Hello, I’m Victoria Nece. I’m a documentary animator, and today I’m going to show you how to use your Kinect to animate a digital puppet like this one in After Effects.

If you have a Kinect that came with your Xbox, the first thing you’re going to need to do is buy an adapter so you can plug it into your computer’s USB port. You don’t need to get the official Microsoft one — I got a knockoff version from Amazon for six bucks and it’s working just fine.

Next you’re going to need to install a ton of different software. It’s all free and open-source, but I’m warning you now: there’s a lot of it. Check the links below to see what you need for your particular setup.

Here’s a quick overview of how it’s all going to work. Once you’re up and running, you’re going to be using a Processing app called KinectToPin, written by the very talented animator Nick Fox-Gieg. That’s where you actually capture the tracking data, as well as where you convert it to keyframe information After Effects can understand.

Then on the After Effects side of things, you’ll set up a skeletal rig for a layered 2D puppet and apply the tracking data to bring it to life.

It’s not an easy process, but the results are worth it.

Required Software:

• OpenNI + PrimeSense Sensor Module (You need both): http://www.openni.org/Downloads.aspx
• OSCeleton: https://github.com/Sensebloom/OSCeleton
• SimpleOpenNI: http://code.google.com/p/simple-openni/
• Processing: http://processing.org/
• KinectToPin: https://github.com/N1ckFG/KinectToPin
• After Effects CS3+ (CS5+ to use tutorial files)

Special Mac note: works in Snow Leopard, may not work in Lion.

America in Primetime is our four-part series that traces the history of television through different character archetypes. Here’s the trailer:

The entire series is now available in streaming form at pbs.org, along with tons of bonus clips and material.

Angle of Attack: How Naval Aviation Changed the Face of War was released in November through American Public Television and is now available on DVD. I did some snazzy opening titles for this one that I’m pretty proud of. Check out the trailer:

And if you’re a Dish Network or DIRECTV subscriber, be sure to catch Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, airing tonight on the Documentary Channel as part of their “Best of Doc” series.

Kevin Clark set it to music, Jason Buckwalter and Andrew Stewart performed it, and I did some quick color FX and titles. Super-fast turnaround! Here it is:

If you need a refresher on how exactly this (admittedly rather baffling at first glance) plugin works, take a look at my tutorial.

He needs a name! Best suggestion so far is “Schroedinger”.

Ingredients:

• 1 can corn, drained and rinsed
• 1 can cream style corn
• 1 (8.5 ounce) package dry cornbread mix (I used Jiffy — if you don’t have mix here’s a substitute)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

Instructions:
Mix everything together. Pour into a big greased casserole dish. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees. That’s it. Don’t expect it to turn golden brown… my batch came out a very pale yellow but was definitely baked through.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’ve been featured on Urlesque and The Daily What. It’s all very exciting.

Here’s how it looks at the moment:

Here’s the underlying vector map layer:

And even that map began life as a set of even more boring public domain vectors. Everything else is AE-generated. (And yes, the size of Hawaii and Midway are exaggerated slightly for increased visibility on your television screen. Shhhh.)

Nothing is finalized yet; the map that actually ends up in the film could be more different still.

It’s very noir-y. And there’s a scene in the film where I have pigtails…