Business Innovation Fund case study – Black Laboratory Ltd

Established in 2008 and based at Puppet Place on Bristol’s harbourside, The Black Laboratory is a distinguished development studio in the West of England’s creative ecosystem. Specialising in creating models, characters, stories, puppets, prosthetics, animation, and visual effects, they bring together teams with extensive expertise to support film, TV, commercials, theatre, live games, and events production.

With a remarkable client list including Aardman, the BBC, Ridley Scott, Cadbury’s, and Lego, The Black Laboratory has solidified its presence in the industry. Beyond traditional projects, they also engage in live performances at steam punk events, live-action role-playing game weekends, and various festivals. Notably, they were part of the Weirdos puppet band that supported Coldplay on their recent UK tour.

For their project – Suddenly Puppets, they continue to develop new products. Black Laboratory wanted to explore creating a way to allow digital animated and controlled characters to be performed using the techniques of physical puppet performance. With skilled puppeteers, a puppet can exist as a performer on-set alongside other performers, can interact and be interacted with, with its own character and personality

Aim of their project

The primary objectives of their research and development (R&D) project involved exploring and advancing technologies and systems essential for the performance of digital animated and controlled characters using the methods of physical puppetry. This initiative aimed to enhance The Black Laboratory's animation capabilities and open new market opportunities.

The current businesses, systems, and technologies which provide performance-driven digital characters and processing models of movement are often focused on human motion capture. Such digital characters used in the creative industries, even those characters not shaped like real humans, will move with a motion derived from humans.

Actors are used to bring these digital characters to life. The digital systems used to capture human motion have applications outside the entertainment sphere, for example in health and safety engineering, ergonomics and security.

The challenge

When a story features characters that don't look like humans, it's challenging to make them move realistically using traditional methods. Currently, animators use time-consuming non-realtime techniques, or modified human motion capture and complex processing to bring these characters to life. This limits creativity and makes changes difficult.

An alternative approach is to start by creating the non-human character as a puppet, giving it the right range of movement. Skilled puppeteers can then manipulate the puppet in real-time, allowing it to share scenes and interact with live actors. This live-directed puppet performance offers flexibility for multiple takes, resulting in faster and more authentic scenes.

Their project was at the right stage in the journey to apply for the Business Innovation Fund, taking a proof of concept forward to produce a working prototype demonstrator. They planned on developing technology that could be licensed in future, building their company value and raising the profile of the creative industry sector in the West of England.

The application was impressive because they clearly explained their project plan. They had a good team in place, led by a Senior Responsible Officer, which made it seem likely they could successfully complete the project. They did thorough research on how to bring their product to market and where it fits in the market. Overall, they showed they really understand the animation industry, its competition, and how to make their product stand out.

What R&D will they be undertaking

The project set out to develop custom puppet capture systems. Achieving this involved creatively blending bespoke-created and existing systems for sensing, motion control, motion capture, facial capture, data transfer, and computer animation, utilising various software and protocols.

It would be important for the output files, protocols and systems to be compatible with existing animation, digital and performance formats, for wider applicability.

The R&D would result in a unique movement recording system which interfaces with industry standard communication and software protocols. It needed to be sensitive enough to digitally capture detailed physical nuances, and robust enough to operate accurately and continuously for extended periods of time.

Future plans

The project initially aimed at capturing the movement of a basic arm. This approach enabled initial testing to address technical challenges and manage project finances effectively. As of the summer of 2023, they have successfully built and showcased a prototype capable of capturing the movement of a full puppet, presenting it at the 2023 Bristol Tech Fest.

Subsequently, The Black Laboratory became a part of the UK Research and Investment (UKRI) funded MyWorld accelerator program. This program, supported by the University of Bristol and NVIDIA, brings together creative technology businesses from the West of England to further develop and grow their ventures.

More recently, they have been announced as one of seven West of England business to be accepted onto the UKRI MyWorld Collaborative Research And Development scheme, working in partnership with a team at University of Bristol.

Director Ben Mars comments, ‘As a result of support from the Business Innovation Fund we are now able to create non-human digital character movement in a manner closer to a live shoot than conventional animation or character adjusted human motion capture. As the puppet’s performance can be captured digitally, we can add to and enhance the characters with detail and levels of animation and movement that would not be possible with a live puppet. This brings the best of both worlds - the benefits of live performance with added animation.’