Dunkirk, Destiny and Call of Duty motion-capture artist James Alexander-Taylor talks about his job.
We may be entering the age where robots can do most jobs a human can do, but one thing they still struggle with is realistic movement. This means that in video games and films where digital characters appear, there is often a motion-capture performer behind the scenes to thank for the naturalistic movement.
Mo-cap has come to prominence recently with Andy Serkis’ now infamous work as Gollum on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Andy Serkis’ work on the Planet of the Apes franchise, and Andy Ser… No, no, it’s more than just Andy Serkis.
Most of the motion capture work you’ ll see, you probably won’ t even realise you’ re looking at it. For this edition of TalkRadar we are talking to James Alexander-Taylor, a motion-capture performer who has worked on films like Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic Dunkirk, and such video-games as Destiny, Call of Duty, and Just Cause.
When I turned up to the studio to shoot Call of Duty I had no idea what it was. And then they said ‘You’ re doing Call of Duty with Guy Richie.’
A big privilege to be directed by @JohnDower @themocapvaults the other week. Such fun and fun times ahead! #grateful pic.twitter.com/FsEmD7lJCS July 5,2016
It’s liberating really. You know, you’re there in all your glory. The weirdest thing is that it’s all velcro, so if you sit on anything, you get up and everything’s stuck to you.
If you want to contact Alexander-Taylor with any employment opportunities, he can be reached at: jataylorarts@hotmail.co.uk
