Puppet Building Live on the Web

I was going to write something today about the recent surge in puppet building live online, but Dan beat me to it.

A lot of puppet builders are using services like ustream.tv, Justin.tv and BlogTV to broadcast their puppet building live to the world. Here's a run down of the shows that are available:

You + Me + Puppets = Yay!
This is Stacey's semi-regular show on BlogTV and the oldest of the lot I think. Stacey is always fun to hang out with online and she makes finger puppet making much more entertaining than you could ever possibly imagine. Easily wins the award for most entertaining.

Stiq Puppets Live
Of all the shows emerging, this is probably the most elaborate. Hosted by Daryl of Stiq Productions, each week he prepares a tutorial and offers a lot of helpful puppet building tips. He also frequently has a lot of other talented puppet builders to guest host the show with him.

Puppets and Stuff Live
I have caught any installments of this yet, but Shawn Sorrell of Puppets and Stuff also does some puppet building live online. I believe he's been a guest on Stiq Puppets' show and offered some marionette making tutorials.

Hoggworks Live
Brian Hogg has also been exploring live streaming and was online Friday night building puppets and chatting with visitors. He's also been doing live installments of Ask Palpatine.

Live streaming opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities in puppetry. It's an exciting time to be doing this kind of stuff on the web!

PuppetBuilding.com - The Return

Due to popular demand and after a few of the inevitable delays and hiccups, I'm happy to announce this morning that PuppetBuilding.com is back online!

I had to take the original site offline last year after it was hacked by spammers (due to a security flaw in the site's software that has since been patched and resolved). I suppose in the end it was all ultimately for the best because the new version of PuppetBuilding.com is going to be bigger and better than ever before.

One thing that I'm especially excited about is a new series of puppet patterns and step-by-step video tutorials I'll be offering very soon. Those aren't ready to go live just yet, but keep your eye on the site and revisit often because I'll be updating the site with new content several times each week from now on.

If you've got questions or suggestions about PuppetBuilding.com I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to drop me an email at puppetvision {at} gmail dot com.

Monday Afternoon Inspiration: 2008: A Puppet Odyessy

Public voting has begun in the 2008 Project Puppet puppet building contest.

Voting has begun in this year's Project Puppet puppet building contest. The theme this year is "2008: A Space Odyessy". An international panel of puppet builders - Terry Angus, Jarrod Boutcher, Ed Christie, Phil Fletcher and James Wojtal - have taken twenty eight entries from around the world and selected ten sci-fi inspired semi-finalists for public voting.

You can check out all of the semi-finalists and vote for your favourite here (I'm personally torn between Brenda Davis' Preegar and Kanja Chen's Gimbul, but they're all great work). Many of the entries that weren't selected are being shared over at Puppeteers Unite (scroll down the recent entries to find them).

Voting in the contest is open until Sunday, December 7, 2008. The winners will be announced on (presumably on ProjectPuppet.com) the following day.

Monday Morning Inspiration: Whatnot Workshop

Ever wanted to own your own Muppet? Now you can!

This is kind of old news, but in case you haven't already heard, FAO Schwartz in New York recently opened a Muppet Whatnot Workshop where visitors can make their very own Muppet Whatnot puppet. Tough Pigs' Joe and Ryan recently paid FAO Schwartz a visit have posted a photo tour of the Muppet Whatnot workshop.

The service is so popular that FAO Schwartz has been overwhelmed by the demand and were forced to temporarily suspend online orders, although the in-store workshop at FAO Schwartz in New York is still open.

Here's a video of three Whatnot puppets that the Gluvet's Philip Fletcher picked up in New York:



If you can get yourself to New York, me thinks these would make great presents for the Muppet fan on your Christmas list.

Rob Schrab's 4 Minute Film School

Filmmaker Rob Schrab talks about his "drawless animation" technique on the 4 Minute Film School podcast.

Rob Schrab is the guest professor for this week's installment of 4 Minute Film School on DIY filmmaking web site Indy Mogul. On the show Rob explains the puppetry/animation technique he calls "drawless animation" and demonstrates how he's used it on a variety of different projects, including The Sarah Silverman Program and the Death Cab For Cutie video Crooked Teeth (see previous post).

I love the way Rob takes everyday stuff, wraps it cardboard, shoots it on green screen and creates something that's very original and very cool!

Via Lost in Schlock.

Björk's Wanderlust is Amazing

Björk's new video Wanderlust combines live-action, stop motion, CG and puppetry.

I've always liked Björk's eccentric music videos, but her latest video Wanderlust has just become my all-time favourite. It's an incredible mash-up of live-action, stop motion, CG and puppetry. They even shot a version of it in 3-D! Both the video and a behind-the-scenes "making of" are available below:


Björk's new video Wanderlust.


The making of Wanderlust.

Via Cartoon Brew.

Update: The embedded video from YouTube has been taken down, so I've relinked to the original version on Yahoo Music.

New Year, New PuppetBuilding.com

Happy New Year everybody!

Just in time for 2008, have a look at the new, improved PuppetBuilding.com. Not only does it look an awful lot nicer, but I've made a lot of changes behind-the-scenes that will make it a much, much more fun and useful place to visit in 2008. Subscribe to the PuppetBuilding.com RSS feed and/or keep your eyes out for what's coming next.

PuppetBuilding.com Back From Hiatus

Posting has been a little thin here on PuppetVision this week (sorry!), but I have been posting over at PuppetBuilding.com, which is being updated once again after a two month hiatus. If you're interested in puppet building check in there regularly for new stuff.

The Swazzle Workshop is back

Tiger and Mousedeer are back with a new episode of The Swazzle Workshop.

The Swazzle Workshop - Swazzle's great puppet building podcast for kids of all ages - is back with a brand new episode. This time out Mayor Mole stops by to show Tiger and Mousedeer how to make a Garbage Monster Puppet.

PuppetBuilding.com Back Online

The new version of PuppetBuilding.com is slowly being rolled out this week, following a complete overhaul (see previous post). The new site will be updated every weekday with puppet building news, resources, tips and tutorials and is going to be a lot more "Web 2.0ish" with a lot of community-oriented features designed to help people find puppet building information and to help puppet builders promote their work.

The first of these features that is being testing out is a new International Puppet Builder Directory. If you build puppets, or even if you sell puppets that other people build please add yourself to the directory. Registration with the site is required to get listed, but once you're set-up you can come back and edit/update your profile whenever you need to.

If you use an RSS Reader, check to make sure you have the correct RSS newsfeed for the site.

There's more on the way at PuppetBuilding.com, so visit often!

Building The New PuppetBuilding.com

Work is underway setting up the brand new PuppetBuilding.com. I've been slowly putting the new site together for about a month now and I'm pretty excited about some of the new features it's going to have. The only catch is that all or parts of the old site may be offline for the next week or so while content is migrated to it's new home. I'll be sure to post here when everything is back up and running.

John Kennedy Builds Puppets on Activity TV

Puppeteer/puppet builder/author John Kennedy hosts a new series of puppet building videos for children.

John Kennedy - the author of the great puppet building craft books Puppet Mania! and Puppet Planet - is hosting a new series of puppet building videos on Comcast's Activity TV for kids. The videos all feature projects culled from his books, including:

• Sock Puppy
• Dancing Snowman
• Shoe Box Monster

There are also videos on performing skits, making your own puppet theatre and puppeteering tips from John. You can browse all of the videos in the puppet category on Activity TV.

Via PuppetBuilding.com.

Monday Afternoon Inspiration: Walking With Dinosaurs

The live arena show Walking With Dinosaurs features some truly remarkable animatronic puppets.

Walking With Dinosaurs, a live show based on the popular BBC documentary series, has got to be one of the biggest and most expensive puppet projects ever attempted. A team of fifty artists, puppet builders and engineers with a $12 million budget has been labouring for months in Australia to bring 15 life-size animatronic dinosaurs to life. These amazing puppets have to be seen to be believed, they're just absolutely incredible.

On the WWD web site you can watch video of the dinosaurs being built in the WWD workshop and see footage of two dinosaurs in action. The show's head of Creature Design Sonny Tilders also discusses the design approach used to build the dinosaurs briefly in a slide show of behind-the-scenes pictures. The show makes its world premiere in Sydney January 10th and will visit Australia's capital cities before embarking on a global tour. The shows looks like it will be incredible so I'm hoping it makes it to our shores in North America.

Special thanks to everyone down under who's been keeping me in the loop about this project!

Making a marionette out of a Mac

Who ever knew you could create digital puppetry by turning a computer in to a puppet?

Over at Machin-X I've posted a video and information about a cool digital puppetry project by Andreas Nicolas Fischer, a digital media arts student in Germany. He hacked the Sudden Motion Sensor in his Macbook to create a digital marionette. You can learn more here.

The Purple-Necked, Black-Bearded Blatch

Here's something that will make all the hardcore Muppet fans reading this very happy to see...the famous Women's Day article from 1969 about the Muppets that includes an original script by Jerry Juhl (The Purple-Necked, Black-Bearded Blatch) and a pattern for making your own Muppets to act it out. I know a lot of collectors and puppet people out there have always wanted this and now here it is, retro-cool Muppety goodness just for you.

Thanks to Scott Richardson who provided this from his personal collection!

3/12/05 Update: The link above is no longer working, but email me if you're looking for a copy of this file.

17/03/06 Update: The link is updated and working again! Thanks to puppetminister.com for hosting the file.

18/06/07 Update: This can now be found via PuppetBuilding.com.