LogInChief Marketing Officer at Vicon Chris Hoskin has told us about the company's story and working organization, discussed their motion capture solutions, and explained how Vicon's tech was used for Snoop Dogg's "Crip Ya Enthusiasm" music video.
Introduction
I'm Chris Hoskin, the Chief Marketing Officer for Vicon. I joined the business earlier this year after serving as Regional Director of Marketing – EMEA for Narvar. I've led global marketing for a number of B2B technology companies over the past 15+ years and am really happy to have landed at Vicon. The company has been leading the motion capture industry for over 35 years, and to see our products in action with some of the biggest names in film production, gaming, life sciences and engineering is incredibly compelling. The power of our technology and the growth in the motion capture market speaks for itself.
The Story of Vicon
Vicon has been around since 1984 and now has a truly global presence, from our headquarters in England to Singapore, the US, Australia, Brazil and beyond. We've revolutionized the motion capture industry, consistently pushing the boundaries for what's possible and compelling our customers to do the same.
Vicon provides tailored motion capture systems for the life sciences, entertainment, virtual reality and engineering industries. We've been a major force in the life sciences industry since our founding and established a strong foothold in the engineering industry by 1987. The company expanded into the entertainment industry in 1995 and extended our product range to include inertial sensors in 2017. While Vicon has been helping customers deliver virtual reality since 2009, we launched our first active virtual reality system in 2018. We design and manufacture our own hardware, software, apps, and accessories.
Today, we have customers in over 70 countries spanning dozens of industries. But we don't rest on our success. It is really noticeable that our teams are continuously motivated to push the envelope to inspire creativity and challenge what's possible with motion capture.
GDC 2023
We were excited to have GDC back in full strength, with large exhibitors like Unreal and Meta in attendance. With over 28,000 attendees, it was a great platform to reconnect with the industry, which has seen a ton of growth over the past few years since we were last together in person.
During GDC 2023, we featured the latest version of our Shōgun VFX platform. Shōgun 1.8 builds upon the product's best in class low latency tracking for both film and virtual cameras, improvements to character retargeting and many more features optimized for virtual production.
Additionally, we showcased our line of cameras, including our newest – Valkyrie. With a resolution of up to 26MP, Valkyrie offers unparalleled clarity. It includes easier aiming and monitoring than our other cameras, can capture movement in any environment and its native speeds can capture the fastest motion. Valkyrie delivers true-to-life retargeting for studios of all sizes and really sets the industry standard for motion capture in so many ways.
We were hosting demo presentations and drew on the expertise of some of our partners in the booth, including the team from Astro Project, the indie production studio that deployed Vicon for Snoop Dogg's recent "Crip Ya Enthusiasm" music video. In the video, Astro Project tapped the power of our mocap technology to bring Snoop's vision to life for Larry Dogg, a combination of himself and Larry David (yes, you read that correctly).
All in all, the show was great fun, and the team was happy to be back in person this year.
Vicon's Mocap Solutions
The best part about Vicon is that we provide the entire 360-degree range of products and services needed for customers to achieve motion capture excellence. From the cameras, to the sensors, to the data capture software for real-time tracking and insights, we span the board. This is why production studios behind some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters and most popular games continue to choose Vicon, from Hogwarts Legacy to Mandalorian, to Batman.
We uniquely have the knowledge and expertise learned from our inception in the biomechanics world to share with the VFX world and enhance the industry's work in meaningful ways. Our ability to capture true-to-life motion in such a precise way surprises and delights viewers and is something we take great pride in.
The R&D Department and Working Organization
While primarily based in the HQ in the UK, we have development teams distributed across the world, and they do exactly as you said – help us get to the next level. R&D has always been at the heart of the company’s DNA and the team size has been growing quickly for a number of years. R&D informs our strategic direction and spans hardware, software and everything else related to delivering motion capture innovation to the market. It’s cool for me to see that innovation first-hand and early in the development cycles. My team is excited about bringing these to the market.
While our global footprint feels big, Vicon favors small focused teams, which allows for a tight and effective management culture. We collaborate across all verticals, so products aren't developed in isolation. That consistency has helped us create for, and sell, across such a wide range of industries from sports, biomechanics, aerospace, engineering, robotics to film and game production. Our products deliver the same impact no matter how or where they're being used – allowing our customers to capture, analyze and leverage motion of all kinds.
Future Plans
We've been very focused on getting our Valkyrie cameras into the market, as demand has been huge. We launched the product last summer, so this is still our primary focus with customers, prospects and, of course, our distribution teams around the world.
Whilst we keep our roadmap pretty private, I can say it is evolving quickly and we're listening to what customers and prospects need to make their jobs easier. However, what I have found in my brief time at Vicon is that by revolutionizing the motion capture industry over 35 years, we have a brilliant foundation to pioneer the range of technologies that allow our customers to capture and analyze motion. We’ve got some innovations in the pipeline that will excite people passionate about motion capture. We listen, we ideate and we create. That's our cyclical process.