A very interesting performance made by the volunteer participants with amazing puppets.
PAGES
VIRTUAL MARIONETTE
DIGITAL PUPPETRY RESEARCH
Porto International Marionette Festival 2011
A unique opportunity to contact with different performances and marionette perspectives.
The Jim Henson Doodle features six original Muppet characters whose shapes are similar to the Google logo.
Moving the mouse the puppets move as they were manipulated by a puppeteer.
Authors: Leite, L., Orvalho, Veronica
Year: 2011
This article was published in ACE 2011 (ACM Digital Library)
Anim-actor is an experiment to understand user interaction with biped puppets using low cost motion capture and is a part of our main research in digital puppetry.
Our goal was to study how non expert artistic (animators, performers, puppeteers) interact with puppets using their body””””s as controllers in different actions and different puppets in particular with 2d / 3d puppets.
We conducted an experiment with 54 participants using the Microsoft Kinect as interface.
The interaction with the 3d puppet was very natural like a player in a motion-driven game or a actor in a motion capture system.
The Interaction with a 2d puppet was a really challenge to the participants because it presented some constraints and didn””””t reflect all the body movements. The participants instead of reproducing the action with their body””””s, tried different approaches, using their body””””s as a indirect controller., like pulling the strings from a marionette or using their hands to produce silhouette shadows . In this way, interacting with a 2d puppets is similar to the marionette manipulation, and the “puppeteer” becomes an interactor.
A lecture by Donal Norman at FEUP.
Very impressive lecture starting with just a few and very small notes to guide him, Donald made a very interesting travel from the past into the future.
Donald Norman is an academic in the field of cognitive science, design and usability engineering and a co-founder and consultant with the Nielsen Norman Group. He is the author of the book The Design of Everyday Things.
He has a very nice ideas about interfaces and interaction design using gestures and touch.
It was a well reward lecture for my investigation.
Thank you Norman.
Kine-Puppet Show is another demonstration using the Microsoft Kinect as a motion capture interface to control a virtual marionette inside a little puppet show environment.
Adaptation of a Marionette play (paper theater) with the title “Convidado de Pedra” to a more flexible format for road shows for TFA (Teatro de Formas Animadas). The original play was made by Teatro de S.João.
The participation for this play was focus on the searching and implementing a multimedia solution for show control video/audio and lights. The final solution for this particular show was: using Qlab and Dlight software with virtual midi machine.
This participations are very important to introduce multimedia in plays.
convidado de pedra
Real Time 3D Puppet Animation
reActor – real time 3d puppet animation using a low-cost motion capture system based on the Microsoft depth camera.
Using body movement for controlling a 3D virtual marionette.
This is a low-cost animation solution for performance animation (real-time productions)
Hardware:
Microsoft Kinect depth camera for mark-less motion capture (accessible and simple calibration)
Macbook with OSX 10.6
Software solution:
OpenNI framework
Avin PrimeSense for skeletal model
SenseBloom OSCeleton for joint information transmission via OSC protocol
Autodesk Maya for character modeling
Unity game engine for real-time animation with OSC data
INTERFACE: Microsoft Kinect
Foto from Pedro Martins
Collaboration in the project “Prometeu – O que é um Gamelão” produced by Teatro de Formas Animadas and the Casa da Musica of Porto. Collaboration in the multimedia design system of a semi-digital shadow puppetry show Wayang type, with gamelan music. The Java silhouettes from Java had great popularity and are famous for their pictures. The wayang is a general term referring to a theatrical performance that combined with another word, defines the type of puppet, for example: Wayan ggolek, rod puppets made of wood, this theatrical performance is usually accompanied by a gamelan music.
The proposal was to build a multimedia system that allows the projection of a film edited in real time. The film made by capturing a light table where the silhouettes were manipulated on a sand background.
With this system it was possible to create a cinematic language, particularly by creating different levels of camera, camera movement, animation and special effects in real time.
The results were very good, not only by the technological platform, but also the artistic platform. This show was on the scene several times in Casa da Música, Teatro de Vila do Conde, and in February 2011 was presented in four performances at the Auditori in Barcelona.
more information at www.grifu.com
I have the privilege to get to know Prof. Sally-Jane Norman at a Masterclass in FEUP (University of Porto).
Jane Norman is the Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts).
She is a great reference for the digital performing arts exploring the bridge between art and technology, and as been working and publishing in this fields since the 80´s. She collaborated with many organizations like the International Institute of Puppetry (Charleville-Mézières).
She inspires this research.
