We had the pleasure of interviewing Marla Rausch, CEO of Animation Vertigo, a motion capture animation company, which worked on Call of Duty’s motion capture. Ms. Rausch was the woman leading the charge who spent countless hours with her workforce of more than 50 Filipino artists located in Manila. Together, they created the cutting-edge technology that makes the game so unique, providing the running, jumping, crouching, crawling and more.
- How/When did you first get started in mo-cap? – I started in mocap in 2000 when I first learned how to do motion capture tracking. I happened upon it when I was waiting for my husband to get done with work, he was working on mocap in LA. I was curious about what he was doing, so I picked it up. After that I would get hired to free-lance when there was crunch time, I enjoyed the change of pace from my financial planning work. Ultimately, it led to the creation of Animation Vertigo.
- What were some of your biggest challenges and rewards in creating Call of Duty’s motion capture technology? While we didn’t have a hand in the creation or utilization of their motion capture technology, we have been on-hand to ensure that the pipelines or processes that they needed were done and made sure we delivered exactly what they needed so that it doesn’t create problems down the line. Some of the bigger challenges we had was when these processes were new and we had to learn them quickly, and the turnaround time to complete the work did not change. It required our team of 3 shifts to learn the new process, be competent in the process, and produce high-quality work in a fast amount of time. And to have all our team members have that consistency, that’s a challenge as well.
3. Can you reveal what you are working on next? Unfortunately, confidentiality agreements prohibit me from saying anything except that I am truly excited when a few of them come out.
4. Last, but not least, if you could be any video game character ever created, who would you be? That’s a novel thought, I’d like to be Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango because I like the genre and the puzzles. Haha!
We would like to thank Marla Rausch for taking the time out of her busy schedule to interview with us. You can take a look at the official Animation Vertigo website.
I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.
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