editors
JERRY BECK (LA)
AMID AMIDI (NY)
Luciano Pavarotti Mo-Cap
by amid
October 31, 2007 12:51 pm


Performance capture and opera: a match made in heaven. Quick, get Robert Zemeckis on the phone and have him follow up Beowulf with this:

(Thanks, Pete Emslie)

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jeannine schafer says:
10/31/07  12:56pm

yikes. why does he seem to be suspended by hooks from the ceiling?

 
Alex says:
10/31/07  1:16pm

Aw, stop picking on the guy. Although it is awesomely creepy how his eyes blink at different times.

 
Jason Geyer says:
10/31/07  1:25pm

I think they are just being true to life in representing his glowing alien friends that help him float high above the stage (just like he always did in his performances).

Bravo, Maestro!

 
Dav-Odd says:
10/31/07  1:28pm

Wheeee! The Christmas toy for every girl and boy!

 
tom says:
10/31/07  1:34pm

you gotta do that when he’s still fresh for maximum entertainment.

 
Mike says:
10/31/07  1:40pm

wow, creepy as hell.

Did anyone see what spielberg siad in regards to his upcoming adaptation of tin tin? Very insulting to animators…

 
KT says:
10/31/07  1:59pm

It’s made by the same guy who made those horrible animations of Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and “the duck Donald”!

He’s even using the same stock set of movements as Mickey in his first scene, only slowed down.

 
Nancy Beiman says:
10/31/07  2:00pm

The Dead can Sing.
But they are still Dead.

 
Alusa says:
10/31/07  2:02pm

Yes. Happy Halloween indeed.

 
Nancy Beiman says:
10/31/07  2:02pm

I kind of like how they have two ’suns’ shining on stage for O SOLE MIO, and how he can sing without moving his lips. The first Ventriloquist Opera Singer!

 
David Nethery says:
10/31/07  2:04pm

A ghoulish Halloween trick for sure .

Ohhhhh , very scary , kids ! Luciano Pavorotti in the “3D House of Opera Mo-Cap Zombies” tonight on Monster Chiller Horror Theater.

 
Lucy says:
10/31/07  2:31pm

Wowww….. That’s one of the scariest things I’ve seen this Halloween! It’s like Frankenstein’s night at the opera XDD

 
Michael DiMilo says:
10/31/07  2:32pm

That has to be the creepiest thing I’ve seen this Halloween.

 
Jay says:
10/31/07  2:33pm

Thanks for the Halloween treat, Amid! It gave me the creeps!

 
Sean says:
10/31/07  3:10pm

Mike, please provide a link to the insulting comments by Spielberg that you mentioned. Thanks!

 
Jon says:
10/31/07  3:25pm

That looks better than anything Zemeckis has done with animation, ESPECIALLY the ugly Beowulf and Roger Rabbit.

 
Mike Russo says:
10/31/07  3:55pm

Mo-cap needs to go away. Seriously.

 
Shaw says:
10/31/07  4:37pm

He’s moving more like Keith Richards than Pavarotti (either that or he’s dealing with a serious case of hemroids) – QUICK – someone motion capture a tube of preparation h!

 
Albert says:
10/31/07  5:24pm

Jon- I’m no fan of Beowulf, but what, exactly, was wrong with Roger Rabbit?

 
Geordie M says:
10/31/07  5:42pm

Yeah… sorry. Mocap isn’t going anywhere. Sorry Mike. It’s only going to get better and better. Until you don’t know when you’re seeing it. But it will never replace cartoon style animation.

It’s by the same guy who is featured under this post:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/worst-mocap-ever

 
Mr. P says:
10/31/07  5:47pm

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE!!! (but this isn’t it…..)

 
mick says:
10/31/07  6:03pm

i think that motion capture can work… take Sister act for instance. This however is clearly an elaborate rouse to garner cruel comments while the author of the work sits at home in his under pants and ping pong balls taking the metaphorical punches and filming himself later to release the product on the under ground Parisian dada scene. It’s actually a very clever idea

 
red pill junkie says:
10/31/07  7:12pm

“BRAAAAAAINS!”

(but sung on a High C)

 
Jay says:
10/31/07  8:54pm

Jon — I’m with Albert. I’m struggling to figure out what was ‘ugly’ about the Richard Williams animation in Roger Rabbit.

 
Asymetrical says:
10/31/07  9:48pm

Now THAT’S the worst. Mocap. ever.

 
Joe Campana says:
10/31/07  10:04pm

What the hell was that??? Who ever did the mo-cap did it by way of a marionette or something. Eeeek! I’ll never get that minute-and-a-half back!

 
tom says:
10/31/07  10:29pm

Yeah, the Roger Rabbit stuff isn’t mocapped! RR was wonderfully animated.

Beowulf looks like the ugliest thing to be released this year, denying Shrek’s slam dunk in that category. The animated Jolie nudity just makes me sad.

 
Zany says:
11/1/07  12:09am

This is too funny!! I got a good belly laugh from this.

 
 
Andrew says:
11/1/07  8:38am

I got the url in that last comment wrong for iClone – it’s actually at http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/ – but still horrible.

 
Mike says:
11/1/07  8:57am

here is the quote from Senor Spielbergo (on a 3-D mocap remake of Tin Tin):

“Herge’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we’ve seen to date with computer animated characters”

and here is the article i sourced it from:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117964927.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

 
Mike says:
11/1/07  9:02am

Anyway, I think it is insulting to computer animators to suggest that by using mocap that they will finally be able to capture soul in characters which if otherwise left to the animator has been lost, to date. How about all the great Pixar films?

I guess that having a computer program interpret the movements of ping pong balls glued to a jumpsuit is a much better window to the soul than the deliberate created movements of an artist. What was I thinking?

 
Jessica Plummer says:
11/1/07  10:41am

The only mo-cap characters I’ve ever seen with “soul” were those portrayed by Andy Serkis…but he also had a great team of *ahem* ARTISTS working afterwards to put more life into Gollum and Kong. Everything else has just looked creepy, no matter how great it’s rendered out. I’m terrified to go anywhere near The Polar Express, and I was so disappointed with the Beowulf trailer. Oh Spielberg…and you were so high on my awesome list too…

 
Jon says:
11/1/07  11:04am

Roger Rabbit was a terrible movie, with ugly animation. The story doesn’t make sense, and it’s just painful to watch.

 
Kitschensyngk says:
11/1/07  12:00pm

He’s rhythmically blinking. His eyelids are like a metronome.

Oh jeez, look at those iClone pictures. Their eyes…so dead…so very dead…

 
Shmalex says:
11/1/07  12:24pm

Why are hand drawn animators so threatened by motion capture?! Happy Feet was quite good. Both can live side by side.

 
Chuck R. says:
11/1/07  1:14pm

Animation fans are easily creeped out. I wouldn’t call this scary —as long as it stays in someone else’s portfolio.

And yes, Jessica. It seems mocap only works if Andy Serkis is involved. He must have been born with ping pong balls on all his joints.

 
Geordie M says:
11/1/07  1:53pm

Amid just likes to piss off Flash animators, modelers, riggers, fx artists, performance capture techs, sony pictures imageworks, ImageMovers Digital, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Weta, ILM…. wait … basically anyone who isn’t working at Pixar.

 
Bobby D. says:
11/1/07  2:45pm

Uh, Jon…please go away,or back to school, or study the art form… because, you’re making animators look really bad.

 
red pill junkie says:
11/1/07  4:16pm

P-p-p-p-p-lease Jon, don’t be so hard on Roger Rabbit!! :-)

 
Dave Silva says:
11/1/07  5:46pm

OH GOD NOT THAT GUY AGAIN!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ^ @!#@#

 
Mike says:
11/1/07  7:47pm

I think Andy Serkis is way overrated. There definitely were a team of people who had to go in and play fix it for a computer program. The thing is whenever they do a behind the scenes, or a promo thing on tv about it they give the impression that it is a magical computer program that does the work for them, when in reality, from what I have heard from industry people, mocap takes just as many “animators” just as much time to fix the mocap data as it would to animate it from scratch.

I don’t think it is 2D people who are threatened by mocap, I think it is animators.

Look, mocap has it’s uses, but it seems like everyone who is a mocap person thinks that everything should be done mocap… animated projects, live action movies… hell, at my job the mocap guys asked for files of our flash drawn characters in some sad attempt to show how they could do it better with mocap.

Here is the thing. I think that it is a very nice technology that has uses, but the general public (and studio execs) are getting a very schewed concept of what it can actually do, which is block out choppy movement which needs much polishing by 3D technicians to be ready to show anyone.

In fact, I challenge these guys like Peter Jackson or Steven Spielberg (with his comments) to just use raw mocap data if it is so great. Let the software stand on it’s own.

It is a creative argument. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should. I don’t know what Tin Tin will finally look like, but I can tell you that something generated by a computer’s interpretation of movements will never have the soul of a piece of art created by an artists hand… or mouse… or stylus… or whatever tool.

 
dan says:
11/1/07  9:31pm

This is not cgi but the work from a shit product called iClone. Idiots use it to make machinima.

 
Rat says:
11/2/07  12:13pm

1)Someone did shitty animation using mocap.
2)Therefore mocap sucks.

Got it.

 
Mike says:
11/2/07  3:11pm

mocap is roto for 3D

 
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