GTA's Tommy Vercetti Talks MoCap

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an ESCmag feature interviewing Jonathan Sale, the motion-capture actor for Tommy Vercetti in GTA:Vice City. The talk includes some illuminating details on the actual capture sessions for the Ray Liotta-voiced lead character: "The getaway car that the lawyer uses to help Tommy escape at the beginning after the coke deal goes bad was just four metal folding chairs, a Fisher-Price steering wheel (literally) and a wrestling mat covering the 'back seat' so that I didn't hurt myself jumping in."

I wonder...

[icemax]

How did they mo-cap the scenes where Tommy picks up one of the fine ladies of Vice City in his car to .. erm .. restore his health?

Re:I wonder...

[Baron_911]

Or when he colorfully 'salutes' oncoming traffic? Bet that was a fun day.

'No that's all wrong, like THIS! *bird*'

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you switch to reverse view while he's in the car and look through the windshield, or if you switch to car first-person view and hit the side (drive-by) view, he's just sitting there. not even touching. the car just rocks back and forth and squeaks.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"if you switch to reverse view while he's in the car and look through the windshield, or if you switch to car first-person view and hit the side (drive-by) view, he's just sitting there. not even touching. the car just rocks back and forth and squeaks."

That's one thing that bugs me about the media. they post that there are prostitutes in the game, but they fail to mention that if you don't know what a prostitute is, this game doesn't teach you.

favorite quote

[Anonymous Coward]

some nice quotes in that interview. heres my favorite for those to lazy to RTFA

It was nice to threaten someone and not have them laugh.

I wonder

[angryLNX]

which stuff was actually done motion capture. Was the in-game play motion captured? Different movements? Or only the little movie scenes inbetween levels?

Re:I wonder

[Vaevictis666]

Just the cut-scenes I would imagine. There's lots of generic walking and running animations around, and if I were Rockstar I'd just reuse the ones from the original GTA3. The scenes with Tommy specifically doing acting would have been mo-capped.