Motion Capture as Storytelling facilitator - Final Task

Brief description and history of Motion Capture

As with all new technologies that are created out of a particular need, MoCap has found many ways to affect storytelling among other things. 

In brief, Motion capture evolved to a very precise way of recording the movements of actors in a three dimensional space regardless of how they look, and with accurate physics. This translated into a wide range of fields where the information could be used. It is currently used in areas such as Film and Television, Game Design, Medicine, Sports, Research, Military, and Robotics.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Blu-ray/8852/

In the film industry, Motion Capture replaced another technique called Rotoscope where actors were filmed and later animation was redrawn on top, following the same movements. This created more life like movement for characters. This technique was used, for example, in 1978's Lord of the Rings. In that particular case, it helped all characters, be it humans, dwarves, elves, or orcs to have consistent movements. This sparkled the idea that by having an unidentified actor producing the movements, you could have any character or object following it's movement. With Today's MoCap technology we are able to do just that.

As the technology was developing, in 2001, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within became the first full length movie to have been produced using Motion Capture. It was a whole world and characters fully created in the computer. After that, the film industry kept developing the technology as they attempted to recreate life like movements into more and more realistic environments.

Before, it would have been very difficult producing the movement of creatures that don't exist and make them believable. So was the case of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers where the first real time Motion Capture was used to record the movements of the actor to be translated into the screen as the fully computer generated character of Gollum. It would have been near impossible finding someone that looked like the tormented creature to play the part, but by using the technology, they were able to blend the CG and real life footage into a realistic form.

http://www.myjive.com/animation-led-motion-capture

There have been countless movies and now also games that have been produced using Motion Capture. In a way using the technology helps reduce the animation time almost to zero. Yes, there has to be some cleanup of the files and the models need to be paired properly for the avatars to function properly and move according to the actor's movements. But instead of having to manually animate and process every single bone in a character's structure, taking a lot of time in the process, by just preparing the files and models correctly, all of this can be done automatically.

On to a more particular matter: Our own experience using Motion Capture to facilitate OUR storytelling.

How is it now, that a small group of students with very little experience animating, can get access to a MoCap studio? Here is our experience using the technology to help create a small story we developed for a game called House of Cats. We made this during the Mediapolis Game Jam.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikaelpeltomaa/23200134006/

As a Team, we developed a story where the player (a boy inside the game) had trespassed into the Crazy Cat Lady's house. He had to navigate through a house with lots of rooms full of cats and find the way out. The worst part was, the Crazy Cat Lady was though to have killed other trespassing kids before, so the aim was to not wake up the woman and leave the house alive.

We made our game and we used the technology available to us. We went to the Motion Capture studio and recorded the movements that our characters would make. We had 3 characters, The boy, the woman, and the ghost of another kid. For each character we had a series of movements planned that we would need. 

Here is me, ready to do the angry crazy cat lady's moves.

For example the boy would need to walk carefully through the room (movement one), he would topple things accidentally (move 2), he would accidentally step on a cat (movement 3), also when the inevitable waking of the woman occurred, there would have to be a move cowering from her (movement 4). The ghost basically would just move around randomly (my movement however, looked like a weird drunk dancer of some sort, I thought the legs wouldn't matter in the end). And the woman, well, she would come at you to kill you.

The video above shows one of the captures I acted of the boy walking carefully around the room and toppling an item from over a table. As you see, the translation of movement is great and it took literally seconds to create. This can then be used for any character after being linked. I, however, haven't gotten that far yet on my MoCap course, so I won't be able to make all the nifty mini-videos I wanted to make.

As with any newbie using something, of course things went wrong and our animation didn't end up looking perfectly like our motion captures. Mostly because of how the 3d model was made, but in the end I think it worked just fine for our purposes, which was to create a scary looking move, so the glitches (and our ignorance of how to properly work with the files) worked in our favor in making the woman look more demon-like than anticipated.

The video above shows the Game Over mini animation of the crazy cat lady attacking the player, along with our player (using a Virtual Reality headset) watching it happen. By the end of the 48 hours we had to create a game, we changed our concept and play mechanics so much that things were a bit off everywhere.

In our particular case, MoCap technology helped us speed things up by prerecording very quickly our movements instead of spending countless hours trying to make the characters move. As time was of the essence for us in that project, using these "simplifying" technologies is what got us through the line.

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There is another project that I am currently working on which involves Motion Capture. It's a short story of a business man and a shoe shiner. We already went to the studio, acted and recorded the movements. This experience showed other advantages to this technology.

For example, after running around and acting, you can immediately watch what you captured and see how everything looks like. You can get the full sense of the scene and correct little mistakes if needed. By watching what you recorded, you can see if there are flaws that need to be fixed before we even get into the developing of the characters. 

For example, we noticed that one of the actors was moving very lightly and made it seem like he was barely affected by what happened. Our project is going to be a "mute" story, so expression is crucial for the transmission of emotions. This gave us the chance to go back and reenact the story with better results. Take two and we are ready.

Since in the screen all you can see is a thin gray avatar with no features, it's very easy to see how the body moves with no extra distractions. I even have to say that the physical appearance of the actor doesn't matter, so if I'm still carrying 5 extra kilos from after the pregnancy, they don't show on the screen at all! (self esteem +1)

Tip toeing around the mad cat house.

All in all I believe this new technology has been able to produce some incredible results and I'm pretty sure that storytellers of old would have loved to see what human ingenuity has been able to produce. To show worlds as we see them in our heads so others can see them too. To experience what others experience as if we were there. Storytelling has evolved since the first person that sat down and told a story. Where will we go next?

Sources:

http://areena.yle.fi/1-3159473

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikaelpeltomaa/albums/72157660723845149

http://www.firstshowing.net/2014/whoa-dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-mocap-comparison-video/

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/02/23/motion-capturing-an-oscar/
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2014/04/10/20-unforgettable-moments-from-ralph-bakshis-the-lord-of-the-rings/

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MotionCapture

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-motion-capture-in-dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-is-1580043101

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_capture

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And to finish, on a side note about quickly presenting ideas, we were so proud of ourselves! We managed to write and say our pitch in less than 30 seconds! I think that on the actual pitch (not on the practice run among ourselves) I managed to do it in less than 16. And watching the video made me realize why people have trouble understanding me when I talk fast...

Our pitch when we were only 3 first year students with no game designing experience. (Two codes joined us afterwards :D)