Gonna Save My Soul,” Produced by Radical Media

LOS ANGELES–(EMWNews)–Image Metrics, the leading

provider of facial animation solutions to the entertainment industry,

has projected life onto a photo-real CG heart that sings about its loss

of love in Gnarls Barkley’s

latest video,

“Who’s Gonna Save My

Soul,” from the recently released album, The

Odd Couple. Radical Media,

producers of the video, turned to Image Metrics because its unique

facial animation solution was the only one able to exactly capture lead

singer Cee-Lo’s lips for translation onto the

digital heart. The project is Image Metrics’

first music video collaboration with Gradient Effects, which designed

and developed character animation for the CG heart.

Chris Milk, director of Kanye

West, U2 and Green

Day music videos, wrote and directed the project. Milk wanted to

capture Cee-Lo singing the lyrics and then add his lips to the

photo-real CG human heart designed and animated by Gradient Effects.

This proved to be a challenge, as traditional motion capture techniques

rely on tracking markers, which cannot be placed on lips. Radical Media

and Gradient Effects turned to Image Metrics and its unique video-based

capture process that works easily with any footage to capture the entire

face, pixel-by-pixel, including the lips and eyes.

“We could not find any other technology that

was able to achieve the level of exacting perfection I was asking for on

this video. The lips had to move like real human lips,”

said Milk. “In the end, not only did Image

Metrics deliver lip animation that was a completely believable replica

of Cee-Lo’s, but they did so within a very

short turn-around.”

Gradient Effects provided the model and rig of the heart and Cee-Lo’s

lips for the video. Using those, one tracker, two animators and one

modeler from Image Metrics produced 15 shots totaling 45 seconds.

“This project was perfectly suited to Image

Metrics’ capabilities as our technology

solutions can quickly and cost-effectively translate actual performances

onto digital models with unmatchable precision,”

said David Barton, Image Metrics’ producer. “Thanks

to our technology, Chris’ goal was relatively

simple for us to achieve.”

About Image Metrics

Image Metrics provides superior facial animation solutions to the

interactive entertainment, film and television industries. Developed by

a team of computer vision Ph.D.s, Image Metrics rapidly re-creates

facial performances without markers or makeup, achieving levels of

realism and fidelity that are unparalleled in computer graphics. Image

Metrics’ solutions enjoy widespread adoption

by some of the best-known production studios in the entertainment world,

including Digital Domain, Rockstar Games and Sony Computer

Entertainment. The company is located in Santa Monica, California, with

R&D headquarters in Manchester, U.K. Company investors include Saffron

Hill Ventures.

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