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photography, designs, animations, short videos by martin thoburn - specialty in visual/photographic mashups

Josephine--this is absolutely phenomenal. The background sounds are very much like grains of sand dripping onto a floor and crackling, shifting--giving an overall impression of a 'sand dancer' that can dance--or just as easily be blown away. I get an impression of both fluidity and fragility. I'm also reminded of the powerful, anthropomorphic sand-spirit that appeared in "The Mummy"; Do you know if they were similarly produced? Thanks for sharing!

@Rebecca - I know, it's hauntingly gorgeous, right? The sand-spirit animation in The Mummy was produced using motion capture as well, but I think with more 'traditional' methods of motion capture, i.e., using reflective balls and/or other reflective gear that is placed on the body that enables motion tracking (like this: http://flic.kr/p/8MJyW ). The actor Arnold Vosloos, who plays the mummy, said, "They had to put these little red tracking lights all over my face so they could map in the special effects." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mummy_(1999_film)#Special_effects) - A major difference between this method & the technique used to create the sand dancer mentioned in the article, is that the sand dancer was created using the Kinect, which doesn't need gear to be placed on the body in order to achieve motion tracking. Basically, the Kinect was a huge step in consumer versions of motion sensing because it enabled the user to move around and capture movement in 3D without an extra interface (no reflective balls or lights needed -- the body becomes the interface).