Chinese Shadow Puppetry with an Interactive Interface Using the Kinect Sensor

This paper addresses the problem of using body gestures to control the Chinese shadow puppets with the Microsoft Kinect sensor. By analyzing the motion of the actors in the Chinese famous drama, Wu-song Fights the Tiger, we propose a general framework for controlling two shadow puppets, a human model and an animal model. A performer can conduct simple actions such as turning the head, stretching the arms or kicking the legs. However, it is more difficult for a normal performer to simulate more complicated movements, for example, back flips and splits. Therefore we define some special postures to represent these difficult movements. Besides, in order to be compatible with the Chinese drama style, we use water color to paint the background scenery and the foreground characters. We show some preliminary results which demonstrate the effectiveness of this work.