move click move: Handspeak
Sandpaintings
1992, 8:19
Two Navajo-inspired figures explore symbols and their meaning. A pioneering film using motion tracking to drive animated characters.
Film by Deanna Morse and Jane DeKoven. Music by Jaron Lanier. The sign language sequences were generated with the data glove at VPL Research Labs; Ann Lasko-Harvill and Young Harvill, performance animation technicians.
Storyboard Animatic
Image Gallery
Navajo sandpaintings were the inspiration for the characters.
Collaborators Deanna Morse and Jane DeKoven
Early storyboard
Brainstorming, developing characters
We wanted a flexible body,
to move like a snake.
We sewed photo corners to create a flexible body stem.
The computer: a useful prop and vehicle.
Years ago, Jane created these stencil cut-outs.
They needed some repair...
Plexiglas separated the original from its shadow.
Our animation stand: big enough for two.
Young Harvill (inventor of Swivel 3D) facilitated the sign language sequences.
He provided this computer 3D hand model. To animate it, we used the VPL data glove.
The glove has wires and sensors connected to a bank of computers.
Wearing the glove, your movements are recorded as pages of data.
Later, that data animates the computer modeled hand to repeat the glove movements.
At VPL, where the data glove was invented, Ann Lasko-Harvill manipulated the data.
This was the first time motion capture was used to animate sign language.