Interface[s] Montréal

Motion Capture

Tom Wilczynski

VOX populi

Laflaque puts on his tech pants

View the presentation [In English]

Gérard D. Laflaque, a character created by famous Montreal cartoonist Serge Chapleau, has been resurrected last year after some 20 years of absence from Quebec television. In the process, he underwent a major face lift, from being a latex puppet to a full fledged CG character. He has become the host of a half-hour weekly variety show based in part on news and current events called “Et Dieu Créa Laflaque…”

Airing 20-plus minutes of computer generated animation a week was both a technical and a financial challenge. Motion capture and real-time animation software presented themselves as the only viable solution to the problem. The pipeline called for integrating multiple-actor sound recording, dual full-body capture using an active optical system and virtual gloves, real-time software for working with the motion capture data, phoneme recognition and traditional keyframing, OpenGL rendering as well as integrating the CG characters into video environments with camera tracking and compositing software. It had to produce top-quality animated CG characters and be efficient enough to react to current events. Although many parts of the show are done in some advance, every week several minutes of animation are captured Wednesday and delivered for final show assembly on Friday.

The formula created by the team at Vox Populi has proven a major success, with the show generating tremendous ratings with the viewers. It also attracts many top names in the Quebec TV and film industry to guest appearances, where they interact with the virtual characters.

Gerard D. Laflaque

Tom Wilczynski, born in 1973, Gdynia, Pologne
Education: Concordia University, B.F.A, Cinema, Major in Animation.
2004 – Vox Populi, Technical Director : “Et Dieu Créa Laflaque…”
2004 DQ Entertainment, Production consultant. Mentoring a new 3D division of an animation studio in India.
2003 Motek, Animator “Cafe de Wereld”. A Dutch TV series done using motion capture, pupeteering, real-time software and OpenGL render. Pioneering work produced four 5 minute episodes of in two days.
2001-2003 Kaydara, Demo Artist, Tech Support.
1997-2001 Taarna Studios, Senior Animator, motion capture studio Supervisor, Editor, Actor: Adventures in Animation 3D. A Giant screen 3D (stereo) feature based on motion capture and custom animation software.