A friend of mine discovered an open source program that allows you to animate 2D images as puppets. It was difficult to learn at first, but the benefit is, you can hook it up to Max and control the coordinates of the puppet’s joints. The videos on the site are really advanced and allow people to contorl the movement of the puppets with their entire bodies. You can see the videos below.
http://animata.kibu.hu/
I haven’t found the patch that allows interaction on this level, but I have played with the patch available online and made it control a puppet with audio.
This patch only controls one joint at this point and makes the puppet wave back and forth based on your volume.
I plan on learning how to create more refined control of the characters with this program.
