What Reallusion products do you use in your production pipeline? iClone and CC4. How did you get involved with Reallusion?

I was an early adopter of Perception Neuron and participated in their Kickstarter. We posted a video in which we put their suit on an actor who was simultaneously performing in an optical mocap volume.  The results of the comparison were surprisingly good and inspired Reallusion to reach out to work with me on a video for iClone.  They gave us a budget to make a short and then speak to our experiences on the project in a video. 

We created a scene from a pet project of mine called Nasa Seals and it was our first exposure to iClone.  I remember that I kept expecting it to be as complicated as Maya and it just wasn’t.  I would call John Martin at Reallusion and ask newbie questions like “How do we import a character?” and the answer was always something as easy as “drag and drop”.   I had to release a lot of my expectations about all animation programs being overly complicated.  

You stated you liked to work with actors in mocap performances and how you enjoyed the workflow. How much has your mocap process evolved since then with iClone and other tools?

My personal roots go all the way back to Foundation Imaging in the mid-90s where we produced 35 half-hour episodes of Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles.  This was one of the first computer-animated kids action shows and for the first few episodes, we created armies with a magnetic suit in an eight-foot diameter volume.  Mocap was part of the curriculum at the school my wife Anne and I started at Universal Orlando.   Our animation studio (Monkey Chow Productions) also relies heavily on mocap.  Until recently, that meant I would book time at a studio (usually an educational institution) and shoot there.  We would take the first pass data (and the cleanup that entails) and make the best of it.

The greatest evolution came nearly two years ago when we realized we could do better work by having the resources to shoot motion capture in-house and clean data within Shogun.  We made a substantial investment in Vicon cameras and created a sub-brand called Motion Capture Orlando.  Upon hearing this news John Martin again reached out to gauge our interest in creating motion packs for iClone and Actor Core.  We were thrilled. 

Now we are also doing work for both Disney and Universal’s local theme park development teams and they push us to do new things nobody has tried before. We have a shoot next month and are using iClone and Motion Live (for face) to show real-time characters during the shoot.  The process is constantly evolving and Reallusion tools are a big part of it. 

A lot of new animators have a tight budget. What do you feel are the essential Reallusion tools to get started in the basics of animation?

As you work through any project you will have problems, and as we got deeper and deeper into iClone we often found that there was a tool for whatever that problem was.  Getting started is easy, you load a character and drop a motion clip on it and you are making movies!  Then you have a scene where a character has to grab a railing and you find out about reach targets.   You want specific hand gestures and there is a great library for that.  Do you need your character to blink or talk? There are tools for that too.  The tools are all easy to use and explained very well in short tutorials published by Reallusion.   That may not sound like a big deal, but it is. I’ve had to weed through hours of video to get an easy answer to a question about other programs.  Reallusion excels at this.  

What was it like to produce Run for Your Life? Was it a difficult project being so physical or was it about the same as other projects?

It definitely was more difficult than most, especially for the performers.  Whenever you are involved in stunts you have to be obsessed with safety.  We worked with Joop Katana, a local stunt director who works on TV, and movies, and because we are in Orlando, he directs stunts on a lot of theme park shows.  We had to bring in scaffolding, fall pads, and build custom platforms that represented existing CGI car tops.  There was design, planning, and rehearsal before they suited up.  

But it was also a lot more fun than other projects.  We shot and delivered way more footage than was required because everyone had good ideas to contribute. I thought some of the moves would be much smaller till I found out what Joop’s team could do.  We got a ton of wild action, and nobody got hurt. 

The best part for me is making the demo video.  I really like using our captures to stage the example scene that Reallusion uses for marketing.  It’s fun to have control over building an action sequence and I loved the lobster monster our team came up with on Run For Your Life.  In doing these videos we get to have the same experience we hope iClone users will enjoy.  Right now, we are doing our next pack about a bank robbery.  As the situation explodes into a shoot-out with police, there will be Actorcore background crowds running for their lives using these same motion clips.

"The more content you create, the more experiences you have telling stories visually." 

A lot of inexperienced animators think buying a mocap solution such as a suit will be the answer to all their animation needs. While mocap suits can produce quality output can you explain how important it is to be a superb actor or maybe in particular, a very physical actor and how posture, walks, runs, and other seemly simple, everyday motions are not so simple to capture in a general sense?

At best, the clips are only as good as the people in the suits.  We are fortunate to be in Orlando because the parks draw a lot of very talented people in stunts, dance, mime, drama, comedy, pretty much anything. We are a mile from a circus school.  A few years ago, we needed Irish Folk Dancers and easily found them at a Pub at Disney Springs.  With rare exceptions, I never put on the suit because I know I’m not going to provide as good a performance as so many of the talented people around me. 

How do you feel about how iClone has evolved since you’ve been using it?

I love how there are new tools being introduced all the time.  Through working with the Reallusion leadership, I am constantly amazed by what’s coming soon, but then I’m equally amazed at what’s been there for years that I was not aware of.  One of iClone’s greatest evolutions is its commitment to opening up iClone to wider pipelines.  Going through 3DExchange was a rough and complicated process.  Now you can import and export to other programs easily. 

Our pipeline changes with each project because different clients use different tools.  If I’m working with a client’s team and they use Maya, I deliver Maya.  But I’m at the point now where I don’t hesitate to use iClone’s animation editing tools and then export it to Maya, Unreal, or whatever is required.   

You opened an animation school at Universal Orlando. That must have been quite an experience. Can you tell us a bit about that?

My wife and I started The DAVE School (DAVE = Digital Animation and Visual Effects) at Universal Orlando in 2000.  It was an amazing experience and many of the graduates have had enviable Hollywood careers that go way beyond anything I was able to do before opening the school or since.  Some are now Show Runners, Game Designers, Producers, Senior Artists, and experts in their field.  It’s not why we started school, but it’s been great to see all the couples who met there and become families.

The best part of the program was having each class make a unique animated or VFX-heavy short film.  These were not student films; they were directed by me or other instructors and the class worked as the crew.  Rather than offering a canned educational exercise, it created real production problems that had to be solved.  I think there was a LOT of value in giving them that experience with qualified creative direction. 

After a great ten-year run, I had become a skilled executive in the education sector, but part of me really wanted to get back to making content.  We sold the school and worked through a healthy transition. Then we started Monkey Chow and eventually added Motion Capture Orlando.  I’m glad to see that the school still consistently places graduates at awesome companies well above their accreditor’s requirements. 

If you could give aspiring animators and filmmakers advice on preparing for and getting into the industry what would that be?

Make Stuff.

I keep hearing that on every podcast with successful filmmakers and animators because it’s true.  I took advantage of the desktop animation revolution with Lightwave on the Video Toaster.  It got me my job on Babylon 5 and Star Trek Voyager.  Now you can shoot feature films on an iPhone or animate in iClone.  I have ideas for a lot of animations I want to make but rarely get past the VERY long process of designing the character, sculpting the character, and topologized the character… but since we have been using iClone I have gotten to try ideas by editing a character in Character Creator (in minutes not weeks) and then jumping right into the animation and rending in Realtime.  The more content you create, the more experiences you have telling stories visually.  You may need to learn additional tools to work professionally but making lots of content (in any artistic medium) is how you grow artistically.