The Line Keeps Getting Blurred

Over at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, Stephen Worth has a short post about animating robots. Stephen mentions how the job description of an animator is rapidly changing and muses about the possibility of animators being hired to “animate” robots, which sounds suspiciously similar to what a puppeteer does.

Although robots and automata aren’t generally considered puppets unless they’re controlled in real-time, puppeteers have been working with them for decades. Puppeteers are often employed by toy companies to help “animate” electronic toys like Furby and Disney projects like the Muppet Mobile Lab have taken pupppetry and robotics to a whole new level in recent years.

I don’t think that puppeteers and animators have to be competitive about who does what in this brave new technological world of ours. The more the line between different disciplines like puppetry, animation and robotics get blurred, the more I think that artists working in each field can learn from one and other.