Andy Serkis, Imaginarium and Animal Farm

David Davis is an animator who has just joined Andy Serkis' new motion capture studio Imaginarium, a digital animation studio based in Ealing, London, dedicated to the creation of digital characters using Performance Capture technology. On 20th October 2012 the studio acquired rights to The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon and also a new motion capture adaptation of Animal Farm, which Serkis will direct. FLIP asked David to tell us a little about his new job.

Andy Serkis will direct Orwell's classic totalitarian satire Animal Farm

Why do animators hate Motion Capture?

Andy Serkis at Comic Con 2011, photographed by Gerald Geronimo

Animators hate Motion Capture. We hate it because it threatens us, threatens to replace what we do so carefully and painstakingly and slowly with fast, inexpensive, automated technology. I first heard about it way back in 1987 on the set of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" when it was rumoured that a technology existed whereby a computer could capture an actor's motion and express it instantly as a piece of 3D animation. Well, that'll never catch on, I thought (or hoped, more likely). Phil Nibbelink, one of the most talented animators on The Rabbit, called Motion Capture "the battle cry of the untalented". How we laughed.