Virtual Puppeteer Goes In To The Dragon's Den

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 at work in the video above.

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