About Shadow Puppets

Shadow Puppets helps kids (and grown-ups) make six hand-shadow animals at home, with live feedback from the camera on their hand shape: dog, bird, rabbit, deer, snail and crocodile. Shine a lamp at a blank wall, hold up your hands between the lamp and the wall, and the animals appear.

How it works

• Your browser runs a small on-device model (Google's open-source MediaPipe hand landmarker): it finds the 21 joints of each hand.
• For each animal, simple rules check the hand shape (which fingers are straight, bent or touching, measured as ratios of 3D joint distances) and, for the two-hand animals, how the two hands sit together (side by side for the bird and deer, stacked with a gap for the crocodile, thumbs touching for the bird's beak).
• Hold the shape steady for about a second to score. Every animal's rule was checked against the app's own reference hand shapes: each animal's shape passes its own rule and is rejected by the other five animals' rules.
• The shadow on the wall is the real test. If your shadow looks like the animal, you did it, even if the camera disagrees: lighting, camera angle and different hands can confuse the checker.
• Two-hand animals: keep both hands in view with all key fingers showing, and do not let one hand hide the other. If the camera loses a hand, the check waits.

The story

Story mode follows one little adventure: the rabbit is lost in the garden, and each animal helps it on its way. Dog shows the path, bird flies ahead, rabbit hops out of hiding, snail knows every path, crocodile lets the rabbit cross the river, and deer waits in the meadow. Finish all six chapters to earn the Story Finisher badge.

Learn more

These links open other websites in a new tab. Shadow Puppets isn't affiliated with any of them and sends them nothing.

Privacy

• Your camera picture never leaves your device. It is analysed in your browser frame by frame and immediately discarded. Nothing is recorded, uploaded or shared.
• No accounts, ads, cookies, analytics or trackers. The app loads nothing from other websites: the models and code are served from this site, and a security policy blocks connections anywhere else.
• Stored on your device only: which animals you've tried, your points, badges, practice days and story progress, your settings, and whether you've seen the welcome message, in your browser's local storage. Clear it any time in Settings → Clear progress, or with the Offline proof → Delete all my data button, or by clearing this site's data in your browser.
• Offline copy: after your first visit, your browser keeps a copy of the app so it works offline. Clearing site data removes it.
• The camera is only on while you're practising. It turns off when you go back to the animal list, press “Turn off”, or switch to another tab.
• Hosting: like any website, the server that delivers the app's files may keep standard technical logs (such as IP addresses) of those downloads. The app itself sends nothing.
• Reference links go to other websites, which have their own privacy policies.

Disclaimer

• Shadow Puppets is a home practice tool, not a teacher, therapist or safety device. Everything runs on your device: no video, audio or images are sent anywhere. Feedback is automatic and can be wrong. For real instruction, learn from shadow puppetry performers and books, linked on the Resources page.
• The camera feedback is automated and approximate. It can mark a shadow as correct when it isn't, or miss a correct shadow. The shadow on your wall is the authority.
• Grown-ups: keep lamps out of reach of hot bulbs, and supervise young children with the camera.
• The app is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind.

Accessibility

• Everything works with a keyboard. Feedback is announced to screen readers, and animations follow your device's “reduce motion” setting. Sound and confetti can be turned off in Settings.
• The live check depends on a camera and on seeing your hands. If that doesn't work for you, the diagrams, written steps, shadow drawings and reference links still work on their own.

Credits

• Hand tracking: MediaPipe Tasks Vision and its hand landmarker model, by Google, under the Apache License 2.0. A copy of the licence is included with the app.
• Hand-shape diagrams and shadow drawings are original illustrations made for this app.
• Reference links: Britannica and WikiHow, linked, not embedded.
• Built with the on-device gesture-tutor engine from the Little Hands app.

Shadow Puppets version 1.0.0