Gumtar the Alien in Chad Costen’s student film Star Crossed Love.

One of the things that struck me about the Gumtar the Alien videos on YouTube when I first saw them was that Gumtar seemed like a well-developed, well-rounded character. A lot of the puppet characters I see on YouTube are either generic, too broad or underdeveloped so I think Gumtar is a breath of fresh puppetry air with a lot of potential. It turns out the little grey guy has bit of history behind him too. Gumtar dates back to a 2002 student film called Star Crossed Love that Gumtar’s creator Chad Costen shot at the Vancouver Film School.

Chad’s done a number of other good shorts that incorporate puppets through VFS. One of my favourites is I Hate Broccoli. What I really like about Chad’s work is that he tends to hold back the appearances of his puppets in his films until the audience is hooked in to the story, which I think makes the puppets that much more effective.

You can see more of Chad’s work on his web site, Reach For Your Star Productions.