Sabah Masood gets to grips with motion capture at Centroid

Vanya, Alex and Sabah

Bucks animation student Sabah Masood recently spent a week with Centroid, one of the UK's leading provider of motion capture services, getting to grips with the motion capture pipeline and learning the technical nuts and bolts of the process. We asked Sabah to tell us how it all went, and what we can learn from the professionals.

Bucks students visit Shepperton Studios

On wednesday our students at Bucks New University visited Shepperton Studios. Being a movie geek, I couldn't wait to visit the place where classic films like Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, The Day of The Jackal,  Ridley Scott's Alien and Attenborough's Ghandi were filmed. I mean, even empty film studios are full of atmosphere; a place to fill the imagination with dreams of stardust. Shepperton did not let us down.

Motion Capture, Animation and Sports

Bucks Motion Capture Animators hard at work

Here at Bucks we're excited by the huge possibilities for animators to work with other departments, such as graphic design, drama, dance and sound design. In short, collaborations with other film-makers, to create truly excellent projects.

Bucks Students visit Pinewood Studios and Centroid - home of Europe's Largest Motion Capture Studio

Yesterday a group of students from Bucks went to visit the Motion Capture studio Centroid, based in Pinewood Studios. Motion Capture, sometimes called "Performance Capture", is an animation technique which captures real-time actor's performances and turns them into digital data which can be used to create animated characters - like the character "Gollum" played by Andy Serkis in The Lord of The Rings.

Bucks and Centroid are pioneering a partnership that will offer Centroid opportunities for research and development, and also give the students a chance to use a leading industry facility for their student films. It's just the kind of thing that universities should be doing - partnering with industry to create a mutually beneficial relationship.

Pinewood Studios - home of 007