Virtual Marionette

The use of virtual marionettes in television begun with Jim Henson with Waldo.

Fraggle Rock was a television series that applied some of the most advanced puppetry technology

The Doozers characters were Animatronics controlled by remote

A research project for developing tools for dance creation and education. This amazing project started in 2011 in Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) where professionals in dance and technology shared their knowledge.

Now there is a open source Toolkit available to download: RAMDanceToolkit

YCAM InterLab + Yoko Ando Joint Research and Development Project “Reactor for Awareness in Motion (RAM)”

Caitlin Boyle and Asa Foster developed We Be Monsters for the Interactive Art & Computational Design  course in Carnegie Mellon University in 2011.

This is a great project that shows how two puppeteers can manipulate a virtual monster.

https://vimeo.com/20367106

In the beginning of 2013 Seth Hunter made a very interesting and helpful video showing different digital puppetry methods to achieve performance animation.

Friedrich Kirchner is developing since 2009 an amazing open-source 3D real-time animation tool for easy sketching.

Instead of the standard modeling process, the user just draws the objects or characters in the canvas or scan them from a Microsoft Kinect obtaining a very peculiar expression.

By presenting a node-based system the user can map interfaces for live performances or trigger sequences.

This is a great tool for creatives that can be used in many scenarios, like digital puppetry or even to build presentations.

Movie Sandbox site: http://www.moviesandbox.net

Movie Sandbox digital puppetry example using arduino to connect to a real sock interface

Another great example from 2008 is the manipulation of a virtual marionette using GameTrak and Wiimote