How do I look around my puppet?
    How do I make a puppet?
    How do I make something that doesn't look like a person?
    How do I paint my puppet?
    What can I do with the Stage?
    Why can't I use props?
    Why are these blobs so crude, they don't look anything like the quality I can get in SecondLife or (insert machinima of choice)?
    How do I chat to friends outside the Live Stage?
    Why can't I use sound effects?
    Why can't I use visual effects?
    Why don't you have...?
    When will you implement/what are you adding next?
    Can I donate more than once or on behalf of someone else?
    This is great, is there a protected version for schools, youth groups and younger children?

  1. How do I look around my puppet?

    Easy; right-click and hold anywhere near your puppet. Now move the mouse and your puppet will spin and rotate so you can see it from every angle. This is really useful when making and painting your puppet.

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  2. How do I make a puppet?

    In the Puppet Workshop window there are six drawers that have the tools in them. The tools are designed to be as intuitive as possible. Each tool affects an area on the puppet that is represented by the red dot that will hover over part of your puppet as you move the mouse around. The bigger the red dot, the larger the area affected.

    To make a nose select the icon of two fingers pinching the clay, and a draw will slide out. Select the pointy lump of clay in the draw. Now reduce the area size on the slider to about ¼ and hover over the "front" of your face blob of clay. When the red dot is in about the right place, left-click and the clay will start to rise out towards your mouse pointer. If it goes wrong, click the undo tool.

    To make a hat, select the cylinder of clay and set the area tool to about ½, then hover the mouse over the top of your puppets head and left-click to rise up a square portion to form a hat. You may need to move your puppet around to see the top of its head and get an even angle for the hat.

    The other tools can be used to poke hollows or holes in your puppet. At any time you can undo, multiple undo's will take you back to the basic 6 blobs of clay. There's also a reset button that does the same thing.


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  3. How do I make something that doesn't look like a person?

    Use the resize and move tools. Resize allows you to select any body part and make it larger or smaller. The move tool allows you to move the parts around in space to make other weird and fantastical creatures. Note: the 'head', 'arms' and 'legs' keep their special control keys and properties so you can make a caterpillar of even sized blobs, then by lifting the arms and legs in sequence while in the Live Stage you can make it appear to undulate along like a real caterpillar.

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  4. How do I paint my puppet?

    You can chose the colours using the red-blue-green sliders and the paint splat will show the colour you'll paint with.

    There are three paint tools;
    1. The paint pot sets the base colour for a single body part
    2. the spraycan scatters a random spread of colour over the part you're aiming at, the larger the area dot the more of your puppet gets sprayed
    3. The brush delivers a precise stroke of colour following the red area dot.
    Remember that this is a 3D puppet so spraying the side of a sticky out bit (such as a hat or nose) won't colour in the bit you can't see, move the puppet around to look at the bit you missed and carry on.

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  5. What can I do with the Stage?

    Decorate it. The three paint tools are the same as for the puppet. The difference is that you've got 5 walls (floor, back wall, two side walls and ceiling). You can also move the walls in to make the stage appear smaller. Since the puppets don't have collision detection this means you can make your puppets walk through walls like a ghost, or sink through the floor.

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  6. Why can't I use props?

    We wanted to make something that encouraged people to rediscover the art of classical puppetry with its richness of story telling. Introducing props would mean a whole lot of coding and design for people making props, plus the additional controls needed to position, move, collision detection, etc. You can achieve quite effective trompe-l'oeil (http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/t/trompeloeil.html) and forced perspective effects within the stage design.

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  7. Why are these blobs so crude, they don't look anything like the quality I can get in SecondLife or (insert machinima of choice)?

    Virtual Puppeteers wants to get people across the globe creating and sharing puppet shows, with a tradition going back millennia. What we're trying to capture is the live energy, simple imagery and honest enthusiasm of story telling. This isn't a replacement for machinima or the highly rendered movies that you can get from Maya or similar. This does allow two people, anywhere in the world, to quickly work up some characters, connect, rehearse, record and share a play with the rest of the world. Obviously the longer you spend honing your puppet, decorating your stage and working on the script the better it'll be; but we didn't want people to have to undertake an advanced course in 3D visualisation and animation, then spend several months plotting character paths and movements before they could have fun.

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  8. How do I chat to friends outside the Live Stage?

    To keep our running costs down in the early stages we've decided not to implement a full chat client. Most people have instant messaging or Voice over IP clients and these are better optimised for chatting and discussing plays, narrative, character, etc. By only allowing voice chat in the Live Stage we reduce the number of simultaneous connections needed to Puppeteers actually acting out or recording shows. If anyone has a Flash Media Server with lots of free connections and bandwidth please contact us or make a donation so we can buy more connections.

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  9. Why can't I use sound effects?

    When we gave stage shows to our parents as kids (using packing cartons for stages and dolls for actors) one of the best bits was giving voice to our characters and their environment. The human voice is an incredibly emotive and versatile instrument. We also found with younger puppeteers in school trials that they didn't need effects, they launched into making their own sound effects without asking for a sound track. So get creative!

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  10. Why can't I use visual effects?

    Similar to the reason for not having sound effects.

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  11. Why don't you have...?

    The project has being run as a not-for profit organisation on a shoestring budget (actually there isn't a budget). The development you see has come from funding provided by Futurelab (a research Charity in Bristol, UK) but we don't have a VC backer. We have lots of ideas but wanted to release a version that had the important bits (Puppet Workshop, Stage Workshop, Live Stage, voice integration and the website) quickly so that people could begin using and feeding back comments. As more people donate, we'll be able to add in features that we have thought of but also those that you suggest.

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  12. When will you implement / what are you adding next?

    We've got tons of ideas for making this better. Some are technical (data compression, better morphing, etc) some are narrative (hot swapping of different characters, teleprompter for helping performances, etc), and some are interface (smoother log-in, presence detection, "friends" lists, etc). Ultimately we'll work on whatever people ask for most and we can afford to do.

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  13. Can I donate more than once or on behalf of someone else?

    Yes, please. Just make sure that the user name and email you enter is valid and that account will be tagged as "Enhanced" so they will be able to upload and share their puppet shows. They'll also get an email notifying that they (or someone on their behalf) as made a donation. At the moment we're only offering the Free and Enhanced accounts, if you donate more than once we'll be eternally grateful and continue working hard to implement new and better features, but we can't offer you anything additional other than kudos.

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  14. This is great, is there a protected version for schools, youth groups and younger children?

    The original prototype was developed closely with young children (under 12 years old) in the UK as part of Futurelab's charitable research. We are deeply committed to making a secure version that children can access safely and freely, unfortunately the liabilities of making such a site are beyond our ability to address at the moment.
    Any school that wants to implement a local version can contact us and we'll work out a cost for implementation. We would also like to build a secure global puppeteering community but there are still some barriers associated with authenticity and moderation to be overcome.

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