On the Move

Diane Sears | 5/1/2007

House of Moves studio in Los Angeles

A Los Angeles company that records movements and converts them into animation will become one of the anchor tenants for what Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer calls a "creative village" where people in the digital media field will work and live. House of Moves, which has worked on numerous films and dozens of console and PC games, announced in March it plans to open the only "motion-capture" soundstage in the Southeast in Orlando.

The move will bring business to Florida that's now being handled in other locations such as California and Vancouver, Canada. The company will share a campus with the University of Central Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy starting this fall, says Brooke Bonnett, a business development manager for the city. It will occupy about 4,000 square feet of the former expo center UCF leases from the city. Terms of the deal are still in the works.

The creative village project is planned for the current site of the Amway Arena, which Dyer and other central Florida leaders want to replace with a new facility several blocks south.

The arrangement will allow UCF students to train on the company's equipment, which is designed and built by its parent company, Vicon. "There's no other school in the nation whose students will have access to that caliber of equipment," Bonnett says. "That's a huge win for UCF."

"This puts us at the cutting edge of where entertainment is going," says Suzy Allen, vice president of Film and Digital Media Development for the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission and head of the Metro Orlando Film and Entertainment Commission. "It puts us more on a global stage."

Tags: Central