Digital puppetry

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Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers. It is most commonly used in film and television production, but has also been utilized in interactive theme park attractions and live theatre.

The exact definition of what is and is not digital puppetry is subject to debate within the puppetry and computer graphics communities, but it is generally agreed that digital puppetry differs from conventional computer animation in that it involves performing characters in real time, rather than animating them frame by frame.

Digital puppetry is closely associated with motion capture technologies and 3D animation. It is sometimes referred to as Performance Animation. Digital puppetry is a form of Machinima and Machinima performers are increasingly being identified as puppeteers.

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[edit] History and Usage

[edit] Waldo C. Graphic

The first practical example example of a digitally animated figure being performed and rendered in real-time is widely regarded to be Waldo C. Graphic, a character created in 1988 by Jim Henson and Pacific Data Images for the Muppet television series The Jim Henson Hour. Henson had been trying to create computer generated puppets as early as 1985[1] and Waldo grew out of experiments Henson conducted to create a computer generated version of his character Kermit the Frog[2].

Waldo's strength as a computer generated puppet was that he could be controlled by a single puppeteer (Steve Whitmire[3]) in real-time in concert with conventional puppets. The computer image of Waldo was mixed with the video feed of the camera focused on physical puppets so that all of the puppeteers in a scene could perform together. Afterwards, in post production, PDI re-rendered Waldo in full resolution, adding a few dynamic elements on top of the performed motion.[4]

[edit] Mike Normal

Another significant development in digital puppetry in 1988 was Mike Normal, which Brad DeGraf and partner Michael Wahrman developed to show off the real-time capabilities of Silicon Graphics' then-new 4D series workstations. Unveiled at the 1988 SIGGRAPH convention, Mike was a sophisticated talking head driven by a specially built controller that allowed a single puppeteer to control many parameters of the character's face, including mouth, eyes, expression, and head position[5].

The system developed by deGraf/Wahrman to perform Mike Normal was later used to create a representation of the villain Cain in the motion picture RoboCop 2, which is believed to be the first example of digital puppetry being used to create a character in a full-length motion picture.

[edit] Ratz

In 1994, the BBC introduced a live digital puppet cat called Ratz, in the TV show Live & Kicking. He became the first real-time rendered digital puppet to appear on live TV. He also co-presented Children's BBC, and was eventually given his own show, RatzRun.

[edit] Bugs Live

A more recent example of digital puppetry from 2003 is "Bugs Live", a digital puppet of Bugs Bunny created by Phillip Reay for Warner Brothers Pictures. The puppet was created using hand drawn frames of animation that were puppeteered by Bruce Lanoil and David Barclay. The Bugs Live puppet was used to create nearly 900 minutes of live, fully interactive interviews of 2D animated Bugs character about his role in the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action in English and Spanish. Bugs Live also appeared at the 2004 SIGGRAPH Digital Puppetry Special Session with the Muppet puppet Gonzo.

[edit] Turtle Talk With Crush

In 2004 Walt Disney Imagineering used digital puppetry techniques to create the Turtle Talk with Crush attractions at the Walt Disney World and Disney's California Adventure theme parks. In the attraction, a hidden puppeteer performs and voices a digital puppet of Crush, the laid-back sea turtle from Finding Nemo, on a large rear-projection screen. To the audience Crush appears to be swimming inside an aquarium and engages in unscripted, real-time conversations with theme park guests.

[edit] Types of digital puppetry

Waldo puppetry - A digital puppet is controlled onscreen by a puppeteer who uses a telemetric input device connected to the computer. The X-Y-Z axis movement of the input device causes the digital puppet to move correspondingly. A keyboard, mouse or joystick-like device is sometimes used in place of a telemetric control.

Motion capture puppetry (mocap puppetry) - An object (puppet) or human body is used as a physical representation of a digital puppet and manipulated by a puppeteer. The movements of the object or body are matched correspondingly by the digital puppet in real-time.

Machinima - A production technique that can be used to perform digital puppets. Machinima involves creating computer-generated imagery (CGI) using the low-end 3D engines in video games. Players act out scenes in real-time using characters and settings within a game and the resulting footage is recorded and later edited in to a finished film.

[edit] External links

  • Machin-X: Digital Puppetry - Discussion of theories, tools and applications of digital puppetry as well as news from the digital puppetry community.
  • Machinima.com - Large web portal for machinima.
  • Mike the talking head - Web page about Mike Normal, one of the earliest examples of digital puppetry.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sturman, David J. A Brief History of Motion Capture for Computer Character Animation, accessed February 9, 2007
  2. ^ Finch, Christopher. Jim Henson: The Works (New York: Random House, 1993)
  3. ^ Henson.com Featured Creature: Waldo C. Graphic (archive.org), accessed February 9, 2007
  4. ^ Walters, Graham. The story of Waldo C. Graphic. Course Notes: 3D Character Animation by Computer, ACM SIGGRAPH '89, Boston, July 1989, pp. 65-79
  5. ^ Barbara Robertson, Mike, the talking head Computer Graphics World, July 1988, pp. 15-17.
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