Even More Kobe & LeBron Puppet Ads

Nike's MVPuppets campaign has been a huge hit with basketball fans.

Nike's MVPuppets campaign (see previous posts here and here) keeps rolling right along. I think the bigger a fan of the NBA you are, the more you can appreciate these. The storyline in the ads has been following along with the NBA playoffs; in one of the newest ones LeBron - who's never won an NBA championship - is stuck at home with Lil' Dez while Kobe Bryant plays in the finals.

The ads have gotten a lot of attention and really prove that clever, well-done puppetry appeals to just about everybody. Click "Read More" to see some of the latest spots:









To see all the videos in the MVPuppets series visit the Nike Basketball video page.

Kiss The Girl

College Humour channels The Muppet Show while spoofing a classic scene from The Little Mermaid.

College Humour sends up The Little Mermaid in Kiss The Girl, a hilarious musical parody that's mildly NSFW and entirely inappropriate children. The puppets in the video were designed and built by James Wojtal, who also performed in the video along with Frankie Cordero (see previous post) and Rei Radilla.

Update: Added the rest of the puppeteers (thanks James!).

More LeBron and Kobe Puppet Ads

Nike's "Most Valuable Puppets" ad campaign features puppets of basketball stars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.

The rest of the ads for the previously-blogged "Most Valuable Puppets" Nike campaign featuring puppets of NBA stars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are now online. Click "Read More" to watch `em all below...







Finally, here's a video of the Kobe and LeBron puppets on ESPN's SportsCenter:



Videos via Line Boil.

28/5/09 Update: The Kobe and LeBron puppets appeared on SportsCenter to parody the SportsCenter theme. I've embedded the video above with the others (via Basketball Fiend).

ABBA Puppets

Four puppets have a "little" problem in this video originally created for the 2004 Eurovision contest

Abba: Our Last Video features "4 small puppets who look very much like the original `70s Swedish supergroup ABBA are try to get a recording contract in Stockholm, Sweden 1974," and with a description like that, honestly, what more do you need to know?

Via Puppeteers Unite.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre is Fantastic Fun

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre creates madcap puppet fun two socks at a time.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre might not be top-notch puppetry on a purely technical level, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a funnier, more consistently imaginative (or prolific) series of puppet videos out there. Created by Kev F Sutherland, the videos have a decidedly Scottish/British sensibility to them and frequently send-up pop culture icons from across the pond like Doctor Who and Torchwood. I also really liked the "I'm A Mac / I'm A PC" ad spoof, The Facebook Song and their apparently famous Halloween video.

Kev's created a mind-boggling 240+ videos for the web since 2006; a playlist of his best work is available on YouTube. You can waste a couple hours watching the mapcap fun of Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre and you won't regret a single moment of it.

Special thanks to Robin for introducing me to this!

Kobe and LeBron Nike Puppet Ad

Puppets of NBA stars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant appear in a new Nike commercial.

The web has been buzzing for the past day or so with talk about the new Nike ad that features puppets of basketball stars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. It's always neat to see a commercial like this resonate with people who don't usually watch puppetry. The spot is reportedly the first in a series of ads Nike is planning to roll out during the NBA playoffs.

The Kobe and LeBron puppets in the ad were created at Legacy Effects. The team of puppeteers who worked on this included Greg Ballora and Greg Manion (Lebron), Rob Saunders and Dave Barclay (Kobe) with Christine Papalexis, Alison Mork, Blake Bolger, and Patrick Gerrity assisting. The Kobe puppet's voice was supplied by David Allen Grier; Lebron's was done by SNL's Kenan Thompson.

13/5/09 Update: I've added information about the puppetry team who worked on the Nike spots (special thanks to Greg Ballora for providing the details!).

Making Doctor Who

Jay Tyson has created a step-by-step tutorials demonstrating how he built a caricature puppet of David Tennant.

Jay Tyson built a great-looking puppet of David Tennant (the actor who pays The 10th Doctor in the long-running sci-fi series Dr. Who) for his puppet web series 99 Acre Wood. Jay is an incredibly talented puppet builder and what is especially cool about this is that he's put together a detailed series of step-by-step video tutorials demonstrating how he built the David Tennant puppet and made them available online.

Each installment covers a different aspect of the process of building a hand and rod foam puppet. You can download each one for just $5 each, or order them as a complete set on DVD for $65.85 US (including shipping). Jay also offers other video tutorials on subjects like flocking and building eye mechanisms for puppets (the full list of video tutorials can be found here). He was kind enough to send me a bunch of them to review and I learned a couple of new puppet building tricks. At $5 each I really think these are an incredible bargain for anyone interested in learning about building puppets.

Cross-posted from PuppetBuilding.com.

14/5/09 Update: I originally linked to the wrong video. It's better now.

Action Figure Videos

Action figures are used as puppets in Star Wars in 3 Minutes.

I've written about the phenomenon of "Action Figure Videos" before (previously posted examples include I'm A Marvel / I'm A DC, The Eyes of Darth Tater and The Eye of the Tiger), which I find really interesting because they're a form of found object puppetry, even if the people making these videos don't realize it.

Thanks to Robot Chicken making Action Figure videos isn't exactly ground-breaking stuff, but someone who was doing it long before Seth Green's crew was Probost Productions. They're probably best known for Star Wars in 3 Minutes , but they've also parodied Raiders of the Lost Ark, celebrities and Rankin/Bass. You can see all of their videos on YouTube.

Muppet Resident Evil

Jim Hensons Resident Evil 5 (warning: link contains minor puppet-related gore!) is clever little Muppet/video game mashup on IGN. Expect to see more videos like this featuring puppets from FAO's Schwartz's Muppet Whatnot Workshop.

Via Puppeteers Unite.

Puppets on 30 Rock

The cast of 30 Rock was transformed in to puppets for a very recent, very special episode.

The latest episode of the NBC comedy 30 Rock featured a fantasy sequence with a a cast of puppets. If you live in the U.S. you can check out the episode on Hulu (its title is Apollo, Apollo), otherwise you'll have to make do with Alan Sepinwall's review of the episode.

This is just an aside, but I really wish they'd hurry up and make it possible to watch Hulu in Canada. It's blocked up here and if you live north of the 49th parallel and like online video like I do, Hulu is like the cute girl you're madly in love with who won't give you the time of day.

Links via Puppet U.

29/3/09 Update: For those located outside the U.S., here's a link to the 30 Rock puppet scenes on YouTube (link via Puppeteers Unite).

Sesame Street Explains the Madoff Scandal

Ernie and Cookie Monster explain what a Ponzi Scheme is with a little help from The Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Last week Jimmy Kimmel ran a hilarious segment that remixed clips from Sesame Street so Ernie and Cookie Monster could explain the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme. I wonder, does this mean that the YouTube Muppet Mashup phenomenon has officially gone mainstream?

Via Guy Kawasaki.

Twilight: The Puppet Saga

He's shiny...puppet versions of Twilight's Edward and Bella in Twilight: The Puppet Saga.

Twilight: The Puppet Saga is much better than I expected it to be. It's a spoof of a certain popular vampire movie that was recently in theatres. It does a pretty good job of summarizing said vampire movie so if you haven't seen it yet consider this your spoiler warning.

Bunraku-Style Mario

Super Mario gets the Kasou Taisho treatment.

OK, this is pretty awesome. I'm not entirely sure, but I assume this is from a recent Kasou Taisho (see previous post).

Pot Cookie Monster

Everybody's favourite snack-loving Muppet gets spoofed in Pot Cookie Monster.

I imagine the good folks at Sesame Workshop aren't too thrilled about it, but Pot Cookie Monster is a pitch-perfect send-up of Sesame Street from College Humour. I know I sometimes give videos that use swearing and/or drugs as their central premise a hard time here, but what I think puts this in a different category is that it's a funny premise (after all, the only way you're going to experience talking letters, numbers and monsters on your street is during some kind of drug-induced hallucination) and it's well written and well executed, which is not surprising since the puppets were built and performed by James Wojtal.

Space Ghost with Puppets

Baltimore's Annex Theater performs a "live episode" of the cult classic cartoon Space Ghost.

Check out this video of Baltimore's Annex Theater performing an episode of the cult classic cartoon Space Ghost live on stage with puppets (you can watch the original episode for reference purposes here). Just watch out for Dr. Nightmare and his army of Nightmare Creatures...

Via Urlesque.

Hi, I'm a Marvel...and he's a DC

Hi, I'm a Marvel...and he's a DC uses super heroes and found object puppetry to send up Apple's popular I'm a Mac...and I'm PC commercials.

This has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on YouTube; it's been around for over a year and half, but I only discovered it this week. Hi, I'm a Marvel...and he's a DC is a long running series of parodies produced by Michael Agrusso and Brinna Li. The videos spoof the popular Get a Mac commercials using superhero characters like Batman and Spiderman that are brought to life using simple found object puppetry techniques.

Michael - who is a writer, performer and voice coach based in L.A. - was inspired to create the series in early 2007, after reading that features films based on DC Comics character The Flash and Wonder Woman had both lost their directors due to creative differences with Warner Bros. on the same day while Marvel comic book franchises like Spiderman, X-Men and Iron Man were either made millions at the box office or were currently in production. Michael saw parallels between Marvel/Macintosh and DC/PC and Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC was born.

The earliest videos were filmed simply against a white sheet, with Michael and Brinna performing action figures in real time in front of an iMovie camera. Later videos are a little more sophisticated, sometimes utilizing stop motion animation techniques and using more sophisticated sets and story lines. My personal favourites are the ones that feature Iron Man and Batman:



The series has become so popular that it has been featured on the official Marvel web site and Michael's YouTube channel currently has over 60,000 subscribers, including the likes of Iron Man director Jon Favreau.

Special thanks to quite-possibly-the-world's-greatest-sock-monkey-maker Robin, for introducing me to these!

The Emperor Strikes Back (at all who steal his dessert)

In the latest Ask Palpatine, the Emperor wants the rebels to stop stealing his pie.

Depending on your feelings towards/knowledge of Star Wars, you may or may not enjoy Ask Palpatine. If you fall in to the first category, check out its latest wonderfully surreal episode.

Sarah Palin Puppet Show

As the polls close on our federal election here in Canada here's another political puppet video, this time featuring Sarah Palin.

Special thanks to Steve Widerman, who discovered this on YouTube!

John McCain Puppet Video Spoof

John McCain sings soulfully in 100 Years To Win.

There is about a month to go until the U.S. election and Peter Orr (better known online by his online nickname "Scary" Larry Wolf) built himself a John McCain puppet and put together a pitch-perfect music video/political spoof about McCain called 100 Years To Win.

14/10/08 Update: In my original post I mistakenly linked to the wrong MySpace page (who knew there were two Scary Larrys?). I've updated the link to point to Peter's profile on imdb.

Law & Order: Special Letters Unit

Sesame Street sends up Law & Order with Law & Order: Special Letters Unit.

I'd bet that the Sesame Street crew obviously had fun with Law & Order: Special Letters Unit. Also worth checking out: RSI: Rhyme Scene Investigation.

Via PajamaMama.