Jack stands in a grey t-shirt and jeans under an entrapment of cameras.
He seems almost ensnared by the metal birdcage which pins itself to the
floor around him, 20 lenses pointed in his face.
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He's not fazed by it, mind, and neither are any of the footballers
who sit within, one by one, faces steely and blank in a whir of flashes,
then with teeth bore in the light and eyebrows - Jack instructs each
one - 'pointed downwards as if you're angry.'
For the uninitiated, this futuristic scene doesn’t look right. To a
degree, it's reminiscent of school picture days as the photographer's
subjects are shepherded in front of a camera - in this case two dozen
cameras - and encouraged to pull various examples of unnatural looks,
perhaps unwillingly, but ultimately excited to see the final product. In
true adolescent fashion, there are even concerns about complexion.
But it's not school picture day and instead this, of course, is the
annual process which Electronic Arts have to go through in order to
capture every angle for the graphics used in forging each player from
Europe's top leagues for their yearly EA SPORTS FIFA games.
Gearing up to launch EA SPORTS FIFA 20 - the latest incarnation -
into highly-pixelated life, Jack is winding down for the day having
spent the last four months travelling across England and Europe setting
up and then dismantling his daunting cage of cameras, lasers, lights and
wires.
It's nine cases," he explains, taking a brief break from packing
away to speak with cpfc.co.uk as his colleague continues the near-innate
process.
"We can get it on an aeroplane between two people. It runs on a
synchronised system so, from our main computer, we fire all the cameras
and the lights at the same time to grab a 180 degree or more image which
goes above and below the chin.
"We spin them [the players] around, do the back of the head, the top
of the head and then that gets stitched together to make a 3D model of
the football player which then gets painted, turned into their likeness
and put into the video game."
In the middle of all of that, Jack and his team also shoot
'micro-expressions', where the players frown, grit their teeth and
manipulate their faces in such a way that EA's computers can track the
most minute movements in their muscles in order to replicate real-life
expressions during gameplay. The attention to detail is staggering.
"One thing that players of the game want is escapism, isn’t it?”
Jack says. “It’s hard to be a professional footballer yourself. Gaming
the closest you can get so they want it to look like the real deal and
that’s why our job is so important. We have to make sure we have the
best technology, the best graphics and update them so we stay on top of
the game.
"Even though we’re at the top level for what we’re doing, we still
work for those incremental gains that you can improve even just the
slightest bit. You’ve always got to get better and better."But to
achieve this requires quite remarkable sacrifice from Jack and his team
alongside a host of trials and challenges on top of the usual obstacles
that working in football creates.
Based in Yorkshire, Jack spends eight months a year capturing
players' images and tends to enjoy just two days a week in his own house
as he travels across the continent. Facing the unenviable task of
setting 20 cameras and lights to shoot within the same frame (typically
about a 40th of a second), he's up against it and has to repeat the
process 500 times for the Premier League alone. 500 times, and then any
players under-21
Once England has been ticked off the list, he then takes the
birdcage across Europe - 20 cameras et al - and continues to snap every
follicle on show for the world's top footballers.Want to buy mut 19
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