Spring of 2024, I had the amazing opportunity to partner with West Liberity University on the Puppamatics project. Team Puppamatics created a tool that helps children visualize the puppet making process. We are focused on marionette puppets and introducing 3-Dimensional geometry. 

The project is designed to run at 2-3 hours workshop in West Liberty’s makerspace. Children will be placed in groups of 2-3 and given a chrome book. First they will design the puppet using the software, then they will print out templates and assemble the puppet. 

Check out our current build using this link:

https://jasmine0204.itch.io/puppamatics

Check out our main webpager using this link:

https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/puppamatics/

My Role:

I was one of the Co-Producers on this project. That meant I was organizing and leading meetings within our team, with our client, and with our project instructor. I helped schedule and conduct the playtest. In additon, I directed, editted and acted in the videos. I collaborated with our voice actor as well.

Our Final Product:

We created a webpage where the students would design a marionette puppet using basic 3D shapes and then print them out to make their puppets come to life. Our final deliverables were:

• Web application Executable
• Printable Marionette Puppet Instructions
• Tutorial Videos about the How to contruct the Puppet

Web App:

In the web app, students could choose between a 4 legged puppet and a 2 legged puppet. Then they pick between 6 shapes; cube, cylinder, cone, triangular pyramid, triangular prism, and pentagonal prism. Each body part (head, arms, chest and leg) could be changed into a different shape. The students could manipulate the shape by changing its scale of flipping the object.

Other features we had in the app, were the ability to move and reset the camera view, see what the surface maps for each shape was, compare your puppet size to your real height, and finally, get answers to frequently asked questions.

Videos:

There were 3 videos in total; intro video, outro video, and tutorial video. The intro and outro videos were orginally story boarded with 2D drawings and then made into 3D versions. In these videos, Duke Pawsley, is hosting a puppet show but he doesn’t have any puppets! He ask the students to help make puppets for his puppet show. In the end, Duke Pawsley and his newly made puppet perform the nutcracker and get a standing ovation.

The tutorial video, is meant to give a more visual way to learn how to create the puppets. Even if we have written instructions, the video still helps those who might not follow along so closely.

Instructions:

We created detailed written instructions that the teacher can printout to help students create their final puppets.

Playtesting:

We did a lot of playtesting with our department and team, but we also got to run the workshop at West Liberty’s campus twice with our target audience.