Physical Props (Proposal Breakdpwn Part 2)

The second section of my proposal spoke of physical props although this will actually include all the things to think about when capturing the initial data. For example this quote from "Puppetology: Science or Cult?" by Brad deGraf and Emre Yilmaz in regards to the initial capture with non human characters in mind for the target link: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.11/3.11pages/degrafmotion.php3 "Ironically, it's often better to have less data than more -- we usually use only 12 body sensors. If you had one sensor for every single moving part of the body, you'd have a lot more information tying you to the human form, but for our purposes we just want enough sensors to convey the broad lines and arcs of the body."  Through my research I found a number of interesting contraptions that were used to modify human motion for use in motion capture.. They all looked a little dangerous though. This was used to help influence the movements of the Pleo the dinosaur toy: Pleo the Dinosaur for planet of the apes andy Serkis used stilt like extensions on his arms to help mimic apelike movement more effectively. Andy Serkis Giant Studios, which motion-captured live performers in choreographed fights to provide critical data for the animators of Reel Steel Reel Steel Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy films due to be released this year is played by vin Diesel who has been sighted getting used to the props that will help him with the extra height needed when performing. Acting Techniques Using acting techniques to manipulate the data during capture is a useful tactic and much safer for me to investigate than some of the contraptions mentioned. Andy Serkis again is a great example of this in both his role as Caesar in planet of the apes and also as Gollem in the lord of the rings and hobbit films. Andy Serkis Disney did some research into this technique but instead of taking the straight capture they took key poses form the source data and matched it to the equivalent pose for the target character. From Research paper by Yamane (2010) link: http://www.disneyresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/nonhumanoid_sca10.pdf Moving Forward I think the main focus will be the acting techniques rather than the props other than maybe basic ones to help with weighting, for example if the character is meant to have more weight on the arms I could get the actor to hold something to imitate the extra weight.