There's a new Jedi on the scene, and she's fighting for her very survival in a universe where every man, woman, and creature may be against her. She's Maris Brood, and she's one of the stars of the new Star Wars video game, The Force Unleashed.
Maris Brood is brought to life for the game by former Xena: Warrior Princess star Adrienne Wilkinson, whose credits include The Sopranos: Road to Respect, and Scooby Doo 2. In those games, only her voice accompanied the animator's vision of the character. However in The Force Unleashed it's Wilkinson herself who forms the physical basis for the character, thanks to a new motion capture technique used by LucasArts.
While not every character in The Force Unleashed is animated in this way, a handful were chosen to go through the entire process, and Wilkinson counts herself lucky to be among them. "I was in their first batch of auditions, and they've told me since that they knew immediately I was the right person, because they thought I resembled the concept art and could really bring the character to life. It was one of those great meetings where everything jelled."
Wilkinson was awed by the sheer scope of the project. "All of the voice work was done in this amazing studio," she explains. "It was very high tech, and they captured every piece of it on film so they could see how we were moving."
The most unusual part for Wilkinson was when LucasArts' technicians began taking some very odd photographs. "We had to make very strange, but very specific faces," Wilkinson says. "With the combination of looks, they're able to capture every single one of the muscles in your face. When they input it into the computer, they can show how your face and musculature would react under different circumstances -- so if there was something they missed, it realistically could be created and look completely legitimate. Then I had to sit in a machine and be completely still while they took a 360-degree digital image. It was so detailed. They got everything from each hair to skin pores." With additional information gleaned using traditional motion capture techniques -- with "dots" applied all over actors' skin for detailed computer tracking -- the final images were fully malleable renditions of the cast. LucasArts' attention to detail seemingly knew no limits. "Because they were so intent on detail, they took actual photos of the insides of our mouths and meshed them with our characters!" Wilkinson says. "Apparently, the skeletal structure is so important that if the teeth aren't set right in the computer, the face will look a little off."
The actress laughs when she's asked just who is Maris Brood. "The truth is I will be excited as everybody else when the game comes out to figure out exactly what my story is!" she admits. "It's like working in film and TV. I have no idea what they've edited. I don't know how much of my story remains, or if they've been able to expand on it." Maris Brood is a female Jedi, "and as anyone who knows about the Star Wars universe can tell you, it's a really scary time to be a Jedi." Having survived Emperor Palpatine's Order 66, Brood is simply "trying to survive."
Read the full interview in issue 105 of Star Wars Insider Magazine on newsstands November 4th. For more information visit www.titanmagazines.com/starwars
