Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Summary

This paper focuses on a theoretical and practical framework for transmedia character analysis, concerning the fields of animation, computer games and interactive installations, with the help of motion capture technology. It presents the research, development and the obtaining first results of a non-human character rigging in the context of the transmedia work “MONOLOVE”.

Extended Abstract

This paper focuses on a transmedia character analysis with motion capture technology from both a theoretical and practical point of view. The characters analyzed here are non-human characters based on the transmedia project called “MONOLOVE”, applying a case study of rigging non-human characters in order to determine the character's range of motion and record its actions, gestures and movement.

Characters are an important part of current entertainment media culture. This ubiquity of characters also leads to a strong need for this article to offer a proposal for thinking about characters and their relationships in different digital media in such a way that it can provide us with satisfactory results. A greater challenge is the study and application of non-human characters since an attempt is made to animate them via human gestures and adapt the protagonists-characters and their various forms into the transmedia work “MONOLOVE” in animation, computer games, and later in interactive installation.

First, the modeling of the protagonists, who are centaurs, takes place. There is a female, a male and a non gender centaur. Within the plot of the work, other forms of non-human characters emerge, such as a mantis, but also forms taken by the protagonists-centaurs themselves, such as a turtle, a centaur with Dali's elephant legs and an ostrich. These characters are modeled step by step from an initial human model giving them the desired form each time based on the script of the “MONOLOVE”project. One of the goals of our research is to be able to compare and adapt elements of non-human features in their different forms and ultimately apply their kinetic features as faithfully as possible to animation, computer game and interactive installation.

By focusing on the attempt to record the kinetic characteristics of the characters, an adaptation is made of the dislocation of the non-human character, a crow coming from a previous project for the Greek National Opera (2020) to another non-human character, the centaur, that we study in this work with the motion capture technology.

The method we follow for recording character movements, is motion capture technology where the real model wears inertial sensors which transmit data wirelessly to our smart device and the cameras are only used as a localisation tool. The ROKOKO Smartsuit Pro is used so that we can capture the human movement, fix minor errors inside the ROKOKO Studio and also gives the opportunity to have live preview of the motion given on to the chosen virtual character (centaur, crow) through Blender and / or Unity.

It is important to note the experience of the authors for this particular research, which comes from the excellent use of design tools as well as experimentation to capturing the kinetic characteristics of non-human characters with motion-capture technology. In addition, their experience in the search for methodologies that will be able to support at a research level the application of characters in transmedia works with the help of advanced technologies.

In conclusion, this paper wishes to describe, analyze and give results regarding the collection of motion capture of non-human characters through the work “MONOLOVE”, that will be able to adapt to different digital media (animation,computer games, interactive installation), using the same dynamics.

Giorgos Nikopoulos is a PhD in Audio & Visual Arts from the Ionian University which was also his graduate University in 2009. His research topic was the connection between Shadow Theater and Animation from the animator’s / puppeteer’s point of view. In 2010 he started working with theatrical and film director Dimos Avdeliodis as an actor and director assistant. He has worked as a professor assistant during his PhD years teaching mainly two courses: “Direction and Acting Elements” and “Iconography of Sound”. In 2014 he founded his own enterprise called BAUBO Productions and completed his first animation short film “Butter Bunny and his Grape must Cookies”. In 2017 he completed his first feature animation film “THEOX”, a production which was also the main piece of art on which his research was based, and so far has been screened and awarded in various festivals worldwide. This film was the only greek animation feature film that has been participated in Thessaloniki International Film Festival National Competition category until its 57th edition. In November of 2018 the film was also announced as an official nominee by the European Animation Awards in the category of BEST Soundtrack, with 4 more European animation films. In 2018 he was awarded by the 1st SNF Artist Fellowship Program / ARTWORKS as one of 15 awarded young filmmakers in Greece. Since 2019 he has worked a lot as a script writer, director and 3D generalist in Virtual and Augmented reality applications with DOTSOFT company and various Universities (the project Smart Speech / collaborator University of Ioannina in 2020, the project Mouseion Topos / collaborator University of the Aegean in 2021).