Motion Slickness

As a struggling actress and dancer, 24-year-old Tina Simonsen has done lots of menial jobs to pay the rent. She’s waited tables, fed and groomed horses at a Malibu ranch, taught yoga and toiled as a personal assistant to a Hollywood star. So when Santa Monica Studios invited her to audition to portray Chrome, the ultra-sexy hostess of the HBO series “Perversions of Science,” she jumped. This was a real acting assignment.

But this was not a standard audition. Chrome is a digital creation, an amply endowed cartoon fantasy object with a gleaming metal exterior. The animated figure vamps across the TV screen in the one-minute opening and closing of the adult science-fiction anthology series based on a Marvel comic.

The gig was to be a “motion capture” actor, meaning the TV audience would never see Simonsen’s face or body, or hear her voice, but she would play a key role in creating Chrome’s lifelike motions. The special effects process is a new source of employment for performers, although in many cases, it replaces existing work, according to the Screen Actors Guild. “It’s similar to puppeteering,” said Allen Weingartner, a SAG senior administrator.

Simonsen got the job, but not before convincing Santa Monica Studios she could move adeptly on an empty stage in a get-up that made her look like she was attending a Halloween party as the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” only with wires dangling instead of swamp grass.

The suit she donned is wired with tiny optical sensors. Multiple cameras pick up light from the sensors, which give animators a precise measurement of the actor’s motions. This information, then fed into a computer, becomes the framework for realistic movements for three-dimensional characters, in real time. (The actors also wear virtual-reality headsets so they can see themselves from all angles and recognize how their movements translate to their on-screen characters.)

“There’s a lot more to it than it looks,” said the Danish-born Simonsen, a sometime model who tried to put her stamp on Chrome as she sat, walked, threw back her head, and swayed in the character’s trademark sensual style. The job involved more than moving gracefully in a tight suit: Simonsen also had to hit her mark and take direction, all with blinders on (she couldn’t see outside the headset). “I was really sweating. This required great concentration,” she said.

Motion capture technology has existed since the 1970s, but has been in wide use at video game companies and character animation shops for the last five years. Proponents describe it as a shortcut that saves digital animators time and money. The alternative is to create images of human movement by key frame animation, a more costly and time-consuming process, according to Rob Bredow, director of research and development for FutureLight, an arm of Santa Monica Studios.

SAG couldn’t supply specific figures on how widespread this work is, but Weingartner, who tracks industrial and interactive contracts for the labor union, said it’s on the rise. For the epic “Titanic,” for example, 35 to 40 actors participated in motion-capture acting assignments, supplying movements for a virtual cast of thousands on the decks of the ill-fated ocean liner. The current SAG day player rate is $559 a day, Weingartner said.

Chrome is the only motion-capture acting job Simonsen has taken, but she’d like to try it again. “It can be fun,” said Simonsen, who focuses most of her energies on assembling a progressive folk band in which she will be the lead singer. Chrome is in retirement since HBO has put the series on hiatus after airing 10 episodes, but “she” may return, and so Simonsen’s virtual star turn.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

AT A GLANCE

* Name: Tina Simonsen

* Job: Motion capture actor

* Education: Assorted acting and dance classes

* Home: Los Angeles