Digital Wayang Kulit

Here's a nine minute demo of a Digital Wayang Kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry) program developed at the MSc in Digital Education program at University of Edinburgh. The 2D figure is controlled by the digital Dalang (puppeteer) using a Gametrak controller and a Wiimote.

There have been a lot of shadow puppet inspired digital puppetry demos created over the years (this one is from 2013), but I love how fluid the movement of this one is.

Special thanks to Jane for submitting this!

Digital Guignol Theater

I've been doing a lot of Punch and Judy research lately and I stumbled across this Digital Guignol Theater that was created by Wizarbox in 2009. A proof-of-concept demo intended to aid in children during rehabilitation, it allows them to control a digital Guignol (the French equivalent of Punch) show using their voice and one or more Wiimotes.

Head tracking with the Wiimote

Johnny Chung Lee (see previous post) has done it again! In his latest video he explains how to use the Wiimote and Wii sensor bar to make a head tracking system. As always, you can download the software to do this yourself from Johnny's site (link goes directly to a .zip file).

The most obvious application that I can see for this in digital puppetry is a quick and easy way to track a camera in 3D space. It could also be used to allow a puppeteer to see through a character's "eyes" in a virtual environment/set.

So many things to do with the Wiimote, so little time!

Multi-touch Interface using the Wii Remote

This is another incredibly cool Wiimote hack from Johnny Chung Lee (see previous post) that suggests all kinds of interesting possibilities for controlling digital puppet characters in real-time. Since the Wii tracks IR lights, Johnny has discovered that almost any surface - a projector screen, a tabletop, or an LCD - can be turned into a multi-touch screen that you can use like the iPod touch or iPhone. All you need is the Wiimote, a ball point pen equipped with an LED and some free software that can be downloaded here. Watch the video for details.

And as cool as it is, I'm even more excited to see the results of what Johnny is working on next - 3D tracking and head tracking with the Wiimote!

Special thanks to Brian for sending this to me!

Track Fingers With The Wiimote

Here's another potentially cool user interface for creating digital puppetry and Machinima...Johnny Lee at Carnegie Mellon University has worked out a method for tracking his fingers using the Wiimote's infrared camera. The basic idea is very similar to the iPhone and the Gesturetek technology I wrote about back in March.

Via MAKE.

Nintendo to Launch Indie Game Development For the Wii

GigaOM reports that Nintendo wants to open up the Wii platform to indie developers next year. Dubbed "Wii Ware", this new service will be designed to enable developers to create small, downloadable games for the Wii in a manner similar to Microsoft's XNA Game Studio for the XBox 360. Considering the Wii's motion-control capability I think this is great news for digital puppetry and suggests all kinds of exciting developments could be on the horizon. It's really great to see Nintendo embracing the potential of user generated content.

Thanks to Brian for the heads up about this!

Gameplay Boogie

Gamers will be able to use the Wii's innovative controllers and some digital puppetry techniques to help an alien bust a move in Boogie.

EA regularly gets critiqued in the video game world for a lack of innovation. It's not hard to see why; the company seems to just churn out one relatively uninventive version of Madden Football after the other. That may finally be about to change though thanks to Boogie, one of their upcoming titles for the Wii.

On the surface Boogie sounds like another Dance Dance Revolution clone, but what makes it different is that instead of pushing buttons to make an onscreen character "dance", players have to make their character move in time with music using the Wii Remote and its Nunchuk attachment. The Nunchuk controls the character's body while the Wiimote controls its head. Players have to invent moves and dance routines with minimal guidance from the game and they succeed based on the variety of their moves and how "stylish" they are.

Sounds suspiciously like a digital puppetry game, doesn't it?

Wii Power Glove Controller

A little over year ago I was speculating about using the old NES Power Glove to perform digital puppetry. I haven't heard of anyone doing that just yet, but someone in Japan has hacked together a custom controller using the Wii remote and an old NES Powerglove. The modded glove has specially mounted triggers on the thumb and middle finger to simulate the A and B buttons and an opening for the wii attachment in the back. It seems to work really well, you can see it in action in the clip above. More pics and details are available at Slash Gear.

The obvious digital puppetry application for this would be to make Machinima on the Wii and since so many people have already hacked the Wii remote to use it on their PCs, with a little technical know-how you could really start to have some fun with this thing.

Nintendo wii = digital puppetry machine?

While the debate continues to rage over wii the stupid official name of the next-generation Nintendo console (it was previously code-named Revolution), Brian Stokes speculates about the wii's potential as a tool for digital puppetry in his blog today.