Virtual Marionette

Accepted for publication for CHI 2012 (ACM Digital Library)

Use your body as a puppetry controller giving life to a virtual silhouette through acting.

We present a solution that allows real-time interactive control of virtual shadow puppets for performance animation based on body motion.
The interaction with the virtual silhouette with this method is somehow similar to the hand shadow performance, where the performer models his hands to create the illusion of a shape, is like mixing the performance of an actor with the manipulation of a puppeteer.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNKefNALEwQ&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Virtual Marionette is a research on digital puppetry, an interdisciplinary approach that brings the art of puppetry into the world of digital animation. Inspired in the traditional marionette technology our intention is to study novel interfaces as an interaction platform for creating artistic contents based on computer animated puppets. The overall goal of this thesis is to research and deploy techniques and methods for the manipulation of articulated puppets in real-time with low-cost interfaces to establish an interaction model for digital puppetry.

Anin-Actor received Honorable Mention for best Breaking Results at ACE 2011.

Honorable Mention

AnimActor: Understanding Interaction with Digital Puppetry using Low-Cost Motion Capture
Luís Leite and Veronica Orvalho

Anim-Actor Poster for ACE 2011

An international event about digital media in Porto.

I have participated in the Digital Media Doctoral Symposium presenting the work-in-progress.

Also i have published a poster for this event.

IPADATA is a digital puppetry experiment using a touch surface IPAD to control a puppet in real-time.
The Ipad can control many control points at the same instance at real-time.

Workflow: IPAD send messages to Osculator via TUIpad which translate this messages into Animata via OSC protocol mapping joints to each control point.

Art festival mixing digital and traditional arts from architecture to design, from music to digital media.

WIIMATA is a digital puppetry experiment using 2 WIImotes to control a puppet in real-time.

Workflow: WIImote send messages to Osculator which translate and scale this messages into Animata via OSC protocol mapping joints to each Wiimote.

I was present at one of the best historical portuguese puppet show with Bonecos de St. Aleixo.

The play was called “O Auto da Criação do Mundo” from the Centro Dramático de Évora.

The amazing little puppets “títeres” are manipulated with upper rods like the ones from south Italy or north Europe but they are very small in size with 40 cm.