Virtual Marionette

In the 30th of April i´ve presented the Virtual Marionette demos to a reporter from a national news paper “Jornal Notícias”.

This is a great opportunity to show our work developments to the community.

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

Simple example on how to use bend sensors to control the mouth of a puppet like in glove puppets.

This project was created in 2009 using three bend sensors connected to an Arduino sending messages to Processing.

Patricio Gonzalez had a very interesting idea to track InfraRed dots using PingPong balls.

Then, he uses CCV which sends TUIO messages to a openFrameWork application that can be downloaded here

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

Developed in 2012 | Digital puppetry | Interactive installation

Puppet Parade is a magnificent good looking interactive installation developed by Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson.  Microsoft Kinect captures the motion of the hand of the digital puppeteer which drives a very awesome bird. They develop and implement a method to recognize the opening and closing of the hand that controls the mouth of the bird.

Puppet parade link: http://www.creativeapplications.net/openframeworks/puppet-parade-openframeworks/

There are many novel approaches based on microsoft kinect to animate real puppets using body motion:

Robot Kinect

Hanson RoboKind Zeno R-30 Kinect Demo

Whole-body Imitation of Human Motions with a Nao Humanoid

Developed in 2011 | Physical digital puppetry | Interactive installation

Ralph Kistler and Jan Sieber developed an animatronic marionette  from a monkey plush toy. This award winning interactive installation (New Face award in 15th Japan media arts festival) responds to the user body motion by moving a monkey toy that is hanged on the wall.  The system is based on a Microsoft Kinect device using the OpenNI framwork with the OSCeleton to track the users motion. Then, the capture data is sent via OSC to the a Processing program adjusting the joint angles to be sent again to an Arduino (microcontroller) that is located inside the puppet. The Arduino board controls ten servo motors attached to a skeleton that makes the monkey come alive.

for more information please visit: http://www.subtours.com/cms/node/76

Developed in 2011 | Digital puppetry project | Interactive installation

Yoke made an impressive virtual puppet to be used as an interactive installation at the front-store of Fredericia Theater (Denmark) promoting the musical performance of Avenue Q. Yoke developed a virtual puppet monster character based on the original Avenue Q character that is animated by the users manipulation using a Microsoft Kinect interface. The funny character covered with fur as a very cool look. The interaction is limited to the motion of the users hands, but by keeping it simple the users get a positive experience. By pressing some buttons with the monsters hands the users get access to extra functions like information about the performance.

A very interesting digital puppetry experience as an interactive public installation.