digital puppetry

Interactive Kinect Puppets

Shortly after the Kinect was launched in late 2010 Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson from Design I/O used it make a quick interactive puppet protoype by skeleton tracking on an arm. Their updated 2.0 installation above, Puppet Parade, looks great fun, allowing

children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or making food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.

The unedited clip where it is easier to see the movements in more focus is also interesting. Although these are made differently they share some qualities with Philip Worthington’s earlier Shadow Monsters.

Machin-X: digital puppetry

Andrew from PuppetVision, has opened another blog,Machin-X to do with digital puppetry. In his introductory post, Andrew defines digital puppetry as distinct from 3D animation and motion capture:

I define digital puppetry – at least for the purposes of this blog – as the manipulation and performance of digital objects and characters in real-time using a mouse, joystick or some other kind of input device. The forthcoming Jim Henson series Francis? That’s digital puppetry. Machinima? That’s a homebrewed form of digital puppetry. This is definitely digital puppetry too.

Keep an eye on Machin-X as it documents projects and explores developments in a very new field.