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).

Creature Shop Open House Recap

Puppeteers bring characters to life with the Jim Henson Company's patented Henson Digital Performance Studio.

Debra Kaufman has written a nice recap of the previously-blogged Siggraph/Visual Effects Society event at the Creature Shop (see previous post). A couple people who were there Tuesday night wrote in to tell me about it yesterday; it sounds like it was a great event!

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

Open House at The Creature Shop Next Week

Kermit the Frog greets visitors to the Jim Henson Company studio lot in Hollywood.

The Visual Effects Society and LA ACM SIGGRAPH are hosting a very cool-sounding open house of sorts at Jim Henson's Creature Shop next week called Innovation in Puppetry: From Animatronics to CGI next Tuesday, January 13th at 6 p.m. The program includes a presentation about the Creature Shop, a live demo of the Henson Digital Performance Studio, an audience Q & A, guided tours of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and self-guided tours of the rest of the Henson lot.

This event is free to LA ACM SIGGRAPH and Visual Effects Society members and $20 for non-members. New members who sign up on site and pay the $40 annual membership fee will be admitted for free. If you live in or near L.A. and have an interest in the Creature Shop's work or have always wanted to see the Henson lot, this sounds like an opportunity you shouldn't miss.

For more details and to RSVP go to www.visualeffectssociety.com.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

Note: You're supposed to RSVP at the Visual Effects Society web site, but I couldn't figure out how to do that so if you're planning to attend, it's probably best to email them directly to sign up.

Animata: Open Source Digital Puppetry

Reverse Shadow Theatre is an installation created with Animata digital puppetry software.

Animata is open source real-time animation (or digital puppetry) software that is "designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances". The goal of Animata is to make it really easy to create scenes with digital puppets that can be controlled via physical sensors, microphones or cameras.

Animata has already been used for a couple of interesting projects, including Animata Jazz Pub (an interesting demo that shows how the Animata software can be used to react to live audio input) and Reverse Shadow Theatre (an installation that was created with Animata, inspired by Wayang Kulit, an Indonesian form of shadow puppet theatre).

If you want to try playing around with the software yourself, the Animata software can be downloaded for free for both the Mac and PC. The source is licensed under the GPL and can also be downloaded from Google Code.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

Behind the Scenes of Sid the Science Kid

The new digital puppetry series Sid the Science Kid (see previous post) is now on the air and TV Guide recently went behind the scenes to see how the Jim Henson Company creates it. The Wall Street Journal has also been covering the show's unique production process.

Speaking of which, Brian Henson was in Silver Spring, MD at the AFI Silver Theatre yesterday and gave a presentation about the history of puppetry and how the Henson Co. has evolved over the years from Muppets to animatronics to it's latest work on Sid the Science kid using the Henson Digital Performance System.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

29/09/08 Update: Brian Henson's presentation was at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD and not the Centre for Puppetry Arts as I originally reported so I've updated the post accordingly. Brian actually spoke at the Centre for Puppetry Arts on Sunday and Harvey Deneroff has some coverage on his blog.

New Henson TV Shows

Sid The Science Kid is just one of several new shows coming to TV from the Jim Henson Company.

The Jim Henson Company must be a busy place to be these days; they've got a bunch of new projects in the works, including the previously-blogged Fraggle Rock movie and three new TV shows for kids! Jim Henson's Pajanimals is a live-action musical series that will debut on the Sprout cable channel in U.S. in November. The show features four soft, cuddly puppets that entertain and comfort viewers with bedtime-themed songs and stories.

Henson's long-in-development digital puppetry series Frances is based on a popular series of books from Russell Hoban, debuts on Sprout this summer as part of a new "Summer Fun Fridays" programming block that runs from June 20 until the end of August. Look for the first episode June 20, 2008 at 12:00pm (noon) in most markets (via The Muppet Newsflash).

Finally, Sid The Science Kid - another animated series made using the Henson Digital Performance System - debuts on PBS on Monday, September 1, 2008 as part of the PBS Kids programing block. "Sid" is a curriculum-based show designed to teach basic science basics to 3-6 year-olds using comedy.

Virtual Puppets Go in to The Dragon's Den

UK company Virtual Puppet creates digital characters like this one seen above.

Virtual Puppet, a UK company that "specializes in motion capture technologies and involves itself with the production of advertising, face to face experiential marketing and performance for theatre and live interactive television," was featured this past weekend on the British edition of Dragon's Den. For those unfamiliar with the show, the idea behind Dragon's Den is that entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure investment from a panel of business experts and self-made millionaires ("The Dragons"). The rules of the show stipulate that an entrepreneur must secure all of the financing they request from one or more Dragons or they go home with nothing. Virtual Puppet's Creative Director David Field appeared on the show to pitch the Dragons for £200,000 (roughly $410,000 US).

Virtual Puppet performs digital puppets at trade shows and retail locations using Alias' MotionBuilder software and the Gypsy motion capture system manufactured by Animazoo. You can see some examples of Virtual Puppet's work on YouTube.

Wondering how David made out? Find out for yourself this clip from the show (sorry, but IE on a Windows machine is required to view the clip).

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

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.

More Skrumps Stuff

The Skrumps are featured in a bunch of new content on Yahoo Kids.

This is kind of old news, but there's some new-ish content featuring the Henson Company's digital puppetry characters The Skrumps (see previous post) available on Yahoo Kids. The new material includes four new Skrumps videos, ecards and a few other downloadable goodies. Also, The Muppet Newsflash recently posted an interview with Victor Yerrid, who is one of the puppeteers working on The Skrumps.

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

One Puppeteer's Journey From Puppets to Pixels

A digital self-portrait by UK puppeteer and animator Craig Crane.

The fence that divides puppetry and animation is a pretty low one and lots of artists like Phil Vischer, Karen Prell, Mike Quinn, and Nate Pacheco (to name just a few) find themselves jumping from one side to the other mid-career and Craig Crane is another of those puppeteer/animator hybrids.

Craig started his career in the 1990s doing a lot of ground-breaking work in real-time animation and performance capture as well as conventional puppeteering on various projects in England, France and Isreal, but these days he's an animator for Double Negative, a British effects shop. Craig discussed his transition from puppetry to animation in a two part interview with 3D World Magazine last fall (click to read part one and part two).

Craig seems to be pretty happy in the animation world these days, but I really hope he keeps a hand (no pun intended) in the puppetry world. He really is a brilliant puppeteer and his preschool puppetry and Real-Time Animation demo reels are especially enjoyable, so be sure to take a look at them.

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.

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.

Where's Waldo?

I'm looking for a high quality picture of Waldo C. Graphic, the world's first digital puppet.

I'm putting together an educational presentation about digital puppetry and Machinima for something and need a little help...any chance any PuppetVision readers out there have a nice, high quality picture of Waldo C. Graphic? Say 640x480 pixels or larger perhaps? If you do and you can share please email me at puppetvision [at] gmail dot com. Thanks!

How Shadowmation Works

A drawing from the U.S. patent for the Shadowmation puppetry system.

I've written before about Mitchell Kriegman's patented Shadowmation system (see previous post) that combines Bunraku-style puppetry with digital sets in real-time. Google recently launched a new patent search feature and I decided to test drive it by looking up the U.S. patent for Shadowmation. It's a fairly dry and technical read, but interesting stuff.

The Skrumps: Behind The Scenes

A new video on Henson.com takes you behind the scenes of The Skrumps.

Henson.com has posted a behind-the-scenes video about the making of The Skrumps, their new digital puppetry characters (see previous post). It's fairly short, but gives you a nice overview of the Henson Digital Performance System and how their digital studio works.

Thanks to C.B. for the alert!

Henson debuts The Skrumps

The Jim Henson Company is developing a new animated property called The Skrumps, based on a line of colourful, monster-like toy characters created by artist John Chandler. The series is being produced using the Henson Digital Performance System and looks very promising. John Chandler, Skrumps puppeteer Victor Yerrid and Henson's head of Children's Programming Halle Stanford discuss The Skrumps and their development in the latest episode of the Henson.com podcast.

The Skrumps debuted today in four new videos available at Yahoo! Kids for a limited time. Be sure to take a look!

Cross-posted from Machin-X: Digital Puppetry.

CG Animated Puppets Mambo Italiano

Puppet-like CG animated characters dance with French actor Gérard Darmon in Mambo Italiano.

There's lots of great puppetry and puppet-inspired work going on in France. Last week I mentioned Jerome Murat's amazing Statue Act and I just watched a great video of Mambo Italiano with French actor Gérard Darmon. To see it click here, then select "productions" and then "Mambo Italiano".

Although the characters in the video look like puppets, they actually aren't. Much like the pseudo-Kermits in Over Time (another great French short) they are puppet-like CG animated characters.

Thanks to Jérôme at Moving Puppet for writing in with this fantastic link!

Making a marionette out of a Mac

Who ever knew you could create digital puppetry by turning a computer in to a puppet?

Over at Machin-X I've posted a video and information about a cool digital puppetry project by Andreas Nicolas Fischer, a digital media arts student in Germany. He hacked the Sudden Motion Sensor in his Macbook to create a digital marionette. You can learn more here.

Over Time

Over Time (link via Tough Pigs) is a beautiful 3D animated film by French animators Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland and Damien Ferrie about a troupe of small Kermit-like puppets who find their creator lying on his bench and have to eventually come to understand his death. It's a brilliant film that includes several subtle, yet very clever homages to famous scenes in Muppet films and TV shows. It's also screening in competition this weekend at Animex 2005 in the UK.

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06/12/06 Update - The original link for this is no longer working so I have updated it to point to a copy of the film on YouTube.