Video via Ubisoft.
As motion capture technology has grown in the world of game development, actors and technicians alike have sought ways to fill fake stages with objects and scenery that can motivate actors' performances. In games like Star Wars Outlaws, actors are tasked not just with acting out dramatic cutscenes, but sometimes doing so with creatures big and small that a human being can't easily be subbed in for.
One such creature in Outlaws is Nix, a one-of-a-kind Axolotl-like creature called a "merqaal" who helps player character Kay Vess (played by Humberly González) on her heists, and joins her for some delicious meals from street vendors across the galaxy. With Nix attached to Vess' hip, how was González supposed to always be acting with a tiny creature that didn't exist in the real world?
One word: Puppets. Or specifically, one googly-eyed, four-legged puppet with fake gills built and piloted by Camille Loiselle-D'Aragon. And as you can see in the video above, he and Loiselle-D'Aragonmake for one hell of an acting team.
A simple puppet gives actors something to work against
There's an infamous joke in the visual effects world about actors whose only scene partner sometimes is "a tennis ball," or other objects used to mark the eyeline of fictional characters. Motion Capture technology and ever-improving VFX can bring some interpersonally back into a scene, but having zero entities to interact with can be a challenging task.
Though González told Game Developer in a conversation at Gamescom that she's plenty experienced working with "nothing," having a puppet on hand was invaluable. As you can see in the footage above, Loiselle-D'Aragon offered González not just an eyeline, but the ability to physically react to whatever the actress is saying, helping her react again in turn. Additional video posted by Ubisoft offers an extended look at how Loiselle-D'Aragon could slip into scenes and improvise with her costar.
It's a surprisingly simple model, with the tendrils around the head being a nice stand-in for Nix's gills—something Vess would interact with while petting Nix on the head.
Nix may not be a Muppet, but he joins the ranks of many, many incredible puppets created for the Star Wars series. It just goes to show how much a little felt and cloth from planet Earth can go to building a galaxy far far away.
