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Who Invented Motion Capture?
by amid
November 29, 2007 8:01 am


San Francisco commercial director Carl Willat has the shocking and hilarious answer.

(Thanks, Karl Cohen)

11/29/07  8:54am
tom says:

Wow! That brought back some ancient, dead memories for me. Ha ha! I had nightmares as a kid after seeing that sequence for some reason. Coincidentally, I had nightmares about Beowulf too- bad dreams about piles of money burning in the middle of a sewer.

11/29/07  9:30am
Stephan says:

At some point I feel facinated looking at this. But on the other hand… thinking of Beowulf and this so called “new rage”… *sigh*

11/29/07  9:33am
Thomas says:

Great! Now we can fire all those pesky artists!

11/29/07  9:44am
uffler mustek says:

curly joe sucks.

11/29/07  10:39am
Ted Maxwell says:

So scientific genius Emil Sitka was the culprit who invented Mo Cap. The ‘electronic cartoon’ footage was rotoscoped and hand-inked, but the concept is identical. If Max Fleischer saw this, it probably led to his stroke.

11/29/07  10:51am
Sean Dicken says:

Great work, Carl! Brilliant! Sums up my thoughts on the matter too.

11/29/07  11:02am

I talked about this film back in January on my blog. The film The Three Stooges In Orbit had a lasting effect on my memory. Of course, rotoscoping involves real hand-drawn animation whereas MoCap does not.

11/29/07  11:24am
Paul N says:

Yeah, electronics are evil and bringing about the destruction of traditional animation. So I guess you guys are stockpiling cel paint and mag track, right?

11/29/07  11:32am
Steve Gattuso says:

Paul: They’re all major stockholders at Eberhardt-Faber. ;-)

While I wouldn’t be shocked that the inventors of mo-cap may have seen this movie in their childhood, most of them have stated that the main inspiration for the concept was the holodeck of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Goddamned Trekkies…

11/29/07  12:08pm
RODAN says:

Thank you! That explains so much I had suspected! Brilliant detective work!

11/29/07  12:14pm

Yes, of course it’s rotoscoped for production, but in the film’s story line it works automatically, more like motion capture.

11/29/07  12:35pm
Al says:

I thought it was created by a team of super intelligent monkeys. NOW I find out.

11/29/07  1:37pm
Ben says:

This isn’t too far off from the truth, yeah?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVUfV0oNKqc

A few steps above Sychro-Vox, you have to admit.

11/29/07  1:50pm

Weren’t they trying to make films like that with Friz Freleng’s involvement? Or am I thinking of something else?

11/29/07  2:19pm
Nancy B says:

That’s hysterical. And how timely!

11/29/07  2:56pm

AL: Superintelligent? Nah. Meany, Miny and Moe are only about average as these things go.

11/29/07  6:08pm
Pedro Nakama says:

Time to smash a bird cage over that guy’s head! “Hold hands you Love Birds.”

11/29/07  7:34pm
Toby OB says:

Pedro, that’s the line I always think of whenever I see or think of Emil Sitka! I can’t explain exactly why it cracks me up but I think most of the credit has to go to Sitka’s delivery.

11/29/07  11:09pm
Peter says:

I like this quote:
“No artist ever touched this. The entire thing was drawn by a machine!”
Sounds like a Zemekis wet dream.

11/29/07  11:33pm

Is calling it MOE-cap just stating the obvious?

11/29/07  11:36pm
GeeVee says:

I have to give the 3 Stooges some renewed respect for their prophetic vision. I love the way the studio guys (the REAL stooges?) are drooling lustfully over their machine of financial salvation. Cigars for the room!

11/30/07  10:09am
Chris Sobieniak says:

> Peter says:
>
> I like this quote:
“No artist ever touched this. The entire thing was drawn by a machine!�
Sounds like a Zemekis wet dream.

Funny how things just come back to haunt you! This little joke reminded me of something I saw once on a public access show where a guy showed what he considers the very first rap song ever made, and it was a scene from a Three Stooges short where the guys did a little poem-like tune to advertise their fruit stand biz, but it was so amusing!

11/30/07  10:23am
Stephen Z. says:

The southern financial backer wears a string bow tie. Wealthy people from the south always have the correct neckwear.

11/30/07  10:48am
alexander says:

I like how normally in a Hollywood film the guy with the invention would be an attractive, love interest character with dignity and a dead center kind of personality and in these clips he just appears like a ridiculous guy with an idea no one making the film has any meaningful sympathy for. He’s just another clown.

12/1/07  9:41pm
David says:

Once again Moe was a man thirty years ahead of his time. First, he invented the famous hairstyle with which The Beatles would later change the world, and then he created Moe-cap. Everything I needed to learn in life I learned from Moe.

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