Sid the Science Kid explains DTV

Sid the Science Kid helps explain digital television for the PBS Kids set.

Confused about this whole DTV thing that everybody (in the U.S. anyway) has been talking about? Well, let Sid the Science Kid help you make sense of it.

Monday Morning Inspiration: Bryn Oh

Bryn Oh is a virtual artist/avatar inside the online world of Second Life (photo credit: )

Lately, I've been really intrigued by the work of Bryn Oh, one of a number of ground-breaking artists who are creating virtual art inside Second Life (SL). Bryn Oh creates steampunk-inspired statues and three-dimensional environments that are really well-thought out and designed to make you deeply engage with them. If you spend some time exploring her work you're often rewarded with a story, a poem, or other special, secret hidden surprises.

One of the most interesting things about Bryn Oh is that she isn't real. She's a sort of "ghost artist"; the online avatar of a Canadian oil painter. Yet despite not being "real", Bryn Oh is increasingly gaining notice online that is totally separate from her creator, who prefers to remain anonymous. A book featuring Bryn Oh's work has already been published (Bryn Oh and the Tinies by Aiko Aichi and Ritva Nybacka) and there is even a Bryn Oh photo pool on Flickr where fans of her work post photos.

I never completely bought in to the hype about Second Life, but seeing work like Bryn Oh's makes me think that just as Friendster paved the way for Facebook, SL is blazing a trail for some sort of future online interactive virtual world where all sorts of things - including puppetry - will be transformed and reinvented in ways we can't possibly imagine.

If you're already a Second Life user, you can see Bryn Oh's work for yourself by visiting Immersiva. Non-SL users can watch Bryn Oh's Machinima videos of her work on Blip.tv (don't miss Ferrisquito, which is my personal favourite).

Monday Evening Inspiration: Machinima For Dummies

I received a copy of the latest book in the popular "Dummies" series - Machinima For Dummies - last week and it's fantastic. I think it's the most practical, useful book that's been written about Machinima yet. The two authors of the book are Machinima filmmaker Johnnie Ingram and Hugh Hancock, the Machinima pioneer who founded Machinima.com and Strange Company and also created and produced Bloodspell, the first feature length Machinima film.

Hugh was the first person to really make the case for Machinima as a new form puppetry and the book discusses a number of different methods for creating what the authors call "virtual puppeteering". If you're interested in Machinima or digital puppetry and looking for a way to get started this book is probably just what you're looking for.

Machinima For Dummies is available to order online through Amazon.com. You can also check out Hugh and Johnnie's blog for news and updates at www.machinimafordummies.com.

Mashing Up Pixels and Puppets

Panda Puppet is a new digital puppetry system being developed to create better looking Machinima with more expressive, relatable characters.

Long time readers of the blog are probably familiar with Machin-X, which I started back in December of 2005 as I got increasingly interested in Machinima and other ways that puppetry is being combined with new technology. Machinima is still developing technically and artistically and many "Machinimists" are realizing that they are creating a new type of puppetry . The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences has even started giving out an annual "Mackie" award for Best Virtual Performance: Puppeteering.

Unfortunately, one of the major drawbacks of Machinima is that in even the best films the expressiveness of the characters is awful compared to what someone can do with even the simplest sock puppet. Most Machinimists come from gaming and computer graphics backgrounds and when they talk about this problem the discussion often focuses on finding new and better graphics software to work with. It seems to me though that while better graphics couldn't hurt Machinima, what it really needs most is better, more expressive puppetry capabilities.

After all, who knows more about manipulating things and creating performances in real-time than puppeteers?

This isn't a new idea. Jim Henson was one of the first people to see the potential of digital puppetry and began experimenting with a digital version of Kermit in the mid-1980s, which led to Waldo C. Graphic. While Waldo is considered the first true digital puppet, he was at least partially based on work that various researchers had been doing as early as the late 1970s. Today, expensive high-end real-time animation systems are being built and used by companies like Henson (HDPS) and Industrial Light and Magic (Zviz) to create digital performances in real-time. What's really lacking is an affordable, accessible tool that's available to independent creators.

To try and address this problem for the past two months I've been working on an open-source digital puppetry system called Panda Puppet. When it's completed, Panda Puppet will be a free plug-in for Blender - the powerful free 3D creation suite - that will enable anyone to create and perform digital puppetry. I've just finished working out Panda Puppet's basic control system and I've posted a video of the latest head control system test on YouTube. This is just an early test. and there is a lot of work to be done before Panda Puppet is ready for full fledged filmmaking, but I'm pretty happy with my progress so far.

One of the cool things about Panda Puppet is that you can use almost anything you want to control a digital character - a mouse, joysticks, MIDI keyboards, even the Wiimote (for my tests I am using an off-the-shelf USB joystick). If you can plug it in to a computer, chances are it can be used to perform digtal puppetry with Panda Puppet.

Another neat thing is that because Panda Puppet works with Blender it's possible to record a performance and then edit it using Blender's animation tools before rendering out a final movie that looks much better than most of the Machinima being produced today. I am still writing the code to make that possible, but when I'm done it will be possible to take a real-time performance that looks like this:



and render it out to look like this:



It it's not quite Pixar, but it's not bad either.

For more information on Panda Puppet click here for all of the relevant posts on Machin-X.

Oh, and if you're interested in this, want to get involved and have a background in 3D modeling, texturing and/or rigging characters for animation we should talk.

Monday Morning Inspiration: iClone

iClone is an easy-to-learn 3D program that can be used to create animation and design 3D characters like this one by puppeteer Paul Louis.

iClone is an increasingly popular software package that lets you easily build and animate 3D characters. It's a very handy program if you're new to 3D animation or looking to quickly produce animatics and do pre-viz work for a film project. While iClone isn't really a full-fledged professional animation package yet, its authors at RealAllusion seem very dedicated to turning it in to a powerful, easy-to-use Machinima production studio. They gave a presentation about iClone at the 2006 Machinima Festival that provides a good overview of iClone and what it can do.

Because it's easy to learn and fairly powerful, a lot of people are using iClone to get their feet wet in animation, including several puppeteers who are doing interesting things with the software. One of iClone's early adopters and biggest boosters is Paul Louis (see previous post) who is a content developer for Real Allusion and writes the excellent daily MyClones for iClone blog where he shares iClone tips, tricks and tons of free character models. Paul recently put together a series of video tutorials explaining how to create characters in iClone.

Want to explore iClone and see what it can do? Get the free trial version or the new 2.0 iClone beta and see what you think.

Nintendo - A Digital Puppetry Pioneer

Nintendo's MIRT (Mario in Real-Time) digital puppetry system enables "live" appearances by Super Mario around the world.

Most people don't know this, but Nintendo is something of a pioneer in the field of digital puppetry. Since 1994 they have been using a system they call MIRT ("Mario in Real-Time") to have many of their iconic characters like Mario appear at trade shows and in-store promotional events. Here's a fun clip of MIRT in action with everyone's favourite Italian plumber bashing Sony, doing a Jack Nicholson impersonation and re-enacting a scene from Star Wars.

The earliest version of MIRT was a facial tracking system that ran on a Silicon Graphics super computer, but over the years the technology has been refined to the point where puppeteer Charles Martinet (the voice of Mario, Luigi and many of Nintendo's other characters) is able to work off a laptop at home and virtually perform characters all over the word. Charles briefly discusses his career as Mario & the gang in this short interview with GT.tv from last summer.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.