Recent Posts

Everything came together and the final reveal is here! I’ll outline all of the working components below and I’ve attached the source files for download. But if you can’t wait, cut to the chase and watch the video on youtube or perhaps checkout it out with all of the 2024 Silver Lining Film Festival videos. Otherwise I’ll start with a quick recap. I collaborated with GPT4 to come up with a script and choreography for 2 characters, a wood carver named Sandy and a squirrel… Read more: Shadow Theatre Collaboration with AI (final part 5)

It’s time to start assembling all the components for the scene. This is requiring a lot of sketching, in the main for the 2 characters and the backdrop. For the woodcarver character I used a sketched template to cut out parts from black card stock. The parts included a body, 2 legs, an arm and a head. Sounds complicated, but it only has 2 control rods, one connected to the arm, the other connected to a leg, and the body position is easily controlled between… Read more: Shadow Theatre Collaboration with AI (part 4)

So in  part 1 we came up with our 2 characters, a wood carver (Sandy) and a squirrel (Whiskers). We co-created a script for the scene. And part 2 explored ways the characters could communicate (subtitles) and ways an AI could direct the movement of a character by describing what should happen. So for part 3 I want to share what happened when I asked the AI to describe the squirrel’s movements. I confess I entered into this discussion by thinking of what questions I… Read more: Shadow Theatre Collaboration with AI (part 3)

So with my new creative friend and collaborator on this project, GPT4, we’ve come up with a pretty good script (in part 1). But my friend has a few challenges being a language model. They have no limbs to control a puppet. And no real vision nor ability to get visual feedback, so I’m not sure precision movement is possible. But hey, life is full of challenges, so I’ve come up with a plan to give the AI as much control as I can. I… Read more: Shadow Theatre Collaboration with AI (part2)

I’m starting off a new project. And this one is inspired by a recent UNIMA Youth Commission session about AI & Puppetry. The session prompted thinking about the faces of AI, and one day perhaps AI could be “person” with whom we will collaborate, not just a “fake” creator or tool for creators. While selfaware AGI (artificial general intelligence) is likely a long way off, I think we could try that collaboration right now. Or at least I’d like to know how far we can… Read more: Shadow Theatre Collaboration with AI (part 1)

As a part of a larger project I thought I’d read a bit into AI rather than just pick a tool and not know what I was doing. Well I learned a lot, which I’ll share here, but there’s probably still a lot more to learn. And I’ve found some references which I think are handy, or at least interesting for you to also browse, so I’ve included them below. Let’s discuss!

This was a bit of an experiment inspired by 2 techniques. The first technique is use of digital projectors to throw rich background scenes onto a screen along with traditional shadow puppets casting shadows. The production Feathers of Fire is a great example of this (image below). The second technique is the use of electronic hand controllers, called “waldos”, originally used to control animatronic puppets, but now these are also used to control computer graphics (CG) puppets. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as using this for… Read more: Digital Shadow Theatre with MoCap and Blender