Puppet Tool #

At E.D. FILMS, I developed a project proposal for Puppet Tool, an initiative designed to transform animation creation through real-time technology. This proposal, accompanying a grant application, successfully secured funding from the Canada Media Fund and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council via CDRIN. Leading a compact team, we investigated various technologies and formulated unique techniques.

Animation Workflow Overview

Extended Features Overview

Puppet Tool is designed for animators, challenging traditional animation methods primarily reliant on keyframes – a meticulous and skill-intensive process. The advent of motion-capture technology (mocap) eased this task by recording actors' movements in specialized suits, translating them into keyframes, but mocap is expensive and demands a large team.

Puppet Tool's objective was to democratize mocap by employing affordable peripherals, such as VR headsets/controllers, gamepads, and tablets. It integrates these with real-time animation tools from game engines. This approach enables animators to manipulate characters like puppets, allowing them to embelished the movements during the recording phase, and utilize a layered, pass-based workflow akin to video or audio editing.