A Clown for a Day

A Motion Capture Session

I captured a number of motion sequences for my Ph.D. thesis research at Adaptive Optics Associates motion studio in Boston. As the photos clearly demonstrate I was a clown for a day, though I did get a number of high quality motion sequences for my motion transformation algorithms.

Ah, the things you wouldn't do for your thesis.

Back View.
Apparently, I'm not quite built in a mold of a ballerina so the lycra suit did not have a chance of closing. For the same reason I needed a marker on my neck.

Front View.
I ended up having a total of 27 markers on my body. Markers on my feet were velcro-ed and then taped, yet they often fell off while I bounced around.

Side View.
The wrist markers were doing fine until I started doing ball-throwing sequences, at which point they seemed to follow the ball rather than stay attached.

Later on at University of Washington, I taught an undergraduate computer graphics course. A few of my students came across this web page and decided to base their final animation project on a character that looked ominously familiar:

Zoran The Magician by Michael Becke and Robert Carr
Zoran goes Deep by Ryan Surgell and Jing Su

Not to be outdone, Brett Allen created the Mocap Man cartoon from a regular image for the non-photorealistic rendering project in my graduate graphics course.

Last Modified: May 19, 2004 by

	Back View. Apparently, I'm not quite built in a mold of a ballerina so the lycra suit did not have a chance of closing. For the same reason I needed a marker on my neck.
	Front View. I ended up having a total of 27 markers on my body. Markers on my feet were velcro-ed and then taped, yet they often fell off while I bounced around.
	Side View. The wrist markers were doing fine until I started doing ball-throwing sequences, at which point they seemed to follow the ball rather than stay attached.