Studio 7 Opens Doors For Motion Capture Extravaganza
Skwigly takes a trip into the heart of Shoreditch to watch a very special motion capture shoot at Studio 7.
Last week, Studio 7, London’s newest and smallest motion capture studio opened it’s doors to the public, allowing volunteers to get suited up and take part in a mocap remake of one of the most famous music videos of all time.
The event was part of Digital Shoreditch, a week long festival celebrating the wealth of talent within the Shoreditch community. As part of the festivities, Studio 7’s director, Chris Richmond and his team had decided to remake the much renowned Michael Jackson classic, Thriller.
The volunteers from the streets were taught the rudimentary dance moves to a section of the song, then were kitted up in the black suits and filmed in Studio 7’s 10ft by 12ft motion capture arena. Once the footage had been filmed, it was to be passed on to Chris’ team of animators and CGI experts, who would turn the raw footage into an animated version of Thriller set in the local area.
It was clear from the outset that some of the volunteers had very little experience in doing anything like this, from dancing in front of an audience let alone a camera, to wearing a full-body motion capture suit. Luckily, help was on hand, as Studio 7 had enlisted the help of a local dance studio, City Academy, so that at least ten of the dancers would be semi-professional.
Two of the dancers, Aaliyah and Winnie, told Skwigly that they really enjoyed the experience. Aaliyah said she had done green screen before, but for the two of them the motion capture suits were a novelty. She added that the event “was quite fun, but the suits were really hot!”
Once the dancers movements had been recorded into the rig, it was then passed on to Libby, the CGI artist who would turn the templates into a selection of dancing zombies, werewolves and MJ himself.
During the shoot, Libby was in and out of the studio. She explained that she had been going “around taking photos of bits of Shoreditch, like the graveyard by church, but there wasn’t any graves, so we’ll have to make them. Then we’ll stick together all the photos in Photoshop, then model it in Maya.”
When Skwigly eventually caught up with her properly she went through the process she was going through to create the zombies from the mocap footage. The basic shapes were to be modelled in Autodesk’s Maya, using humans in a t-pose, then Libby would “zombiefy them with ripped clothing, rotting faces and crazy hair.” She added that “the whole process will be done in Maya, or at least the all the modelling will be. If we want a bit more detail, on the faces for instance, we will use [Autodesk’s] Mudbox, and I will add all the textures later in Photoshop.”
Chris Richmond, director of Studio 7 and its partner production company, Atticus Finch, told Skwigly how they had become involved in the project.
“We’re based in Shoreditch, so heard about the festival taking place this year and decided that because most people were doing open studios we wanted to utilise the facilities here as part of our open house. The motion capture seemed the most obvious thing. It seemed pretty fun for people to come of the street and get straight in a mocap suit.”
When we asked him why Michael Jackson’s Thriller? He explained that “We were trying to do something that would be easy and also Thriller is quite a famous dance sequence, so even if you’re not a professional dancer, you can still have a bit of fun with it.”
Although the motion capture footage was all done on the day, the dancers and volunteers will have to wait a couple of weeks to see the final results. All the participants will be invited back to view the final piece, and even if the final outcome doesn’t make them look the best, it seemed that everyone who took part enjoyed their mocap experience, and isn’t that what an event like Digital Shoreditch is all about?