PoppeKast animation

Perhaps you've seen them live: it looks like normal animation, but the images are generated on the fly. The characters are directly controlled by us (JvR and EvB that is). This makes interaction with the audience possible. The event is much more like a Punch and Judy show than a regular movie.

Scalable

That means the entire set, characters, background and texts can be set to various resolutions. Higher resolution requires more computing power, but it can still all be done on a PowerPC. A G3 is smoother of course, but the point is that you don't need a heavy workstation to run this.
Also, the action can be recorded, and played back at a higher resolution. For instance, TypoMan can act at roughly 20 frames a second on a 300 by 600 pixel screen, and then later rendered at 16:9 DV, 50 fields a second with antialiasing. Image quality improving in production? Amazing!

Depth

The image is two-and-a-half-D. The characters can hide behind each other, which allows great chases and hide and seek stories.

Controller

This is the controller, a ADB/IO device (a simple A/D converter for ADB port) with 4 analog sliders on top. Moving the sliders results in changing values which are used to control the position of the puppets.
Microphone input is translated into different mouth positions for the main characters: when the puppeteers speak, the puppets speak as well.

Actors.

Up to 16 individual actors can be controlled at the same time, but so far we've had enough work with 4. From scene to scene, different characters can be contolled. Also interesting are the autonomous characters. These are the same as the controlled characters, except that they have their own behaviour, responding to external stimuli, and making plans. Some actors are curious and follow things around, others can be controlled by the actors, for instance a TV can be switched on and off, and objects can be manipulated. Also available in TypoMan world: titles, movable and unmovable props, background sound and music.