motion studies / 001
puppetshow.
real puppets.
new ways to bring them to life.
learn with the puppets
circuit playground.
18 films, from amperes to soldering. adaptive quality, captions and transcripts, no ads or autoplay. try billie’s portrait edition, or b is for battery with notes and a transcript.
a musical experiment
billie sings the blues.
our LED puppet takes the stage. a small performance, and a first look at another expression of our puppet world.
also available: the first 720p release · 7.2 MB · English captions
our real puppets.
photography: adafruit · CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
research notebook / in progress
one character.
more than one way to perform.
we have real puppets. digital performances are another expression of them, with room for stages, movements, and ideas we can try together.
- 01 / the wireframe
early Blender close-up · actual mesh a shape we can examine.
an early non-puppet Billie study in Blender. the wireframe exposes the model’s structure, before materials and a stage.
- 02 / the workshop
early rig study · a held gaze make it together.
a pose gives us something specific to discuss: gaze, eyelids, expression. people and ints build, inspect and revise the result.
- 03 / the performance
performance frame · 00:27 give the idea a stage.
a frame from this 4k performance. movement, sound and light bring the character into a world we can watch and question.
where this is going. educational videos made with our puppets, people, and ints. this first release is a music study. the lessons, experiments, and making-of notes will grow from here.
notes from this screening.
what you are seeing
Billie is a blue LED puppet with two pale leads for legs. in this digital performance she sings in a mostly monochrome jazz club, with other electronic-component characters in the audience. a title card introduces the film, and the performance moves between a wide stage view and a closer portrait.
the words
They put me in a mood lamp
and complained that I was blue.
They put me in a mood lamp
and complained that I was blue.
Honey, I was born this color.
What’d you think that switch would do?
the working principle
the character can move between physical and digital work. each version gives us something to examine together: a gesture, a voice, a circuit, a story. people choose what to keep and what needs another pass.
working together to maximize human potential.
release 001 · · a continuing experiment at adafruit labs