You Can Motion Capture With Only One Camera

Side by side, the actor and the animation the motion capture is applied to. What you need is After Effects, (Checked Craigslist lately?) a video or web cam, something to make marks on your face and an actor willing to be filmed with weird looking dots on his/her face. Notice that the movement is not an exact match but it is very effective. This technique works really good for lip sync. The nice thing about this technique is it exaggerates and dramatizes expressions and acting witch is what animators over the decades have discovered, works really well in the medium of cartooning and animation. That is why the use of "squash" and "stretch" has become prevalent in animating. This blog-site is dedicated to this type of cartoony, motion capture for 2D animation. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

Track the Body to Animate Characters Using One Camera

Most major animations use motion capture these days but it requires thousands of dollars for cameras and other equipment. That is because most motion capture is for 3D animation. But you can get amazing results using motion capture for 2D animation. I like the results more than 3D motion capture because it looks a lot like old-school cell animation in that there is a lot of stretch and squash, exaggerated movement and animation with a lot of character and life.

This video is about motion capture of a moving actor's body (rather that motion capture of face.) I hope the independent animator realizes that they can start motion capturing. I'm developing the technique of motion capture for 2D because I'm looking for ways to put more life into my animation. I think animation should be direct, intuitive, and have a feeling of spontaneity. Animation is about the quality of movement. With motion capture YOU can control many points of movement at once. If you follow this approach your animations will look amazing and get people's attention.

The fact that motion capture for 2D is not exact is more of an advantage than disadvantage, similar to how hand drawn is an advantage over photography.