I’m pretty sure that Andy Serkis has done for motion capturing what Citizen Kane did for deep focus. There’s no doubt that his performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films cemented motion capture as a viable option for an important role or performance. It’s even more exciting that he’s been bringing his skills to games (Enslaved is next) and is at least pasionate about how important real stories are in games.
Thus, it should come as very little surprise that the man has opened up the first motion capture studio in the UK in order to produce high quality performances for games and film. He’s founded The Imaginarium (no, not that educational toy store) in order to produce high quality motion capture performances and to share ideas and foster creativity.
We’ll have to see how well his work in Enslaved is to pass judgment on whether this is a good idea or not, but with the rapidly expanding role of mo-cap in gaming I think that the prominent public name in the field taking a leading role in working on games is a good thing.
Andy Serkis launches mo-cap studio for games and movies [TVGB]