Asa and I have decided to stick with We Be Monsters to the bitter end; we are continuing development of the project throughout the remainder of the semester as a joint capstone project for Interactive Art, Computational Design (and possibly over the summer, continuing development into a full-fledged, stand-alone instillation).  There is a lot left to do on our little Behemoth, and our to-do list doesn’t look like it’s ever going to end; besides integrating 3 and 4 person puppet capabilities into the project, each individual puppet needs a serious re-hauling to get it up to standard. After going over our to-do list and looking at the week we had left before Project 4 was due, we decided to choose the option that was most feasible; dynamically activating the front half of the puppet somehow via BOx2D physics.

In layman’s terms, we decided to make the BEHEMOTH vomit a bouncy fountain of rainbow stars.

The feature is not integrated into the puppet yet; we created a small demo that showcases the vomit-stars, which will be implemented after we rehaul the code for the puppets. We are also planning to tie the star-puke to sound; children (or adults) puppeteering the BEHEMOTH will be able to roar/scream, triggering a pulsing mass of stars. Our hope is that this feature adds another level of play to the program, and will encourage those using the puppets to really try and become the BEHEMOTH- not only in movement, but also in voice.

::other features on our to-do list include::

-Each piece of the puppet will be set on a spring, so it bounces back to place when not being manipulated by a user; this will hopefully alleviate the problem of the BEHEMOTH looking like it’s had a seizure if Asa and I step out of place.

-Using physics to create a more dynamic puppet in general; we like the look of the beady blank eye, but the BEHEMOTH and future puppets will include aspects that move in accordance to the movement of the puppet pieces; bouncy spines on his back, a floppy tongue, etc.