Uh oh! I feel myself being drawn down a familiar path. So when I’m sitting here trying to understand all this stuff, this “Java” stuff and this “video” stuff, I think of the most basic thing I could possible want to do, figure out how to do it, and then move on from there. So in terms of thinking about tracking, the most basic approach would be to track one thing moving and make something else move in the exact same way. That’s where the puppets come in. I guess my instinct is to personify things in order to better understand them. Track something in real life, make something move on the screen. So I’m basically looking at how tracking parts of the body or the body as a whole can allow you to move characters on the screen. Finger puppets. Hand puppets. Body puppets. So far I’ve been trying finger puppets using the multiple rectangle tracker, but I think I need to switch approaches, because my current setup produces really terrible results. But it’s a start. Perhap I need to try identifying skin blobs. Funny how the what I think of as the simplest thing still ends of taking me forever.
Vision for the future: People in orange jumpsuits jumping around in front of the camera to make their characters move on screen. Full body experience.