Avatar: Motion Capture Mirrors Emotions

The Animation Storyboard

The animation storyboard is the first sight of what a cartoon or piece of animation is going to look like. The animation storyboard looks like a series of strip comics, with individual drawings of storylines, scenes, characters and their emotions and other major parts of the movie. The drawings will reflect the early ideas of what characters will look like, what the backgrounds and scenery will be some idea of dialogue, emotions ,and a general feel of the animation process.

 

Storyboards are very important, as they form the basis of the work that is carried out on the movie, describing most of the major features as well as the plot and its development.

Animation storyboards are also the coordinating vehicle of the film, taking the place of the script, and allowing different teams of people to work on different aspects and scenes in the movie. A studio like Pixar will have thousands of storyboard frames like the one shown here. 

The finished movie may not always conform to all aspects of the storyboard, but they will document many of the early developments in the movie. They are often the first step of the animation process, as they show the first views - albeit static - of the animation process. 

Source : Internet

Motion Capture Technology

Motion capture technology is a good example of how digital techniques are being applied to the movie (and related) industries to allow more convincing visualizations of imaginary or composite images. For motion capture you use human actors who are dressed in a leotard with integral reflective or magnetic markers. The actor performs the actions that are required, and the digital cameras - or array of cameras - capture the motion of the reflective markers.

Computer Processing with Human Intervention

You subject the data to a computer process that converts this motion into a composite figure. You then modify this composite figure by normal computer animation software.

The end product gives the effect of an animated character acting directly with human actors. Gollum, in the Lord of the Rings, was shot in this fashion, giving an absolutely life-like image of a composite character. That guy on the left here? That would be Gollum, or at least the movements of Gollum.

Motion capturing techniques are very effective, but the computer processing needs much human intervention, and if there is any error in the data, you can find it more effective to re-shoot the whole scene rather than correct the data. However, motion capture technology is so much more effective and realistic than traditional techniques, and ultimately less time consuming, that its future looks assured in movies and in video games.

Source : Internet