Shown above is a demonstration video of my rod puppet design. The puppet stands, controller included, about 80cm tall and is shown bare bones, without paint or clothes and with a generic set of hands and head. The primary use case is film making and as such the focus has been on hitting a sweet spot between smooth movement and ease of control, the trade off being a need for a power supply as well as expensive servo motors. I'm currently working on a design more suitable for live performances, one that can offer roughly the same range of expression without being largely reliant on servo motors.
The design is heavily influenced by the kind of European rod puppet made popular by the Viennese puppet master Richard Teschner (who in turn was influenced by the traditional javanese rod puppet art
wayang golek) in the early 20th century.
Check out the
ASSEMBLY instructions if you would like to build your own.