This Company Makes Motion Capture a Cinch

You don't need a black belt to work at Organic Motion--but it might help. "We have a [quality assurance] guy we brought in who does kung fu," says Evan Simeone, chief product officer for the New York City-based company, a specialist in motion-capture technology, which records movement and translates it into three-dimensional digital imagery. "He tests the system doing all these jumps, kicks, flips and things like that ... and we're tracking all of it."

Traditionally used in movies and video games, motion capture creates 3-D data that can be altered and manipulated. It's the same type of technology--typically achieved by filming actors in spandex suits covered in "markers" that look like ping-pong balls, identifiable by image-processing software--that gave life to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and created the lanky, blue aliens in Avatar.