Digital Puppets available for the new Apple TV

We're pleased to announce that we have released our puppets for Apple's new AppleTV platform.

The app is called "TV Puppets"; search for it on the AppleTV App Store, and you should be able to find it.

Our puppets are normally $15, but for this introductory period, they're 33% off - $10 each.  If you get your hands on a new Apple TV, be sure to pick them up!

The puppets are slightly different than our desktop models in a few ways.

• First, they use accelerometer controls from the remote to produce much more natural motion.  The motion is much smoother and more lifelike than the desktop controls because they mimic the motion of the remote.
• They have fewer options.  Outside of the accelerometer, the remote is not as capable of capturing puppeteering intent, so we've simplified the puppets significantly for this type of presentation.  For instance, the Magic Mirror doesn't have multiple moods.
• Because we don't control the unlocking of software when delivering through Apple's store, we cannot extend our policy of a software key purchased for, say, Yorick, to the AppleTV version of Yorick.  And vice versa.  Sorry.  We hope the convenience of using the puppet on the television will make up for this!

Enjoy, and Happy Haunting tomorrow!

Codesigned versions of puppets up

Just a maintenance update.  I've put up "code signed" versions of the OS X versions of Mirror Mirror, Yorick, and Gordo on the web site.  This is to address the issue of the dialog box that appears when you launch the puppet and OS X warns you that it is from an untrusted developer.  (I guess that means I'm now a trusted developer!)

The versions are exactly the same as the previous versions otherwise.  If you already have them working in your environment, there is no need to update unless you want to suppress that dialog box from appearing.

Yorick at the Playboy Mansion

We just got a note from one of our customers who used our Yorick puppet to create a fun attraction at a party at the Playboy Mansion:

Sometimes, I think our digital puppets have more fun than we do.

New versions of puppets released!

For those of you who don't know yet, we've released new versions of our Halloween-themed puppets (all except Frosty) for the 2012 Halloween season.  Get them on the main ImaginEERIEing site.

Please note that these puppets have different features than the 1.x series, so be sure to try them out in advance of using them in an attraction. Most notably, the microphone input and prescripted performance control modes are now gone. The former caused huge problems for many people and delivers subpar performance, and the prescripted performance setting is now easily covered by screen capture software.

All the new versions of the puppets are free upgrades for existing users. Enter your serial number for an older version of the puppet, and it should work.

Happy haunting!

Working on new puppets for 2012

Greetings, home haunters.  Here's an update from your friends at ImaginEERIEing.

For the 2012 haunting season, we're (sadly) not introducing any new puppets. But we are rewriting our digital puppets from the ground up, and will be releasing them as a free update to all users.

Here's what's going on.  Our current digital puppets were created in a 3D framework called Adobe Director.  Unfortunately, Adobe's support of the Director product has been nothing short of abysmal; the last update was released in the year of our lord 2008.  Up until now, it hasn't posed a problem, but with both recent versions of Mac OS X and Windows, our puppets are starting to fail, and since it appears Adobe is not going to update Director, we have no way of fixing these problems for our customers.  (Thanks, Adobe.)

So, we're porting our puppets over to the robustly-supported Unity platform.  We're having to do everything from the ground up, but our puppets are going to work better, and we'll be better able to support them on this new platform.

If you've purchased one of our puppets in the past (except Frosty), and would like to help us beta test the new puppets, drop us a line!

Interesting Use for Yorick

Here's a use for our digital puppets I hadn't seen before: recreating the audience chamber scene from Wizard of Oz.

For Halloween 2009, Chris used our "Yorick" digital puppet as the ominous head over synthetic flames to retell the story with his own, Tim Burton-esque spooky spin on it. Be sure to check out the other cool stuff this home haunter put into this year's highly original haunted theme while you're there.

Carnival of Souls 2009 a success!

We're exhausted, but Carnival of Souls 2009 was a success.

In all, we had nearly 40 volunteers helping at our house this year at one time or another. All together, we were able to put on one of the best seasons of Carnival of Souls ever. New elements this year included:

The Cursed Treasure - A new carnival game which lets kids roll balls down an inclined playfield where stacks of coins and other pirate treasure lay scattered. Depending on where the ball rolls, the kids would get different amounts of candy. It was a huge hit, and a great improvement over "toss a rat in a bucket".

The Spider Cave - Though a little too imposing for some kids, the spider cave allowed the brave souls who attended to go inside and have the spider answer a question, any question. It turns out our spider puppeteer did such a great job that the spider cave became quite popular.

The Pirate Graveyard - This walkthrough attraction included a ghostly possession of Madame Sarita, a large ruined bastille inhabited by undead pirates, and a journey over the sea on a sunken pirate ship helmed by an undead captain, where kids could shoot cannons at the damned crew of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. We had some technical difficulties with the final scene a few times, unfortunately, but we got them ironed out quickly.

Pirate Barter - Instead of just getting candy this year, the attractions doled out pirate treasure: coins, jems, strings of pearls, etc. Walking around the show were some greedy pirates who would barter with kids for this treasure in exchange for candy and toys. Kids loved being able to buy their treats with the booty they earned.

Of course, some of the old mainstays were still in effect, such as the Magic Mirror, which is always a hit with the kids. And Dr. Richman returned with his "Creepy Crawly Emporium".

All in all, it was a fantastic year for the tots. Thanks to all our volunteers and visitors! We're already looking forward to 2010.

New Versions of Digital Puppets Up!

We've been busy at ImaginEERIEing with our home haunt, but that doesn't stop us from trying to help you make your Halloween better.

We just released two new versions of two of our signature digital puppets:

Mirror Mirror has been updated with a new feature that allows the Mirror face to fade away when it is set to "asleep" mode. This allows your Mirror face to magically appear somewhere your visitors may not expect it.

Gordo has been updated with a new feature that allows Gordo's exterior to be rendered completely black. This allows you to project Gordo onto a real pumpkin, and have it appear that it is magically animated. The effect is truly fantastic - I'll try to get some video of this up in the coming days.

(Since both of these improvements haven't been tested extensively yet, the downloads are only available on the main site. The download link you receive when you buy will still be the older, known stable version. If you don't need the above features, we recommend you stick with the stable versions, since these are not maintenance releases.)

Problems with our Hosting

Our long, reliable host, which we've been hosting with since the 90's, was bought by another company called "agavue" recently, and already the service is careening downhill. We sell digital puppets for Halloween, and on October first, of all dates, all the files we had hosted on their servers vanished. The entire directory is just gone, so it's not even something that could have been user error on our part. And our original host's late-hours technical support has been replaced with a nine-to-five tech support, so I can't even talk to them about it until tomorrow. Super.

If you were trying to download one of the demo versions of our digital puppets in the last few days, and were told that the file no longer exists, well, this is why. I've updated the demo download links to grab them from a different server.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

DIY Magic Mirror

The guys over at DIY Magic Mirror used Mirror Mirror and Yorick to create the videos for an installation-based Magic Mirror program. You can extend what his mirror installation does by using any of our digital puppets.

If you create an installation from them, be sure to send us photos and videos - we love to see what people do with them!

Kohler Haunt's Magic Mirror

Here at the Carnival of Souls, we love to see what people do with the digital puppets we provide for people to use.

Today, the House of Kohler sent us some great video of the Magic Mirror in action at their haunt. It looks like they have a great little yard haunt, complete with fireworks.

This video is a good one to watch because the puppeteer of the mirror had to deal with a rather quiet young boy who looked a little apprehensive about the entire place. He did a really good job setting the boy at ease while still maintaining the sense of magic about the place.

You can see other peoples' implementations of our effects at our Friends of ImaginEERIEing page. If you have photos or video of the Mirror (or any of our other ideas) at your own home haunt you'd like to share, be sure to submit your haunt.

Mirror, Mirror

For those of you still subscribed to my blog, I thank you for your loyalty. Sorry I was away from posting for so long, but when my second son was born, well, I had to focus on that for a while. No offense to you, dear reader, but he's hella cuter.

Anyway, to make it up to you, I'm announcing Mirror Mirror, our new digital puppet for the 2008 haunting season. It's a massive overhaul of the original Magic Mirror effect we did way back when we started Carnival of Souls.

It includes all the features you've come to expect from ImaginEERIEing's digital puppets: customizable lighting and other appearance options, multiple modes of control, and an easy-to-use onscreen console for configuring your puppet. Plus some spiffy new tricks, such as cool background effects like fire, spectral emissions, and necrotic venting. (Necrotic venting is shown at right.)

If you try it out and find any problems, please let me know. I want to get any bugs knocked back well in advance of the 2008 haunting season if possible.

Happy haunting!

Frosty Demo Available

Okay, I've just uploaded the demo version of Frosty to the ImaginEERIEing site. Frosty is our new Christmas-themed digital puppet, for all you home haunters who start putting up animated reindeer and Santas after you tear down your animated zombies and witches.

The puppet is not for purchase yet, since I want to get some testing done on it before I start charging. I'd appreciate it if you'd try it out and let me know whether you experience any bugs or problems with him. Thanks, and enjoy!

Gordo for charity, other testimonials

I've put up some testimonials on the ImaginEERIEing site which tell some good stories.

One is the story of a home haunter who charmed everyone from toddlers to parents, including some college girls in between, with the Magic Mirror.

But even more gratifying was the story of Gordo being used for a charity event for children and adults with severe disabilities. When we first built the Magic Mirror and offered it as a free download, we hadn't anticipated its use outside of the context of a home haunt, or possibly a haunted house attraction. But this was a great use of the puppet, because it was engaging and spooky enough to connect with the kids, but (thanks to Gordo's "happy face") not so intimidating that it put them off. Having an adjustable level of friendliness with moods really does come in handy for managing your performance to be appropriate for your visitors, on the fly if need be.

As stories come in about people using our digital puppets, I have to say: it's really great to know that our creations have spread smiles all over the country and beyond. It's a great feeling.

Digital Puppet Fun for 2007

It looks like ImaginEERIEing's digital puppets really contributed to some fun for kids outside of our own little home haunt this year. There have been a lot more downloads of the puppets this year than in 2006, and the reports are starting to come in about how they worked for people.

Dez, who lives in a not-very-Halloween-oriented town up in Canada, decided to get the ball rolling in his community by using the Magic Mirror to get kids interested in a spooky, fun tradtiion. He's wwritten a really good blog post with his mirror implementation and response, complete with video and photos. The facade he built looks great, and he describes how he built it. He had some interesting ideas on keeping the cost low for it - it's worth a read.

And Brent used our Yorick puppet to greet his guests with a really big pirate skull. The facade he constructed carried the theme through, complete with a treasure chest and iron sconces. Very nice!

As for our own haunt, the Magic Mirror remained an audience favorite, with people lining up all down our sidewalk to have a chance to talk to it. My buddy Rich provided the entertaining and engaging voice for it, and parents were telling us nonstop all night how their kids wouldn't miss the mirror on Halloween.

If you used the Magic Mirror or one of our "pro" puppets in your haunt this year, be sure to send us a note!

Update to Gordo

I've released a new build of our "Gordo" digital puppet which includes a new feature suggested by one of our users.

Basically, it extends the "keypress performance playback" control mode by letting you control Gordo using the keyboard (not the microphone) when a performance is not playing.

This way, you can have a prerecorded performance with a soundtrack that can be triggered with a keypress (say, for the introduction to a show), but you can still have Gordo interacting with your visitors while they are getting themselves seated.

If you try it out, let me know whether it works for you, or if you have any other troubles. Thanks!

Frosty: a New Digital Puppet in the Works

Here's a teaser for the new digital puppet I'm working on for ImaginEERIEing:

I hope I didn't scare off any of my fellow home haunters, but my wife thought that people would be interested in these puppets for the holiday season, too. As you can see, I've been working on a singing snowman with a top hat. I will probably name him "Frosty" for obvious reasons.

Question: What would you use a Christmas-themed digital puppet for? I know what Halloween-themed digital puppets are used for, so I can customize the controls and other features to the use that they'll be put to, but I'm less sure about what a Christmas-themed digital puppet would be used for. If I had an idea of how Frosty might be used, I could probably have a better feature set.

Gordo Available For Purchase

Well, the Gordo demo has been out for quite a while, and I haven't received any problem reports, so I've released Gordo for sale.

Gordo is our new digital puppet for 2007, a new addition to our existing line-up of Yorick and Mirror digital puppets. It's a haunted pumpkin that has a friendly, tot-friendly side and a corrupted, angst-ridden-teen-friendly side. You can spook or delight your visitors, or do both - Gordo can switch between modes instantly to accommodate all your visitors.

There is a free demo you can download to try it out. The full version is $15.

If you like Gordo, or Yorick, or any of our offerings, I'd appreciate it if you spread the word a bit to your fellow home haunter friends. We're not getting rich off this; it's just helping to offset the costs of our own home haunt each year.

And, as always, if you use Gordo in your home haunt, please send us a link where we can check out videos or photos of it in action - we're always amazed at the creative uses people put our products to.

Happy Haunting in 2007!

ImaginEERIEing.com opens its doors

Thanks to Apple's new domain name support, I can now host my haunt-related stuff on its own separate domain, and have the digital puppets not look like such a fly-by-night operation.

Introducing: imaginEERIEing.com.

As part of the launch celebration, our new digital puppet for 2007, Gordo is now available for download as a demo version.

It has not been extensively tested yet, and this is why it's not available for purchase yet. I hope to get some feedback and testing done on it over the next several days, after which point, Gordo will become available for purchase. If you try out Gordo, please drop me a line and let me know how it works for you. Gordo has a higher-resolution model than Yorick or Mirror, so it will probably demand higher system requirements than the other puppets did.

Speaking of our other puppets (Yorick and Mirror), they are still available and have their own pages on the new site.

Enjoy, and happy haunting!

Gordo, everyone. Everyone, Gordo.

Here's a preview of the next digital puppet we're brewing up at ImaginEERIEing for 2007...

His name is...Gordo.

(If you're interested in helping out on the beta test for Gordo, drop us a line.)