In each issue of the Journal we introduce you to members of the faculty through items they have in their offices.
1. Motion Capture Suit
Large studios have pushed the quality of content further and further—this motion capture suit levels the playing field for independent creatives.
2. Facial Motion Capture Headset
Every piece of technology can be used for good or evil. I love the speed the facial mocap (motion capture) headset provides to iterate over dialogue and expressions quickly. Sometimes it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.
3. I Am a Super Girl!
As part of my main project for the next few years, this book means a lot. “Rigs of color” is how I combine my technical, production, and artistic skills to improve representation in media. I’m crafting various diverse casts of characters with my students for the animation community. There are roughly 12 black and brown characters vs over 2,000 humanoid characters available. This book inspired one of the characters from my daughter and son’s book collection. Once they are modeled and rigged, we can apply motion capture to them to bring storytelling back to the diverse shared experience people used to listen to around late-night campfires.
4. Anatomy of Facial Expression
As a technical artist I need to keep learning and improving my skills in digital sculpting—rebuilding and constructing faces to be as emotive as possible is a necessity to connect better with the audience.
5. Maya Python for Games and Film
I also need to constantly improve my skills in programming and other technical aspects of my work.
6. Drawing Gloves
I always have these drawing gloves on my desk, and usually in my pockets. They make working on digital displays so much easier, gliding across surfaces and not smudging the graphite or the screen. These gloves = love!