Halloween Themed Digital Puppets Available To Download

Now this is a pretty cool use of digital puppetry and something fun for Halloween; a company called ImaginEERIEing sells some basic computer programs that display a digital puppet on a Windows of Mac computer that can be controlled using a keyboard or microphone. It's also possible to playback a prerecorded performance too. It looks especially effective when the computer screen is hidden in a facade like it is in the video above.

There are currently three different characters available. The "Magic Mirror" character seen in the video can be downloaded for free; there's also a skull and a talking pumpkin available for $15 US each.

Via The Odd-Lot Puppetry Company.

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.

Quick Experiment With Panda Puppet

This was just a quick experiment that I did yesterday...I took a head that was modeled and rigged by Calvin over at BlenderArtists.org and set it up so that it could be puppeteered right inside a standard Blender window (i.e. not using the game engine) with a joystick. It was quick to set-up and fairly easy to do, I may experiment a bit more with this.

BusinessWeek on the Future of Machinima

BusinessWeek recently ran a story on Machinima and how more and more game developers are packaging their titles with Machinima creation tools. It's a good read that outlines the history of Machinima and ponders where the artform is headed in the future.

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.

Brian Windsor wins Innovation Award for Digital Puppetry

This is just a quick post to say congratulations to Brian Windsor, who won the Puppeteers of America Jim Henson Award for Innovation for his work in digital puppetry at the recent Puppet Rampage 2007 festival in St. Paul, MN. Awarded by Puppeteers of America biannually, The Jim Henson Award for Innovation is given to recognize "innovation in puppetry that is technological, dramaturgical or collaborative in nature".

Brian and I held an impromptu demo of Brian's impressive digital puppetry work and the still work-in-progress Panda Puppet system at Puppet Rampage last week and I got to know him a bit. He's a great guy who's doing really great work and his award is well-deserved.

Congrats Brian!

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.