This commercial for We Buy Any Car (a used car purchaser in the United Kingdom) features a clever combination of puppetry, animation and an annoyingly catchy jingle.

The puppetry in the ad was supplied by Hattie Thomas and Matt Lloyd of Smoking Apples Theatre, who are featured in this look behind the scenes:

I just absolutely love Colosse – A Wood Tale, a new short film by director Yves Geleyn.

Here’s what he has to say about the film:

“I’m a huge fan of Jim Henson’s work. I have always wanted to work with puppets but never had the chance to do so before. I’m also a huge fan of robots; they were in all my childhood movies, cartoons, and comics. The robot from Paul Grimault’s The King And The Mockingbird; Brad Bird’s Iron Giant; and Goldorak, a Japanese cartoon, were inspirations for me. It was these two passions of puppetry and robots that drove me to create this short film, with a bird in it of course (can’t lose my bad habits).”

The short was produced by stop motion animation shop Hornet, Inc. who have a behind-the-scenes video and a photo gallery from the shoot available on their site. The film’s wooden marionette was built at Hornet with the assistance of Steve Widerman, who along with Billy Barkhurst also performed it.

Via Motiongrapher.

Look who’s back, it’s Flat Eric! With a special guest appearance by…William Fichtner?

Via Director’s Notes.

America’s Got Talent kicked off its summer series earlier this week. The popular televised talent show has proven to be a nice showcase for puppetry acts like Fighting Gravity and (most famously) Terry Fator. This season’s premiere episode featured black light puppet/dance troupe Light Wire Theater, who seemed to have made an early impression on the show’s judges. They were voted through to the next round of the show, which will be taped in Las Vegas.

You can watch America’s Got Talent Monday and Tuesday nights on NBC in the United States and on CitvTV in most Canadian markets (check your local listings).

Via Unreality TV.

Warrick Brownlow-Pike – who performers several popular puppet characters on the BBC – made this nice video tribute to Jim Henson, whom the world sadly lost all-too-soon on this day in 1990.

Say, you know what we haven’t done around here lately? A run-down of Michael Jackson puppet acts!

Let’s get started after the jump…

#5 Scott Land’s Michael Marionette

Michael Jackson always seems to be a popular act for marionette puppeteers to spoof and with good reason. Have you ever tried to make a rod puppet moonwalk? (early in my career I had to and I don’t recommend it unless you have a lot of patience). Probably the best Michael marionette you’ll ever see is performed by Scott Land. He’s a really amazing, old school marionette puppeteer who does cabaret shows in the style of legends like Tony Sarg, Frank Paris and Rufus and Margo Rose (it probably helps that he studied under other marionette masters like Tony Urbano, Albrecht Roser and Phillip Huber).

I would love to see this live.

#4 Mini Michael

This is one of the smallest Michael marionettes I’ve seen and it’s performed by a puppeteer in (I think) Comoros, which in case you didn’t know is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa.

…and don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of Comoros before, I had to look it up on Wikipedia myself!

#3 Malaysian Michael

Another thing that Michael Jackson puppet acts seem to have in common is that they’re really popular in Latin America and Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines and Malaysia for reasons that I don’t completely understand). This act from a magic convention in Malaysia isn’t that great, but I give the performer full props for actually singing rather than just lip syncing to a prerecorded track.

#2 Terry-Fator-as-Michael

You know who doesn’t need to lip sync either? Terry Fator. Now intricate, complex manipulation isn’t really Terry’s thing (he’s more of a straight Ventriloquist/impressionist) but, who cares? Is there a better or funnier celebrity impressionist working in puppetry today? I seriously doubt it.

#1 Damon Scott’s Michael Monkey

Our last act is Damon Scott, who nearly won the first season of Britain’s Got Talent. This is a video of his first appearance on the show and watch how he actually makes Simon Cowell grin and laugh out loud. Just accomplishing that alone should win you a cool million on that show!

I hadn’t heard of Titan The Robot until recently, but apparently he’s kind of a big deal.

I wonder who made him? I want one!

Puppets are used to remind people that when they don’t recycle, the containers know, and so does everyone else in these commercials for Encorp Pacific, a Canadian not-for-profit specializing in beverage container management. The container puppets in these spots were built by Furry Puppet Studio and were performed by Paul McGinnis, assisted by Kyrian O’Kane and puppet wrangler Helen Pearson of the Fungineers (both of whom are no strangers to Furry Puppet puppets).

Special thanks to Graeme – who art directed these commercials – for sending them in!

Punch is celebrating his 350th birthday this weekend and he’s having a huge party right where it all began.

It was 350 years ago yesterday that famed diarist Samuel Pepys was out on a stroll in London’s Covent Garden and recorded an encounter with “an Italian puppet play that is within the rayles there, which is very pretty, the best that ever I saw…” He was describing a marionette performance by an Italian puppeteer named Pietro Gimonde (who apparently performed as “Signor Bologna”) featuring a popular puppet character from his native country known as Pulcinella. Eventually, “Pulcinella” became “Punch” and a British cultural icon was born.

Punch as a marionette would go on to hit the height of his fame in the early 18th century before evolving in to a hand puppet in the mid-18th century and picking up a wife (Judy), a baby and a large cast of supporting characters along the way. Although not as popular as they once were, Punch and Judy shows are still performed all over England today, although never more so than at the annual Punch and Judy Festival in Covent Garden, which celebrates “Punch’s birthday” on May 9th (the date Pepy’s entry in his diary). This year’s festival takes place May 12-13 in in Covent Garden Piazza, London and will be extra special, as befits a famous fellow who’s been entertaining audiences for 350 years.

Even if you’re not in London this weekend, don’t despair! Events to celebrate Punch’s “Big Grin Birthday” are ongoing throughout the rest of the year, including a special Happy Birthday, Mr Punch exhibit at the V&A Museum of Childhood July 14th through December 9th. You can find more information and a complete listing of events celebrating Punch’s 350th Birthday around the UK at www.thebiggrin350.com.

(Embedded at the top of this post is a brief clip of Geoff Felix’s Punch and Judy show – which I’m told is fantastic – at the 2005 Punch and Judy Festival in Covent Garden)

The Stan Winston School of Character Arts (SWS) is an online school devoted to special FX make-up and animatronics founded by veterans of the Stan Winston Studio (now known as Legacy Effects). Their subscription based service offers a wide range of downloadable video tutorials on almost every aspect of character effects imaginable, ranging from basic character sketching all the way to how to create fully realized movie monsters. Best of all, the videos have been created by some of the best artists and technicians in the business, many of whom were colleagues of Stan Winston himself.

To help promote their service, SWS has been regularly posting lots of rare and never-before-seen footage from Legacy Effect’s work, including this latest video of their crew rehearsing a leaping “attack” with animatronic and rod-controlled raptor puppets for The Lost World: Jurassic Park (I’ve previously posted behind-the-scenes video from the Jurassic Park trilogy here and here). You can find lots more great footage from the Legacy Effects archives in the Stan Winston School YouTube Channel.

If you’re interested in checking out full length tutorials from the SWS, now is a great time to start. This week only they are offering 30% off of all of their training videos. Just go to www.stanwinstonschool.com and use promo code 600K by Friday to get the special discount.