Mr. Yuji Shimomura, a director who specializes in action scenes, was appointed as the director of the game cinematics, and this project started with joint development of a scenario with the game development team of Capcom. After completion of the scenario, storyboards and then videomatics were prepared for the initial design of screen images. MoCap (motion capture) was basically used for character animation. Originally we planned to use American actors, but switched to Japanese actors, and videomatics were prepared in Japan. The reason we used Japanese actors were that we judged that it would be best to do the process by exchanging opinions between Japanese staff for the director's designing actions and camera work. At the same time, the completed videomatics were also used to estimate the necessary number of days for MoCap shooting and to judge if it could actually be performed by an actor. The process led to an efficient shooting, which contributed to the cost reduction.

After that, we organized auditions and rehearsals to decide the actor for MoCap shooting in Los Angeles and Tokyo, and the actual shooting was performed in Tokyo. During MoCap shooting, the videomatics served as a good communication tool between staff from Japan and from the United States. Video recording was done simultaneously to prepare more precise motion capture videomatics by using real acting.

For this work, we intended to create "crazy actions which are impossible in live action shoots", so we needed to prepare more exaggerated and stylish actions as well as ones with real actions by using MoCap. So, we went through a process to manually refine actions shot with MoCap.

Preparation of motion data is a major part of the preparation of real time graphics, and not the preparation of actual screen images. All the preparation and adjustments of motions were performed with Softimage | XSI, but the editing of created motions was handled by a special animation controller. After that, the data was imported into a proprietary tool for PS2 to add effects. The game development team of Capcom developed a special tool for this game, so we used the same tool for our production. The development tool has been enhanced as necessary, which resulted in a tool which specializes in screen image productions as well as development of games.