Working with UMBC's Imaging Research Center (IRC), animator Lynn Tomlinson and I have created an award-winning digital puppet app that uses an iPad as its controller. The crab is physically drawn, digitally animated character designed to perform for live audiences.  "Kendra" has performed in theaters, classrooms, and festivals -- most notably at the outdoor production of Kendra's Bay at the inaugural Light City Baltimore international arts festival.

Our digital puppet app also has significant applications in animation software development (with similarities to the beta-level software tool Adobe Character Animator), museum interactive displays, educational settings, and live performance. For more information, contact me at csearls@umbc.edu.

What is a digital puppet?
Digital Puppets are drawn characters (animated figures) performed live by puppeteers. Unlike traditional animation, digital puppets can interact spontaneously with characters on the stage or screen, and/or a live audience. Some of the most visible examples of digital puppets are the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio’s Sid the Science Kid characters, the surfer-dude turtle in Turtle Talk with Crush (a popular Disney World attraction), and the floating Magic Mirror from Shrek the Musical. Digital puppetry most often involves puppeteer/actors using motion capture suits and/or complex video-game-like controllers to make an image come to life.

You can read about digital puppetry's use in the film industry in my essay "Unholy Alliances and Harmonious Hybrids: New Fusions in Puppetry and Animation"  in The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance.