I am in love with this project, the virtual marionette, which uses the Kinect to do real-time puppeteering of a humanoid marionette; it attempts to stay true to traditional marionettes, while bringing tradition into the technological age. I would love to work on something similar, riffing off of finger puppets or shadow hand puppets; I’m an animator at heart, and I find real-time animations that mimic the user very endearing and compelling.  I’ve seen similar projects by Theo Watson like this funky bird puppet, but the amount of articulation in the marionette project is particularly wonderful.

More about the Virtual Marionette