The Imaginarium of Andy Serkis
It is reported that actor Andy Serkis who is famous for bringing Gollum to the big screen in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is to head up a motion capture studio in the UK.
His characters Gollum and King Kong were created using the technique, his next outing will be as Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's Tintin, he will also revisit the role that made him and the technique famous in The Hobbit.
Performance capture, also known as motion capture or mo-cap, is a technique of recording an actor's movements and expressions, and translating that into a computer-generated image. Actors wear blue Lycra suits covered in dots that are tracked by cameras and coverted into digital images. James Cameron used the technology to create his Na'vi in Avatar.
Serkis describes it as an “exciting and liberating” tool for actors, because it enables them to play any creature and allows them to make the character decisions rather than a committee of animators.
Serkis calls his studio concept the Imaginarium. He is in discussions with various partners, and would head the studio himself. He wants it to be used not only for film and video games, but also for live performances to create mo-cap creatures in ballets, rock concerts or even nightclubs.