Who Invented Motion Capture?

By
on

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

(Thanks, Karl Cohen)

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  • http://www.autodaddy.blogspot.com tom

    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.

  • http://stephansolarchive.blogspot.com Stephan

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

  • Thomas

    Great! Now we can fire all those pesky artists!

  • uffler mustek

    curly joe sucks.

  • Ted Maxwell

    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.

  • Sean Dicken

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

  • http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/ Michael Sporn

    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.

  • Paul N

    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?

  • Steve Gattuso

    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…

  • http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=20670536 RODAN

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

  • http://carlsfinefilms.com Carl Willat

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

  • Al

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

  • Ben

    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.

  • http://www.davemackey.com Dave Mackey

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

  • Nancy B

    That’s hysterical. And how timely!

  • http://www.cartoonresearch.com/gerstein David Gerstein

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

  • Pedro Nakama

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

  • http://toobworld.blogspot.com/ Toby OB

    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.

  • Peter

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

  • http://mytwoyenworth.blogspot.com/ Michael Jones

    Is calling it MOE-cap just stating the obvious?

  • http://geritopia.blogspot.com GeeVee

    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!

  • Chris Sobieniak

    > 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!

  • Stephen Z.

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

  • http://cinemahustle.blogspot.com alexander

    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.

  • David

    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.