‘Live’ animation goes from expensive dream to affordable entertainment option in just a few years
by Keith Miller
In November 2004, “Turtle Talk With Crush” opened at Walt Disney World’s Epcot in Orlando, exposing park guests to something designers knew for some time—live animation had arrived, and it was going to add an entirely new dimension to the way guests were entertained and educated at parks and attractions.
“Turtle Talk” is still a popular attraction years later. It features a “live,” animated, interactive onscreen character named Crush from the movie “Finding Nemo,” who carries on conversations with members of the audience, especially kids. The character moves around in front of the guests on a large screen themed to look like a window into the ocean; his movements synchronize with the voice of a behind-the-scenes actor (termed “puppeteer” by Disney) portraying the character.
Anyone who sat in on a showing of “Turtle Talk” in its first year of operation witnessed audiences that were astonished by what they were seeing. Kids were mesmerized, finally living the dream of actually talking with a “cartoon” character; adults were dumbfounded and whispered among themselves during the show, desperately trying to figure out how in the world this “magic” was accomplished.
When “Turtle Talk” opened, its developers— Walt Disney Imagineering—stated one of their eventual goals was to create attractions in which the guests themselves assume the roles of animated characters on the screen. But at the time, “Turtle Talk” was described by Bruce Vaughn, then Imagineering’s vice president of research and development, as only existing in “the Disney realm—cutting-edge and very high end.”
Fast-forward five years, and live animation has hit a growth spurt as an entertainment and educational vehicle. And as more an more companies develop their own take on the medium, an inherent outcome has arisen: the price is coming down.
 “Originally, anyone doing it had to do a lot of research—it wasn’t plugand- play,” says Danny Colajacomo, president of 3DSite & Living Pictures (www.3dsite.com) in Topanga, California, which specializes in interactive CG (computer graphics) animation. “There was a lot of trial and error and patience involved.”
Another important element in this evolution is the growth of computer processing power. “In the ’90s and early 2000s, computer technology was much more expensive,” says Paul Collimore, director of sales for AnimaLive (www.animalive.com) in Brighton East, England. “It’s consumer electronics that brought the cost down—the mass marketing. A ‘Turtle Talk’-type character attraction can now come in at about $25,000.”
How It’s Done
Though there are several different ways to produce live animation, the exact methods are proprietary secrets among the medium’s various providers. But Wayne Sullivant, president of PeopleVisionFX (www.peoplevisionfx.com) in Roselle, New Jersey, agreed to explain how his “Man on the Moon” live-animation face, which was displayed at IAAPA Attractions Expo a few years ago, was achieved.
“An actor was hidden from the audience in a mini studio, built right into the booth itself,” Sullivant reveals. “There was a hidden camera on the audience that fed a monitor the actor was watching, and a hidden microphone fed headphones so the actor could hear the audience, as well. Of course, the actor was also on camera and miked to create the projection feed. In addition, there was an alignment verification system positioned in front of the actor so he could confirm that his enlarged image was properly aligned with the ‘big head’ on screen. The actor was also positioned in a special alignment chair that helped him maintain proper positioning relative to the image-capture equipment.”
Sullivant says it’s all based on motion capture, which he describes as a “venerable technique” of recording key points on an actor and then projecting them on a three-dimensional model or a screen, so when the actor moves, the model/projection moves.
 This is also the system employed by AnimaLive, in which a performer wears a motion capture suit. “What we use is previsualization,” Collimore says. “Someone feeds the systems from the motion capture suit into the animated character. We allow the person wearing the suit to see what he/she looks like. We’ve developed our systems to be less scientific and more user-friendly.” He adds animation companies and computer game developers have a large base of studies about how living bodies move, and this helps in producing realistic movements in the animated characters.
A live-animation system from Alterface (www.alterface.com) in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium, uses no wires or sensors. “We detect the position of people, their movement, and their interaction with a laser gun, and we can see them with a camera,” says Olivier Vincent, Alterface’s content and communications manager. “Thanks to our Salto software, it reacts to the camera [image] in real time, and the media is played in real time, with no delay.”
Alterface employs this system at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. There, a pachycephalosaurus interactive dinosaur follows visitors’ movements and plays around with them (a video of this interaction is on YouTube; search “dance with the dinosaurs Alterface”).
Alterface is currently developing the “Crazy Circus,” which will have four themed interactive rooms, featuring animated and interactive flying bats, penguins, and a charging rhino, all responsive to guests within the room.
Guests Become the Characters
As astounding and exhilarating attractions like “Turtle Talk With Crush,” “Man on the Moon,” and “Crazy Circus” are, the ultimate goal for many of the live animation companies is for guests to actually become the characters, and to do it easily and seamlessly. For the first time, guests would not be passive audience members, but active players in the stories on screen.
“A degree of participation has started creeping in, from simple to complex,” says Colajacomo. “Simple is a shy animal that runs away if someone moves too fast, and complex is making the [guest] become a character. The problem with trying to do it with motion capture is the actors need to be animators, which I don’t think would be possible with guests.”
However, AnimaLive uses motion capture, and Collimore says it can be done: “The guest will have to wear some hardware, but they could control the character live, operating the cartoon from within the cartoon. The guest could be an animated turtle in ‘Turtle Talk With Crush,’ let’s say, in an immersive environment.”
Collimore reveals AnimaLive is working with a major branded attractions owner to produce an interactive Barack Obama in a set decorated like the Oval Office. The guests will see themselves in the Oval Office talking with Obama, and they will be able to purchase a DVD of their conversation with the U.S. president.
But there are some constraints to guests becoming the characters. “The problem with the technology now is that you have equipment costing around $25,000, and do you want guests playing with that?” Collimore says of the motion capture technology. “Also, we need space. Our systems mimic your body movements, so if a guest wanted to walk from one side of the screen to the other, there has to be the space to walk that distance.”
There’s also the issue of guests’ creative skills. In “Turtle Talk With Crush,” the “puppeteers” are skilled performers who can emulate the personality of the Crush character audiences know. “The entertainment problem is if you’re seen on screen [portraying] a humorous character, and people don’t react as strongly to you as they usually do that character,” says Colajacomo. With well-known characters, Collimore asserts guests would also need to mimic that voice. “You can synthesize the voice to a certain degree,” he says, “but a well-known character’s voice needs to be exact.”
Another challenge is getting guests to handle the unexpected. “One main problem is interruptability,” Colajacomo points out, “such as when a character is speaking and a cell phone goes off, and he needs to pause and maybe even react without it looking choppy.”
Wide-Ranging Applications
It’s not just big amusement parks that are now employing live animation—museums, zoos, aquariums, and even corporate clients are using the medium. “The Royal Belgian Institute is not big and doesn’t have a large budget,” says Alterface’s Vincent, “and some of our customers are small, like FECs, and it’s now affordable for them.”
Collimore sees great prospects for museums: “There are all sorts of studies showing that kids are more responsive to learning from an animated character, and they’ll even go back and ask the character a question because it’s an interactive character.”
According to Colajacomo, 3DSite/Living Pictures will soon be putting in animated interactive characters at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park. “Also, in Dubai, we have a client who’s using [live animation] with an interactive horse, and a client using it to promote a children’s book.”
As for what’s coming next in live animation, the limitations are disappearing as the technology becomes cheaper. “Every single frame in the movie ‘Transformers’ took 72 hours,” says Collimore, “but now we’re rendering animation live. We can’t get the same pixelization quality yet, but as the processing power increases, we’ll be able to do that, and it will allow more polished computer graphics to be added.”
What we currently see in attractions like “Turtle Talk With Crush” is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming, according to Colajacomo. “The smartest companies will be the ones able to develop modular building blocks,” he says, “which will allow it to be done a lot cheaper and faster. Five or 10 years from now there will be intelligent characters that can carry on a conversation—I’m talking about completely autonomous interactive characters that don’t require an actor at all.”
Contact News Editor Keith Miller at kmiller@IAAPA.org.
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