Story-telling with puppet shows have entered a new generation of performance thanks to the Kinect. Developers Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson released this video demonstrating what the Kinect can do in order to provide a refreshing way to tell stories. In this video, with the help of a project, a computer and the Kinect, the users were able to display a cartoon image of a bird that responds accordingly to the user’s arm and hand movements. This then provides an interactive “puppet show” to the user and also a creative and new way of entertainment.
The project is a prototype that makes use of the libfreenect’s Kinect Drivers and also the ofxKinect. The Kinect is then programmed to trace the skeletal framework of the arm, plotting the key joints in order to properly register the commands. The result is the complete manipulation of the image (in this case, a cartoon bird).
For more information about this project, visit the developers vimeo account.