The Slowest Week (4)

"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

- Fannie Lou Hamer

It's frustrating to want to do something but not have the ability to do it. This past week was entirely consumed by school work and robotics, followed by a weekend of traveling to upstate New York for a cousin's bar mitzvah, and all the while being sick. The sad thing is, I was unable to get anything done in terms of moving forward in the fine tuning of my skills in Cinema 4D. That's right...nothing.

I am not one to merely lie around and stay put like a caged animal. That's not the type of person I am. So while I didn't have the ability or the focus (a.k.a blowing my nose ever 10 seconds) to sit down and diligently work on generating more graphics in C4D, I was able to conduct some more research in between my times of celebration and illness, learning more about MoCap's interesting history.

Real talk for a second. MoCap is freaking amazeballs. I'm talking finding-money-you-didn't-know-you-had, eating-the-last-crumbs-in-the-chip-bag amazeballs. You know what I mean...

That being said, you can't expect something that incredible to have just appeared out of nowhere without having evolved and gone through some complications first.

History lesson! Motion Capture Animation is a relatively new art, only coming around in recent decades. The 1970s was when motion capturing techniques were beginning to be utilized. Rotoscoping was an original technique, which transferred an image from live action film into another film sequence using a rotoscope (shown below). Rebecca Allen, from the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, was one to take advantage of this animation tactic. Using a half-silvered mirror, she was able to superimpose clips of real living dancers onto the computer screen to pose a computer generated dancer. Allen's work was PAINSTAKINGLY HAND DRAWN, and later incorporated into Twyla Tharp's The Catherine Wheel.

As time went on, numerous other methods were developed, making Motion Capture Animation more complex yet more efficient, as well as better looking. In the earlier years of the 1980s, potentiometers were being used in biomechanical labs to analyze human motion. Tom Calvert, professor of kinesiology and computer science at Simon Fraser University, acquired these potentiometers and attached them to a human figure (the ratchet setup is shown below), using said human to drive computer animated figures.

Following potentiometers was the use of Graphical Marionettes at MIT in 1982-83, which relied on optical motion capture systems (or Op-Eye) and used sequenced LEDs attached to a wired body suit. Then came Mike the Talking Head, developed in 1988 by deGraf/Wahram using their state-of-the-art software Silicon Graphics, whose face could be controlled and manipulated by a single "puppeteer." Interesting (albeit slightly terrifying) images are included below.

Doesn't this remind you of the dental headset in the most recent Willy Wonka movie??

A quick development in the field led Kleiser-Walczak to produce Dozo, a singing and dancing woman, in 1989. They used a basic style which is still used to this day. Multiple cameras were used to triangulate the images of small pieces of reflective tape placed on a body, resulting in the output of a 3-dimensional trajectory of each reflector in space. Again, the intriguing but kind of freaky video in placed below.

As of right now, that's all I've got for you. There is obviously much more to MoCap in recent years, but we will get to that at another time. Thank you for listening to my history lesson; I tried to make it as brief as possible. Please, feel free to place comments or suggestions in the responses below. Have a great day!

(PS: I am continuously reaching out to Greyscalegorilla, being pointed in all sorts of directions by different people as to which person would be best to take up my interview. I hope to get that to you ASAP!!!!!)