PuppetVision Blog

Slowing Down For the Summer

2009-07-02T07:05:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. I've recently been occupied by a family emergency and updates may be few and far between over the summer as a result. If you're enrolled in the Puppet Building 101 course, it's been placed on hold until July 13th, at which point it will resume.

I have no definite future plans right now, but things will probably return to normal sometime around late August or early September. Thanks for your understanding.

Sock Zombie Movie

2009-06-21T23:44:00.003-04:00

Kathy Danley made a short video featuring an adorable Sock Zombie.

Remember Erin Glaser's Sock Zombies? Well, Kathy Danley went and made a short film with one of them! You can watch Sock Zombie "doing the dating thing" on YouTube.

Jay ThePal

2009-06-18T08:52:00.002-04:00

Jay ThePal (and Kay ThePal) seem to be popping up all over social media lately.

It took me a little while to figure out what was up with Jay ThePal, a puppet character that seemed to start popping up all over every social media website that you can think of lately. I think I first saw him (along with Kay ThePal) when they gave me a shout-out on 12seconds.tv, which is sort of Twitter for video.

Jay ThePal is one of those FAO Schwartz "Whatnot" Muppet puppets and seems to be a sort of puppetry experiment that's happening all over the web (Twitter, YouTube, 12seconds, etc.). It's a little difficult to get a handle on the whole project or where it's going, but it's very interesting to watch how people are using puppetry to explore social media. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance)

2009-06-17T00:51:00.001-04:00

Puppetry students at the University of Hawaii re-create The Evolution of Dance with a puppet.

I love Bunraku-style puppetry, so I really enjoyed seeing A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance), a final project for a puppetry class at the University of Hawaii inspired by the famous YouTube viral video.

Going Back To The Future Of Advertising

2009-06-16T21:57:00.002-04:00

Paul recently did a great post on his blog about Jim Henson's early commercial spots and how that could be a successful advertising model today. I think he's absolutely right; his post reminds me of one I wrote a couple years ago called Using Puppets To Pay The Bills.

The 30 second pre-roll ad is almost universally hated. The web is a new medium that we're still in early stages of exploring. The people who really "break through" and define it will be the ones who figure out new ways of telling stories and develop new (old?) ways of thinking about advertising and sponsorship.

Monday Morning Inspiration: Dan Stevers' Christian Motion Graphics

2009-06-15T09:55:00.005-04:00

Dan Stevers creates Christian-themed motion graphics.

Over the past month or I've been watching and enjoying Dan Stevers' Christian-themed motion graphics videos on Vimeo. Two of my favourites are The Light of the World and Life With God. Some of Dan's videos are artistic interpretations of Christian scripture, while others simply illustrate basic Christian principles.

You can see all of Dan's videos on Vimeo. His work is available to purchase from Worship House Media.

Pop-Up Puppetry Music Video

2009-06-14T06:40:00.000-04:00

"OK" nicely combines puppetry and pop-up books.

I know at least a couple puppeteers who love to make pop-up books. This music video from an unfortunately named band seems to combine those two interests very nicely.

Via Mary Robinette Kowal.

Even More Kobe & LeBron Puppet Ads

2009-06-13T21:15:00.005-04:00

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.

Transylvania TV Happenings

2009-06-12T22:09:00.001-04:00

Transylvania TV is preparing it's second season.

Production on Transylvania TV (see previous post) seems to be humming along nicely. The show is holding auditions for new puppeteers and also running a puppet design competition called the "Lose Your Intellectual Property Contest" (hey, at least they're honest about it!).

Season two of Transylvania TV debuts online July 4th.

Is 30 Rock A Muppet Show Rip-Off?

2009-06-10T23:35:00.004-04:00

Is NBC's 30 Rock based on The Muppet Show?

Brian Lynch - screenwriter of the unproduced and literally-titled The Next Muppet Movie - has written a hilarious post on his blog alleging that the NBC comedy 30 Rock is a rip off of The Muppet Show. Although he's writing with his tongue firmly in his cheek, the similarities are actually kind of striking. I mean, I knew there were some connections between the Muppets and 30 Rock, but after reading this I'll never be able to look at Tracey Morgan with a straight face again.

Virgin One's New Puppet Mascot

2009-06-09T06:09:00.004-04:00

Red is the new puppet mascot of Virgin One.

British broadcaster Virgin One has a brand new mascot and he's a puppet. His name is Red and he's performed by Brian Herring and was built by Paul Jomain, who also built the PG Tips monkey.

Red was created as part of complete rebranding of Virgin One that begins on air tonight at 9 p.m. in the UK. There's a promo available on YouTube and eagle-eyed PuppetVision readers will spot several puppets by the Gluvets (see previous post) and Darryl Worbey Studios in the video. The cast puppeteers who worked on this included Mak Wilson, Brian Herring, Phil Fletcher and Simon Buckley.

Update: I've revised the post to correct some mistakes I made about who did what on this. Special thanks to James for setting me straight!

Linear vs. Passive Income

2009-06-07T23:19:00.013-04:00

You may not know this about me, but I went to business school.

Actually, I went to a special one-year program here in Toronto that incubates small businesses and trains them in entrepreneurship. While I was there, we frequently had business owners come in to do guest lectures. One of the lecturers was the owner of a rapidly expanding bakery who told us a story that I've thought about a lot lately.

The story was about the first few years of his business and how he barely made a living running a small shop selling his baked goods. One day, finally fed up with not having any money and with a baby on the way, he decided something had to change. He started trying new things, altered his business model and starting selling his products wholesale to supermarkets and other stores. This worked really well because the supermarkets and stores could sell a lot more of his products to the public than he ever could. As an additional bonus, because the stores and supermarkets now took care of most of the sales work he was able to focus on his real passion, making food.

Not long after he made the change he was out with his wife one night and they stopped at a supermarket to pick something up. He saw people buying his products and realized that he was making money right then and there even though he was out on a date with his wife!

In business there are two types of income - linear income and passive income. Most people make a linear income. If you have a job and work X number of hours to get paid X number of dollars or if you make something (like a puppet) and then sell it, you make a linear income. There's nothing wrong with a linear income per se, but the difficulty with it is that in order to make more money you usually have to do more work. At a certain point you just can't work any more hours so there's a pretty firm ceiling on how much money you can earn from a linear income source.

By comparison, a passive income is money that you make with little to no effort. Advertising is a good example of a passive income source; it takes about the same amount of work to write a blog read by one million visitors as it does to write one read by ten people, but you can make a lot more money advertising to one million readers than ten. Other good examples of passive income would be selling merchandise through Cafepress or selling a puppet pattern that people can download from your online store. A passive income scales much better than a linear one does, so in theory you can make more and more money without having to do more and more work.

Selling baked goods wholesale probably isn't a textbook example of a passive income source, but the underlying lesson of the bakery story - maximizing profit while minimizing effort - is what passive income is all about. It's also something that I think all artists need to understand. After all, if you look at puppetry or just entertainment in general, the most successful companies all rely on passive income streams like licensing and advertising to make most of their profits.

I know his might seem really simple and an obvious thing to point out, but if it's common sense then it's not so common. Think about how many people you know who are struggling and make a linear income? Are you? Earning any kind of income - passive or linear - takes hard work, but the more I think about it, the more having a passive income seems like a better, smarter way to work.

The Making of Abba's The Last Video

2009-06-05T23:41:00.005-04:00

Take a look behind the scenes of Abba's The Last Video.

This is a follow-up to the post about Abba's The Last Video; it's a making of video that shows how the puppetry and effects in the video were achieved.

Special thanks to "Scuba Steve" for finding this!

Food Party Fun

2009-06-04T22:55:00.001-04:00

Thu Tran's Food Party is like no cooking show you've ever seen before.

Food Party is a new show on IFC that describes itself as a "mind-bending, non-reality cooking show" and is built around artist/food enthusiast Thu Tran and a cast of puppets who cook up all kinds of bizarre recipes together. Food Party grew out of an art installation and online series Thu created in her hometown of Cleveland and kind of defies explanation. It's a little bit like what Martha Stewart might look like if it was filmed it on the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse.

In an interview with Thu about the genesis of Food Party, Gothamist called Food Party "quite possibly the only cooking program you should be watching" and I'm inclined to agree. It's independent, wacky, weird and exactly the kind of thing we need more of on TV.

Food Party debuts on IFC next Tuesday at 11:15 ET/PT. A bunch of Food Party videos are available on the IFC website, including a look behind the scenes.

Puppet Building 101: Nine Week Online Puppet Building Workshop

2009-06-02T09:15:00.001-04:00

I'm really happy to announce today that I'm going to be offering a nine week, interactive online puppet building course, Puppet Building 101.

This is an intensive nine week course I'll be offering via PuppetBuilding.com that is designed to take you step-by-step through the process of how you to build exactly the kinds of puppets you want to make. The course has a couple of components, including:

Weekly video tutorials and handouts that take you step-by-step through the puppet building process.
A personalized program that will be geared to the specific needs and interests of the participants.
A weekly live video session with an interactive format for asking questions that will feature extra tutorials and demonstrations.
A private “class discussion” message board where you can share, discuss, critique and trade notes with other participants.

Don't let the "101" fool you. The goal of the course isn't just to teach you how to build a puppet and follow a bunch of instructions step-by-step, it's designed to teach you how to think about building puppets and how you can design, pattern and build your own original characters from scratch. Over the course of nine weeks, everyone who participates will build three different puppets including a custom character they've designed from scratch.

The cost of the course is $89.95 US. That's less than the cost of two really good puppet building patterns or DVDs and this has the added bonus of being interactive and with one-on-one help and feedback. I think that's a great bargain, especially considering that really good offline workshops can often cost a couple hundred dollars.

Enrollment for the course is now available and it would be great to have some PuppetVision readers involved! The deadline to sign-up is June 6th, but because this is the first time I'm offering it I'm going to be limiting enrollment so the cut off may come before then if the course fills up quickly.

If you have any questions please read the Puppet Building 101 FAQ or drop me a line at puppetvision {at} gmail dot com (be sure to include "Puppet Building 101" in the header so your message gets flagged and I can get back to you ASAP).

Gareth Oliver's Got Talent

2009-06-02T08:00:00.001-04:00

Gareth Oliver is a talented British Ventriloquist who appeared on the latest season of Britain's Got Talent.

With all the worldwide media attention heaped on Susan Boyle during the latest season of Britain's Got Talent, a really talented Ventriloquist on the show has somewhat overlooked - Gareth Oliver. He debuted on the show with a really unique act - throwing his voice while performing martial arts - and wowed the audience and judges with a spoof of badly dubbed Kung Fu movies. In the second round he switched gears and performed an opera-singing puppet named Pav (built by previous Britain's Got Talent contestants the Gluvets). Gareth almost made it through to the finals and actually received enough public votes to get into the top three, but was cut when the judges had to break a tie between him and singer Shaun Smith.

Even though Gareth may not have won the competition, appearing on Britain's Got Talent is already boosting his career. The website of E3 Group (the firm that represents Gareth in the UK) have reported record traffic on their site since his appearances and say that hundreds of people have been inquiring about his availability. He'll also be making extensive promotional appearances for ITV in the UK, so it looks like it will be a happy ending for him after all.

Kiss The Girl

2009-06-01T17:28:00.007-04:00

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!).

Lou Romano's Art of UP

2009-06-01T06:40:00.003-04:00

Lou Romano shares some of his beautiful conceptual art from Pixar's Up on his blog (image c Disney/Pixar).

Up was the number one movie at the box office this weekend, which is pretty unsurprising since many critics are calling it Pixar's best movie yet and because, well, it's a Pixar movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to checking it out this week because everyone seems to be raving about it. If you want to see some absolutely beautiful conceptual art from the film, head over to the blog of Lou Romano who has put together a huge post featuring his design and production work from Up.

Pixar's next film is Toy Story 3, which is slated for release next year. A teaser trailer has just been released and it's predictably perfect (I imagine it's probably playing in theatres in front of Up).

Puppet Building Live on the Web

2009-05-31T15:26:00.006-04:00

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!

Deliberate Practice and Why Talent is Overrated

2009-05-30T23:09:00.003-04:00

Over the past few months I've been getting back in to a lot a of serious puppetry rehearsal and thinking about the concept of deliberate practice quite a bit. While the famous adage says it's important to “practice, practice, practice”, that's not how deliberate practice works. Hit the link for a really good article on the subject, but the basic idea is that how you practice is much more important that how much you practice.

Over the years I've noticed that the best puppeteers are intensely self-critical and have a remarkable ability to identify their weaknesses as performers. They often analyze seemingly trivial details - the way their fingers grasp a puppet, the way their muscles flex, the way they grasp an object in a scene - and continually experiment with ways to improve their performances.

Just some food for thought this weekend.

Rare Muppet Clip

2009-05-28T22:44:00.001-04:00

Jim Henson and Frank Oz on the set of an Orson Wells TV pilot.

Orson Welles was well-known as a Muppet fan. He famously appears in a cameo at the end of The Muppet Movie and was once quoted saying "Sesame Street is the greatest thing that ever happened to television." I had no idea though that Jim Henson and Frank Oz were Orson Welles' quests on a TV pilot he shot in 1979. Of course, after some quick Googling I discovered that the good folks over at Muppet Wiki already knew that (they know everything about Muppets).

Video via The Muppetcast and We Love You So.

New Film From Frankie Cordero

2009-05-27T22:21:00.001-04:00

The first in a new series of four films from puppeteer/director Frankie Cordero has just been released.

Frankie Cordero (see previous post) is directing and series of four web shorts for a company called 14 Hands. They incorporate a variety of puppetry styles and the first just became available to watch online here. I don't know what this is called, but I like it and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of Frankie's new films.

More LeBron and Kobe Puppet Ads

2009-05-26T15:20:00.007-04:00

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).

Memorial Day Inspiration: Sita Sings The Blues

2009-05-25T06:31:00.005-04:00

Sita Sings The Blues is an animated feature by Nina Paley licensed under Creative Commons.

Happy Memorial Day to all my American friends! (Here in Canada, it's just another Monday...)

Whether you have the day off today or not, find sometime soon to watch Sita Sings the Blues. It's a feature length animated 2D film that was written, directed, produced and animated entirely by Nina Paley on a single computer in her apartment(!). As if that wasn't cool enough, she's decided to release the film under Creative Commons for free and is trying to make money on the film through voluntary payments, ancillary products, sponsorships, public screenings, and limited DVD sales. According to some reports, her somewhat unorthodox distribution strategy has already made her money than a conventional film distribution contract would have.

You can download Sita Sings The Blues for free and learn more about the film at www.sitasingstheblues.com. If you enjoy watching the film, please show your appreciation and consider giving Nina a small donation for all her great work.

ABBA Puppets

2009-05-24T22:59:00.002-04:00

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.