One of the most popular puppets on YouTube has got to be Achmed The Dead Terrorist, a creation of Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Achmed is a brilliant idea for a character – even if Jeff’s humour is sometimes questionable – but what I think really makes audiences respond to Achmed is the way Jeff performs him, especially the way he creates the illusion of thought and focus.
As I’ve mentioned before, good puppetry – much like good animation – requires a good understanding of the power of silhouette (see previous post). There probably no more pure example of that than shadow puppetry, a medium that this new commercial for Surf Twilight Sensations takes full advantage of.
I just watched two clips from the upcoming NFB adaptation of the Maurice Sendack classic Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life and I haven’t been this excited to see a puppet film in awhile. It’s directed by Canadian filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski who previously directed the acclaimed stop motion film Madame Tutli-Putli. Higglety Pigglety Pop is done in a hybrid style that’s very similar to Tutli-Putli, utilizing live-action puppets, actors, animation and digital manipulation.
spotted this video from the latest version of the long-running Taiwanese puppet series Pili (see previous post) over on Kelvin Kao’s blog. As per usual, it’s a mind-bending mix of computer animation, slick editing, and traditional Chinese hand puppetry.
I greatly enjoyed watching the demo reel of puppeteer Russ Walko this morning.
Over at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, Stephen Worth has a short post about animating robots. Stephen mentions how the job description of an animator is rapidly changing and muses about the possibility of animators being hired to “animate” robots, which sounds suspiciously similar to what a puppeteer does.
Although robots and automata aren’t generally considered puppets [...]
I love this “Hand Ninja” video. Clever, simple, effective. Most importantly, the girls in this video are obviously having fun. More puppetry should be like this.
Remember this scene in The Empire Strikes Back? Much like being a Jedi, the key to mastering the art of puppetry is control…in order to be a good puppeteer you must learn control! (wise Master Yoda is, isn’t he?).
More important than lip sync, eye focus or any of those other puppetry concepts, the first skill [...]
The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta is presenting a lecture and workshop by Steve Whitmire called “Steve Whitmire: Perspectives – The Sentient Puppet” this month.
Well, another year has come and gone. I’ve been a little too busy doing puppetry to write about for the past several months, but before 2009 comes to a close I wanted to share JibJab’s annual year end video, Never a Year Like `09.
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