Skip to main content

Animator uses a Nintendo Powerglove to streamline his stop-motion

The Nintendo Power Glove may have failed as a game controller, but animator Dillon Markey has given it a new lease on life. With a few modifications and design tweaks, he’s revived the Glove and put it to use as an ingenious stop-motion animation tool.

Now, for those of you who might’ve been too young to experience the Nintendo Power Glove firsthand during its heyday, allow us to explain: Power Glove was essentially a new type of controller designed to be worn on your hand, and when it came out in 1989, pretty much nobody liked it. Nintendo’s adverts made it look totally kick-ass, but shortly after the glove was released, people began to realize that it was horrible for controlling games, so it eventually died off.

dillon markey power gloveBut it didn’t die off entirely. Enthusiasts kept Power Glove around, and now tinkerers like Markey are finding innovative new uses for it.

His idea to use it as a stop-motion animation controller was hatched after years of frustration with a tedious and inefficient workflow. During shoots, Markey would constantly have  to move back and forth between his computer, the camera, and the puppet stage, so getting a single frame sometimes took up to 10 or 15 minutes. That’s not exactly ideal when your video is comprised of thousands of individual shots.

He needed something better; something wireless that wouldn’t get in the way, and as a guy who grew up in the late 80’s, the Power Glove was an obvious choice. He just needed to reprogram it. With a little bit of help from an electrical engineer, he managed to equip the glove with Bluetooth connectivity and custom controls mapped to his computer.

Markey also added a few clever analog modifications as well. To help with small adjustments on the puppets (eyebrows, mouths, fingers, etc), his glove is outfitted with a set of auto-retracting tweezers that snap back into place when he lets go of them.

Brilliant!

Editors' Recommendations

Drew Prindle
Senior Editor, Features
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
Why AI will never rule the world
image depicting AI, with neurons branching out from humanoid head

Call it the Skynet hypothesis, Artificial General Intelligence, or the advent of the Singularity -- for years, AI experts and non-experts alike have fretted (and, for a small group, celebrated) the idea that artificial intelligence may one day become smarter than humans.

According to the theory, advances in AI -- specifically of the machine learning type that's able to take on new information and rewrite its code accordingly -- will eventually catch up with the wetware of the biological brain. In this interpretation of events, every AI advance from Jeopardy-winning IBM machines to the massive AI language model GPT-3 is taking humanity one step closer to an existential threat. We're literally building our soon-to-be-sentient successors.

Read more
The best hurricane trackers for Android and iOS in 2022
Truck caught in gale force winds.

Hurricane season strikes fear into the hearts of those who live in its direct path, as well as distanced loved ones who worry for their safety. If you've ever sat up all night in a state of panic for a family member caught home alone in the middle of a destructive storm, dependent only on intermittent live TV reports for updates, a hurricane tracker app is a must-have tool. There are plenty of hurricane trackers that can help you prepare for these perilous events, monitor their progress while underway, and assist in recovery. We've gathered the best apps for following storms, predicting storm paths, and delivering on-the-ground advice for shelter and emergency services. Most are free to download and are ad-supported. Premium versions remove ads and add additional features.

You may lose power during a storm, so consider purchasing a portable power source,  just in case. We have a few handy suggestions for some of the best portable generators and power stations available. 

Read more
Don’t buy the Meta Quest Pro for gaming. It’s a metaverse headset first
Meta Quest Pro enables 3D modeling in mixed reality.

Last week’s Meta Connect started off promising on the gaming front. Viewers got release dates for Iron Man VR, an upcoming Quest game that was previously a PS VR exclusive, as well as Among Us VR. Meta, which owns Facebook, also announced that it was acquiring three major VR game studios -- Armature Studio, Camouflaj Team, and Twisted Pixel -- although we don’t know what they’re working on just yet.

Unfortunately, that’s where the Meta Connect's gaming section mostly ended. Besides tiny glimpses and a look into fitness, video games were not the show's focus. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to focus on what seemed to be his company’s real vision of VR's future, which involves a lot of legs and a lot of work with the Quest Pro, a mixed reality headset that'll cost a whopping $1,500.

Read more