Motus Digital Presents Larry The Zombie

So far it has been a crazy morning here at RTX. It got even crazier when I met the lovely boys at Motus Digital and their latest project, Larry the Zombie.

I spoke with Kyle Blietz, the executive producer of Motus to see what their project was all about.

Bitter Girl :: So what exactly is Motus Digital about?

Kyle :: Motus Digital is a motion capture animation studio out of Dallas, TX. We do a lot of animations for video games mainly regional in the southwest area but we’ve worked with people all around the US.

BG :: And what made you guys decide to start this project?

K :: Well, mainly there was a need for mo-cap in this region. But why we’re here at RTX is that we came up with a way to do live animations. So basically as the actor acts it can be translated directly onto a CG character that we can record and broadcast on any kind of medium.

BG :: So go into a little bit more detail about how the process works.

K :: Basically, we get an actor in the studio we marker them up on all the joints and all the bones of their bodies and glue markers on their face. The cameras then triangulate the markers to tell exactly where it is in 3D space. Then that data all goes into the computer. It’s applied, labeled. Says this is an elbow, this is a nose. It then gets translated onto a CG character. From there we take it into another computer that can broadcast it live on Skype, or uStream or whatever media we choose.

BG :: So you’re going to be having some upcoming projects soon. Tell us a little about that.

K :: With this live animation we have three ideas that we’re announcing that will be coming out in the next few months. One is Larry the Zombie. He is a talking zombie who’s able to interview people and do skype calls with people and he’s gonna have his own weekly show. We’re gonna cover cos-play, movies, tech, video games, comics, toys, tv and cool shit in general. Then we’ve also got Bush and Clinton and they’re gonna cover the 2012 election. They’re gonna travel around on the campaign trail and make fun of politics. I’m excited about that. Then we’ve also got Herby. Herby is an elf and we started that this last Christmas. We went around to different hospitals and schools and had the kids talk to Herby and tell them what they wanted for Christmas. We Skyped with 500 kids. We did about 250 personal messages at one hospital two schools and we did that in four weeks.

As I spoke with Kyle and watched their promo videos I was rather intrigued, but nothing could have prepared me for the experience I was about to have with Larry the Zombie. For those that know me well, you know I’m not a big zombie fan but this guy was great. He was interesting, quick to the draw on underhanded comments nd hilarious to interact with.

For more information on Motus Digital and their upcoming projects, check out the following sites ::
www.motusdigital.com
www.partycrashersusa.com
www.elfhotline.com
www.larrythezombie.com