The latest innovative episode of dotBoom is filmed in "papervision" using cut-out paper puppets.
Brian Hogg is quite possibly a total madman. Fortunately for us, instead of focusing his madness on some kind of diabolical scheme to conquer the world he's quite content instead to make full-length episodes of his online puppet sitcom dotBoom in his basement in Kitchener, Ontario.
I met Brian last summer and when he was talking about his then soon-to-be-unleashed show I kept marveling at how ambitious Brian's plans were relative to his budget (almost zero) and puppetry experience (absolutely zero). I wondered if he knew what he was getting himself in to and I'm not sure that he did, but that may have been a very good thing because otherwise he might not have made dotBoom and the puppet podcasting world would be much poorer for it.
Brian has experimented with all kinds of cool ideas for dotBoom and his latest innovation is what he calls "Papervision" - filming episodes of dotBoom using cut-out paper puppets in a scale model of the dotBoom offices much like toy theatre. dotBoom's seventeenth episode, A Bride Named Clark is part one of his three part "paper doll epic". It's only been out for a day, but it's already getting attention. If you haven't ever checked out an episode of the show before, now is a great time to start watching!
dotBoom is seriously great and a milestone for film and video puppetry on the web. Even if the show isn't your cup of tea, there's no denying that there's no one else is doing anything with puppetry on the web as ambitiously or consistently as Brian right now.
