Henson Digital Puppetry Studio

This is a brand new promotional reel for the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio, the patented real-time animation/digital puppetry system developed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

An Animator Praises Sid the Science Kid

Keith Lango thinks the use of digital puppetry on Sid the Science Kid makes sense and I have to agree (but then you knew that, didn't you?). More and more I can see how puppets and pixels really are coming together. Check out the comments for the above-linked post to read some interesting discussion on puppetry, mo-cap and animation.

BTW, new episodes of Sid The Science Kid start the week of May 4th on PBS.

Creature Shop Open House Recap

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.

Digital Puppetry Open House at Jim Henson's Creature Shop

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

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.

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

Behind the Scenes of Sid the Science Kid

The 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.

TV Guide video via Puppeteers Unite.

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.

More About New Henson/PBS Digital Puppetry Show

Sid The Science Kid is the star of a forthcoming digital puppetry series for kids.

The Muppet Newsflash reports that work is continuing on the forthcoming Jim Henson Company/PBS Kids digital puppetry series What's The Big Idea? (see previous post), but the show has been retitled Sid The Science Kid. The series' concept is using short sketches to teach children lessons about science and discovery and is being produced using the Henson Company's HDPS Digital Puppetry System. Forty half-hour episodes of the show are currently in production; there's no word whether or not it has been affected by the current writer's strike in the United States.

Look for Sid The Science Kid on PBS sometime in 2008.

Henson Announces New Digital Puppetry Series

The Jim Henson Company is partnering with PBS’ KCET to produce a new educational digital puppetry series entitled What's the Big Idea? using Henson's HDPS real-time animation/digital puppetry system. The goal of the series is to promote science readiness in preschool children. Forty-eight episodes of the series have been ordered. The show is scheduled to debut in the United States on PBS stations next year.

More Skrumps Stuff

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.

Digital Puppeteer Interview: Julianne Buescher

The Muppet Newsflash has an interview with puppeteer Julianne Buescher, who specializes in performing with the Henson Company's HDPS animatronic/digital puppetry control system. In the interview Julianne talks about the work she's done on a variety of Jim Henson company projects over the years, including performing digital puppet characters.

You can also learn more about Julianne on The Muppet Wiki.

Henson debuts The Skrumps

The Skrumps is a new digital puppetry series from The Jim Henson Company.

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!

Via The Muppet Newsflash.

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13/01/07 Update: A behind-the-scenes video about the making of The Skrumps is now available on Henson.com. It's fairly short, but gives a basic overview of how their HDPS works and shows the performers in action.

Laugh Pad

Here's some test footage for Laugh Pad, a new digital puppetry series developed by The Jim Henson Company and The Dan Clark Company. I love the main character (is Lagoon his name?) and his infectious laugh. It looks like this show could be lots of silly fun and it's one of the best examples of digital puppetry I've seen. Hopefully it will become a series!

Via Puppeteers Unite!

CGI Twiddlebugs on Sesame Street

The Twiddlebugs, a small family of insects that live in Ernie's window box, have been a stable of Sesame Street for decades. Traditionally, they've always been conventional puppets, but the show's newest season has been featuring new CGI versions of the Twiddlebugs this year.

I'm not sure if these CGI Twiddlebugs were created with conventional 3D animation, or if they are actually created using digital puppetry like Elmo's World. Does anyone out there know for sure?

Either way, things have certainly come a long way since the good old days.

Digital puppetry hardware, part one

Brian mentioned Panda Puppet and Flash Puppet in his blog yesterday and made the excellent point that there's a desperate need for both better software and hardware for digital puppetry systems.

Unfortunately, as Brian also pointed out, almost all of the decent hardware is custom-built and proprietary. Here's a run down of what a few of the better shops in L.A. use:


Jim Henson's Creature Shop - Has the proprietary Henson Digital Performance System, inspired by the Creature Shop's Academy Award winning animatronic controls and probably the most sophisicated system of it's kind in the world. I know a few people who saw a demo of the latest version of it in the fall and they say that it's very, very impressive.


Perform FX - This company - founded by Henson alumni Dave Barclay and Bruce Lanoil - uses a neat little toy called the PerformFX Glove. I don't know much about it, but it certainly does look cool and given Dave's track record it's probably an awesome tool to work with.

The Character Shop - Uses Waldos and owns the Waldo trademark ("Waldo" was common name for these types of devices until TCS trademarked it so no one else could use it...don't even get me started on that bulls--t). They have a whole variety of devices like the one on the right, primarily developed for controlling animatronics, but presumably they could be used for digital puppetry applications as well.

One of the interesting things that all three of these systems have in common is that they're all telemetric data input devices, not motion capture technologies (which are much, much more difficult to work with).

There's bound to be other systems like these out there. Anyone know of some that I've missed?