Little-known video game professions | Playing a Na’vi, a Jedi or a dragon, a piece of cake

“Hello, Patrick, what did you do today?” “Well, I was lying on a table and doing the dragon with two other actors.”

This is the kind of phone conversation that actor Patrick Emmanuel Abellard (Completely High School) may have on occasion, after one of his motion capture scanning sessions (motion capturealso abbreviated mocap) intended to bring a video game character to life. Since the beginning of his career, he has also recorded voices for various productions, such as Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace Or This Bed We Made.

His most recent mission, completed after three years of contributions, was notably devoted to the title Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in which he played the main character. For this video game lover (he loves Gran Turismo, Call of Duty And Halo), breathing life into all sorts of pixelated characters is a lot of fun, and he appreciates the leeway he has. “I find there’s more freedom to put more interpretation and my own swing, to make the character my own, compared to dubbing, where I have to try to match something that’s already been done,” the actor says.

A skin of pixels

One of his favorite tasks is to put on the suit for motion capture sessions, so much so that he would like to have the opportunity to do it more often. Covered with sensors placed all over his body, scrutinized by a hundred cameras, supervised by two technicians and directed by a director, he must perform all sorts of gestures, choreographies, fights or dialogue scenes, which will be digitized and covered with a skin of pixels. “I love it, it’s quite physical. For me, it’s really going back to my childhood, it’s a game. I do a lot of sports, I’m not afraid to throw my body, I know my limits and I’m always ready for a challenge,” says the man who was trained in stage combat and fencing. In fact, he wouldn’t mind playing a Star Wars character in an upcoming video game, lightsaber in hand or not. “It would be incredible to have the Force!” ” he said with a laugh.

Patrick Emmanuel Abellard specifies that three modes of motion capture are possible, either the digitalization of body movements, that of facial expressions or even the capture of performance (performance capture), which includes both of these options in addition to simultaneous voice recording.

Is he working on a particular project these days? “Yes,” he answers. A short silence. Which one? “I can’t tell you what it is,” the actor confesses, emphasizing the high degree of confidentiality that surrounds video game production by major studios like Ubisoft. “We only communicate by code names. I had participated in three rounds of auditions for Avatarand I only found out it was for this game after I got the contract and arrived at the studio!”