Just a few hours ago we posted the official video of Groot from the end of Guardians of the Galaxy dancing his tiny twiggy heart out. But as much as we want to pretend that giant talking trees are real and hanging out in actual space, Groot does not actually exist. So whose dance moves were those, really?
In an interview with Yahoo! and later on Twitter, James Gunn admitted that he was the one who provided the motion capture moves for Groot’s dancing, which was originally meant to be a mid-credit sequence before the director decided that it was too amazing to risk people leaving the theater before seeing it (although they should all know better by now in a Marvel film). He said:
“Baby Groot dancing is 100 percent me… I was too embarrassed for anyone to be there, so I made everyone leave the room and I set up a camera and I videotaped myself dancing. Then I sent the video to the animators and had them animate over that. I begged them not to leak the video! Two of my closest friends came to an early screening and said ‘Hey, I recognize those moves! That’s you dancing isn’t it?!’”
This, of course, begs another question: does James Gunn usually dance like a potted plant? Or is he just a very heavy proponent of arm-flailing in his general day-to-day life?
[Update]Â As a number of much more animation-savvy commenters and readers have pointed out, we messed up: technically the process by which Gunn’s dance moves were translated to Groot is called keyframing and isn’t actually motion-capture. So I learned something new today (that I totally already should have known). The post has been edited to reflect that. Sorry, all!
(via Pajiba)
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