Talk:Digital puppetry

Not established

I have removed "Virtual Movie Makers" from the section on types of digital puppetry, because it is not an established term that is widely recognized. Also, it appears to be referring to a type of software which although it could be classified as "Machinima" is not really digital puppetry in the sense that it relies on scripting and does not give a puppeteer permit complete real-time control over a digital character, which is the common definition of puppetry. The removed paragraph is below:

Virtual Movie Makers - Similar to Machinima, but applications designed for producing virtual movies, stageplays and TV shows. These are not additional movie recording sections of existing games, but specifically designed tools. These usually offer a range of sets, costumes, actors, lighting and camera technology to make your own movies, usually allowing voice recording with lip-sync or text-to-speech engines, online communities and output to standard video formats. The Movies Game does this, but also Microsoft 3D Movie Maker (1994), Immersive Education MediaStage (2004), Alice 3D (current freeware) and Mission Maker (2005).

201.161.160.247 02:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Note on the refimprove tag July 2013

At this writing, the article is devoid of any references/citations from the Cave Troll and Gollum section onward. -Wine Guy~Talk 22:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Examples of Digital Puppetry History

I have removed the sections on "Cave Troll and Gollum" and "Bugs Live" from the History portion of this article because no citations have been provided.

Even if citations can be provided, are these really appropriate? Although they are interesting examples of digital puppetry used in high-profile properties (Looney Toons and the Lord of the Rings franchise), their importance to the history of digital puppetry is highly debatable. It would be much more appropriate to include sections relating to developments such as the Henson Digital Performance System, Machinima-based digital puppetry or examples of consumer-oriented software like iClone, all of which have made a more significant impact on the development of digital puppetry than either of the previously included examples.

Perhaps there is a way to incorporate references to Bugs Live and the work in Lord of the Rings that provides better context for readers, e.g. how and why those projects happened and how they relate to the overall history of digital puppetry? The section on "Elmo's World" poses a similar problem and perhaps it would be better to have a section on developments between roughly 1995-2005 and include references to experiments and projects developed during that time period.

Also, the section on Disney Imagineering's use of digital puppetry is still lacking citations and this should be rectified.

Puppetvision (talk) 00:49, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Article clean-up and removal of Citations Needed Template

I have done a fairly extensive clean up of this article to streamline the history and usage section and restore a neutral point of view (as per WP:NPOV). In some cases, sections and statements have been removed because they were not verifiable through reliable, independent sources per WP:V and/or appear to be promotional in nature (which has been a recurring problem with this article for many years). Full details of these changes and the reasons for them can be found in the edit history.

The section on Military simulation and training is valid and interesting because most militaries generally prefer human-driven digital puppetry techniques (as opposed to the use of A.I. agents) in virtual training scenarios because it preserves the unpredictable nature of human behaviour. However, as currently written, the section solely discusses Organic Motion Live, which is now defunct. Their LIVE product has a minor, verifiable degree of historical significance, but was not a major milestone that warrants the current heavy, standalone focus. The section should probably be rewritten to more broadly reflect the use of digital puppetry in military simulation and training and possibly law enforcement internationally. The section could potentially reference other systems like the UK's Immersion Studio or how Sweden uses real-time digital puppetry to train police investigators and security personnel.

Also, the "Types of Digital Puppetry" section still likely needs to be overhauled and improved. There is a need for one or more citations related to Mike Normal, but I have left the uncited statements in place due to the historical importance of the project.

I specifically removed the External Links section because the links listed do not follow Wikipedia guidelines for external links. They could possibly be restored more appropriately as inline citations, since both links are related to subjects (Mike Normal and Organic Motion Live) that are already mentioned in the article.

The Citations Needed template was added to this article in 2013 and has been removed because the article has been extensively updated with at least 20 reliable sources covering all historical and technical sections. ~2026-33510-03 (talk) 19:59, 6 June 2026 (UTC)