cameras. The technology was used as the foundation for alien characters in "Avatar," the great ape in "King Kong" and the Gollum character in "The Lord of the Rings" films.