Rebecca-louise Leybourne
The Imaginarium’s facial technical artist explains how a perfect smile shaped her career path
ARTIST profile Rebecca-louise Leybourne Rebecca-louise is a facial technical artist at The Imaginarium Studios who’s worked on Godzilla and Avengers: Age of Ultron. She blogs @Thatmocapgirl www.bit.ly/mocap-girl
Being inspired is the best part of being a creative person, and while the littlest of things can inspire the biggest of ideas, I always feel lucky that I grew up with so much on offer to help me decide what I wanted to do for a living.
Through the 90s I had a front row seat of being able to watch as film and animation progressed into the digital age – from the beginning of Pixar, to my favourite books becoming huge franchises.
I can still remember in 2009 when I was at university studying animation and visual effects and trying to figure out what part of the industry I could see myself in. When I went to see Avatar – which was the VFX filled film of the year – I came out spellbound. All I could think about afterwards was how much I wanted to know how they managed to get Sigourney Weaver’s smile so right.
Performance capture and facial animation in particular has fascinated me and been my drive since then. It took a lot of hard work but also a little bit of good old fashioned right place, right time luck to get my first job in the industry.
I’ve spent the past few years tracking and learning pipelines from start to finish, which I think is important, but now being a part of the newest wave of technology breakthroughs that is enabling new ways of being able to achieve that perfect smile, inspires me everyday. Although sometimes I still go back and watch the behind the scenes of Avatar to get that fix if I feel I need it. See more of Rebecca-louise’s work at imaginariumuk.com