Name: Norm Motion Capture
Uploaded: 2022-02-03T06:00:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Motion Capture' from TickleMeNorm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Motion Capture' from TickleMeNorm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-03. Transcript available.

No, no, no, it's good. We're just doing a sound check.
Oh, we're just doing a sound check?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait, are we acting now?
Or we're actually just speaking now?
Well, yeah, I mean, that's what you're speaking, I'm speaking.
We're not acting.
I got confused.
You know, obviously we're pretty excited to do this because it's rare that
House of Moves kind of goes out and does anything that is our own.
I'm doing mocap for the House of Blues.
That's actually House of Moves.
Huh? Whatever.
With House of Moves changing and becoming an animation house, Norm, in his subtleties,
I just felt was a great actor to play this character for us.
They'd say, you need somebody to jump off a building, I'd be the guy to go to.
When you start dealing with full body and face and synchronized audio, and it
becomes about the very subtle movements in the body,
like the lean or the push forward or the push back that comes out in the voice.
I'm a big, tough guy. I like doing things.
The way that his subtlety came through the character using our technology was
just very cool.
I act. I'm the actor.
We've put a lot of effort and energy into this room.
We're surrounded by 200 Vicon T160 cameras.
We've tried to create a very comfortable room for people to bring a project to
life.
When they really want to focus on the characters and focus on the mood and the
feel.
The stage two, it's just a little bit more intimate.
The room itself, it's a sound controlled room, so we're capturing audio.
Scene six, take six. Roll sound.
Motion capture, time synchronized video, all at the same time, face, body,
hands.
This room, we really focus on the performance, letting the actors act, letting
them drive the character with their bodies.
And then it becomes our job to make sure that that gets transferred, moved, and
animated back to the character in the most believable way possible.
It worked!
It's just kind of about breathing life into inanimate objects. We kind of dig
that part.
How many? I love when that happens.
So yes, we have done mocap, but the intriguing part is watching Eric Lachelle
and watching the animators really like take Norm,
take Norm's bass performance, and then have a CG character who obviously is
just over the top and really giving him life and really say,
well, this is funny, but this is even funnier.
With Norm, I think we're keeping the majority of his acting because that's who
we liked and we liked what he did and he's very funny.
We'll adjust head nods, hand poses, and some of the timing in giving a little
bit more life to the character.
Because he's such a big guy to compare to Norm.
I think a lot of people think that once you capture the motion, it's done, but
there's a lot that goes into just the retargeting,
making sure posture is okay, because you're trying to match bones and muscle
that slide and move around to these very rigid quasi-skeletons.
And the models typically aren't one-to-one.
We are looking for good silhouettes, good animation, taking out penetration,
adding action, adding overlap, making sure the foot contacts are nice.
And we clean up eyeline.
We're taking the ultra-real and adding just a little bit of style to it.
You're a piece of work.
You know, make it look nice.
Damn right.
Good money in it, I heard, on the TV.
House of Moves is an animation studio.
I want to discuss the feel of a character.
You know, does it feel right to you?
It's trying to live in that subtle layer in between pure mo-cap and pure keyframe
to make sure that we mix it just correctly to get just this beautiful little
character that we can share with people is, you know, that's, we kind of, we
kind of get juiced about that stuff.
It's pretty exciting.
Here comes the pain.
I am the pain bringer.
That's where I got the nickname.
I bring pain.
Take that, you Nazi bastards.
Ah, I'm here and I'm your nightmare that's not good.
I got a cramp.
Cramp.
No, no, no.
Can't we start again?
You can start again.
This is frightening me.