The Half Rez motion design event returned live to Chicago this year with a packed house and this opening from the team at Flavor who slammed together 2D, 3D, AI, VR, and mo-capped puppets into a mad visual rampage.

Flavor ECD Brian McCauley: “Collectively, we all appreciate Half Rez as a fun opportunity to share your creative voice, and we noticed that the logo has a speech bubble design. Since ACD Brad Backofen has been experimenting with motion capture hand puppets in C4D, a puppet finding his creative voice felt like a great place to start.

Brad Backofen: “We had an idea for how to animate CG puppets using a very simple but effective method of motion capture, which let us just shoot a performer’s hand doing the movements and lip flaps of a puppet.

“We then tracked those performances and applied the data to our custom puppet rigs, and with only some minor adjustments, we had lifelike puppet animation in 3D.”
 

 
Client: Half Rez
Planning Board: Chris Schmidt, Amador Valenzuela, Brad Chmielewski, Gavin Morrissey, Miqui Crespo, Michael Kislovsky

Production: Flavor
Creative Director: Brian McCauley
Associate Creative Directors: Brad Backofen, Mack Neaton, & Colby Capes
Executive Producer: Kate Smith
Managing Director: Neal Cohen
CG Supervisor: Brad Backofen
Art Director: Mack Neaton
2D Animation Supervisor: Colby Capes
Storyboards: Danielle Otrakji
3D Artist: Brad Backofen, Brian McCauley, Ryan Bechtel, Emily Berveiler, JC Tecklenburg, Krzys Pianko, Dan Tiffany
2D Artist: Colby Capes, Sam Stucky, Keith Slawinski, Torey Kervick, Aaron Fisher, Sierra Lee, Marly Koven, Jesse Willis

Live-Action Production: Dictionary Films
Director/DP: Brian Broeckelman
Technical Director: Adam Kohr
Puppets: Liz Backofen

Sound Design/Mix: Another Country
Managing Director: Tim Konn
Senior Producer: Louise Rider
Sound Designer/Mixer Jordan Stalling
Assistant Audio Engineers: Cathryn Stark, Brett Rossiter