So this is my 5 minute brush with fame. Since 2001, I’ve been involved with the Mortal Kombat video game franchise as a motion capture artist. In layman’s speak, I do the martial arts moves that the video game characters do in the game. When it’s mentioned people always wonder what my involvement was and I always tell them to look on Youtube. To make it easy for me, I’ve decided to consolidate all the stuff I did for the Mortal Kombat games so far in one easy to find blog post.

This was the first MK game I was involved in. So I lied about the title because this is not technically an intro, but I didn’t have anything to do with the intro of this game. However, I feel like this teaser trailer clip is reflective of the work I did for the game. Keep an eye out for a 720 front sweep with a broadsword at 0:34. Ah, those were the days.

I have a little beef with this game because somebody at Midway dropped the ball and as a result, my friend Kevin and I were not credited. That said however, I really loved the intro. Kevin, Carlos (Pesina) and I pretty much did the whole intro. During the 3 man fight, I was Raiden – how cool is that? When it was just the 2 bad guys, I was Shang Tsung and Kevin played Quan Chi. What’s funny is at the time – I had long hair and Kevin shaved his head. I wonder if that had anything to do with the characters we played. Personally I had a different idea of where to take the fight. If Raiden could teleport at will, I would have had him simultaneously fight the 2 bad guys, teleporting all over the place. Imagine a Dragon Ball fight scene where he teleports behind, kicks the guy, guy flies over, he teleports above, bashes them down followed by a lightning bolt. I think that would have been pretty cool.

This game is a departure from the regular MK franchise in that it wasn’t a one-on-one fight game, but a platform fighter ala Double Dragon or Golden Axe from the old days. I don’t recall doing too many moves for the actual gameplay but we were heavily involved in the cinematic intro. Although you see many characters on screen at once, most of it was done by Kevin and I. I got to play Liu Kang in this one. Apparently I ham it up pretty well.

The MK Armageddon cinematic intro was probably one of the biggest undertakings of the MK franchise as far as intros were concerned. All the characters in the MK universe were present for one big battle. This cinematic was fun for 2 reasons: 1 we got to play with weapons and 2 we had to work with a staircase for the pyramid fights. I got to reprise my role as Liu Kang – this time as a cool undead zombie wield double chains.

Recently, my friend Ray and I have been working on MK vs DC. I don’t want to give too much away, but from what I’ve seen of the game so far, it’s going to rock. You guys at E3 are going to be in for a real treat. If only I can get Ed Boon to let me go to E3 on Midway dime. One can dream. Click here for some photos of me doing motion capture for the MK vs DC.