Imagination Rabbits in house professional weirdo M dot Strange released an animated feature film titled "I am Nightmare" in 2014. You can see the trailer here
The reason this film is relevant to Nightmare Puppeteer is because it was the first time M dot Strange utilized a basic automatic lip sync for the characters. This is done using a very simple technique where the audio amplitude of the voice drives the rotation of the jaw.
After completing the above film in 2014, M dot Strange went into video game development and finished several small games and experiments you can find here on his itch.io page.
In 2017 he decided to recreate his simple lip sync system inside of the Unity game engine just to make some fast animations. This animation was made using that technique
After making that animation using the lip sync technique M dot decided to push the technique further and turn it into a weird little game/toy called "Weirdo" or "Weirdoware" It utilized the lip sync with a live microphone. The system analyzed the users voice and could detect pitch, causing different things to happen based on the pitch. You can see a video of it here
You can download and play with Weirdoware for free here
In early 2020 M dot dug out the Weirdro character with its lip sync system to make some more weird animations like this one
*If you look closely at Weirdro's head it is included in Nightmare Puppeteer with a different texture.
A few days after making the last video M dot pushed the concept further adding manual animation control and he created this animation with it
*The character in the above video is used in the short video that plays before every scene in Nightmare Puppeteer.
A day after that M dot pushed the concept further and made this animation in what was the first version of Nightmare Puppeteer
*The scene in the above video became the "Funny Haha" scene.
So now you know where Nightmare Puppeteer came from. May god have mercy on your soul.
Now go out and create and release your own original animations with Nightmare Puppeteer!
You will write the next chapter in Nightmare Puppeteers history! Good luck Puppeteerians!