Well, I won't talk about the Oscar winners. Oops, just did. =)

But, seriously: what I really want to talk about is about this very cool post about puppets (or muppets) I found on Spline Doctors blog.

Those muppets have very little controls, and require a lot of skills from the puppeteer in order to make them act like they do. In 3D, it isn't the huge number of controls that will make your animation stand from the crowd. An über-complex rig can help sometimes, but will not replace a talented artist moving it.

Really worth a read. =)