Google is celebrating the 75th birthday of Muppets creator Jim Henson with an interactive homepage doodle that turns the average Web user into a puppeteer.
"Become a digital puppeteer today and tomorrow with our homepage tribute to Jim Henson!" Google tweeted.
Henson's birthday is on Saturday, September 24, but Google got the party started early Friday night. The doodle features six original characters crafted by the Jim Henson Digital Puppetry Studio and brought to life on the Web by Google engineers. Each colorful creature sits atop a small button; press it and the character will follow your mouse's movements. Clicking on the character, meanwhile, will make it "talk."The six new Muppets were designed expressly for this project. The Jim Henson Company says the Google partnership is a way to ”commemorate and elebrate Jim’s creative legacy.” (Google tweeted: “Become a digital puppeteer today and tomorrow with our homepage tribute to Jim Henson!”)
“He loved gadgets and technology,” Brian Henson, chairman of the Jim Henson Company, writes about his dad in a Google blog tribute. “Following his lead, The Jim Henson Company continues to develop cutting-edge technology for animatronics and digital animation, ... But I think even he would have found it hilarious the way today some people feel that when they’ve got their smartphone, they no longer need their brain.”Henson died aged 53 in 1990, yet his legacy, including characters from "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," has wafted merrily into cultural history.
Google's little homage is a fine tribute to a man who, apparently, began every one of his new creations with, well, a doodle.
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