Rock Giant is a short film from filmmaker/puppeteer Chris Heady that features a 10’0 tall puppet (the titular rock giant). Unfortunately, Chris had some bad luck earlier this year and his giant puppet was partially destroyed with 10% of his film remaining to be shot. Using Kickstarter – a sort of online pledge system that funds creative projects if they meet a pre-determined fund raising goal – Chris has raised $1,150.00 (as of this writing) to pay for a new, improved puppet, as well as equipment, travel expenses, and meals for his cast and crew.

Here’s a look at the animatic for Rock Giant to give you a sense of what Chris envisions the finished film would be like:

I had originally intended to write about Rock Giant to encourage PuppetVision readers to help push Chris over the top (yesterday he was still roughly $200.00 short of his $1,100 goal), but now that it’s been exceeded maybe some of you will consider assisting some of the other puppetry projects looking for funding on Kickstarter. You could even kick in a few more bucks to help out the Rock Giant (I did), after all, if there’s one thing an independent short can always use a little more of, it’s money.

(By the way, in the interests of full disclosure, I don’t know Chris and have no connection to any of the projects on Kickstarter, there’s just some interesting projects on the site that I think are worthy of support)