Big Spaces, Small Animals

As most of you know, I’m one of the co-founders of Unraku, a puppetry studio in Toronto that combines the talents of several puppeteers and puppet builders who work in diverse styles of puppetry. All of us there adore the work of Kelly Kirkham (see previous post) – another one of Unraku’s co-founders – who makes beautiful hand puppets and marionettes through her studio Run Rabbit Run.

Kelly builds traditional hand puppets and marionettes using papier mache that have a lovely old fashioned aesthetic to them. She’s recently started to explore filmmaking and I think this video – created earlier this year for an art exhibit here in Ontario called Big Spaces, Small Animals – is her first piece. It’s very quiet, thoughtful and contemplative. It’s very different from much of what usually gets mentioned here on PuppetVision, and that’s precisely why I like it so much.

Kelly is teaching two puppet building workshops later this year, one on hand puppet construction at Open Door Designs and another on marionette making at Unraku (details for the second workshop haven’t been announced yet). If you’re in or near Toronto you should sign up and check them out!

Pepto Puppets

I like these Pepto Bismal spec spots made by Craig Morrison, a fellow Torontonian who’s fairly new to puppetry. Simple puppets performed with a sense of humour. Fun stuff.

Exit Row

Something I’ve been remiss about mentioning here is Exit Row, a new-ish web series from Puppet Heap and Paul Andrejco (see previous posts) that’s already been featured on several other puppetry blogs. The show is built around two air sickness bags, Ralph and Chuck, and is another example of how great a simple idea can be when it’s well-executed. The show is ideal for the web – made with just two paper bag puppets, a simple set and a few props – and most importantly pretty funny.

The puppeteers involved in this project include James Godwin, Melissa Creighton, Tim Lagasse and the rest of the crew at Puppet Heap so it’s not surprising that it’s so good. You can check out all nine episodes of Exit Row on Puppet Heap’s YouTube channel. New episodes continue to debut weekly.

Via Sons of Punch.

Bear Town Demo

Even though it’s been about seven years since I put my short-lived puppet web series Bear Town online (check out an episode on YouTube), I still occasionally get asked if I’m ever going to do something with it. Well, after a few false starts, I’m happy to finally say that the answer is “hopefully”. I spent the first half of this year directing a demo for Bear Town that’s intended as a first step towards finally producing it as an independent feature film.

Although this was just a demo, this was one of the biggest and most complex projects I’ve ever worked on. Twenty-three puppets were built for the shoot, including rod, hand and rod and Bunraku-style fully body puppets. It took a large and talented crew of people to make this happen, most notably the Unraku gang who were responsible for all of the puppets, costumes, props and sets and puppetry, aided by a bunch of new puppeteers and freelancers. A total of seventeen puppeteers were needed on set; I was especially thrilled that Chris Grom – who played Hank in the original “Bear Town” videos – agreed to return. It was just about the best group of wonderfully creative puppet people you’ll ever meet and we were blessed with an equally fantastic and very professional crew.

There’s not much more I can say about Bear Town at this point for the usual, pesky-but-legally-necessary reasons. Although the demo isn’t finished yet and probably won’t be available online for quite awhile, there’s a set of photos from the build and shoot for the Bear Town demo available on Flickr for you to peruse and enjoy.

Photos via Unraku Blog.

Skippy Shorts

Have you seen Skippy Shorts? They’re loud, manic, in-your-face and possibly more annoying than Fred (see previous post). They’re also pretty good and are finding decent audience on YouTube, with tens of thousands of views each (a couple of the videos have somewhere north of 50,000 views). It’s nice to see such a simple concept with a puppet gaining popularity online.

Via Run Rabbit Run.

Monday Morning Inspiration: Living in a Green Room

Living in a Green Room is a wonderfully quirky autobiographical sketch blog written and drawn (on an iPod Touch no less!) by “Hibou”, an anonymous puppet builder and puppeteer here in Toronto. It’s been gaining a small, but loyal readership and I really think it deserves a wider audience.

Please read, subscribe and enjoy…and tell your friends. You won’t regret it.

Puppet – A film by David Sol

Puppet is a documentary by David Sol. I don’t know much about it, but it appears to be about the staging of Dan Hurlin’s Disfarmer, a puppet play about Arkansas photographer Mike Disfarmer that was produced in New York last year.

You can see some excerpts from the theatrical production of Disfarmer below:

Puppet looks like a very interesting film; I’m definitely intrigued.

Via Frank.

Update: I added some additional information and videos that I found via The Disfarmer Project.

Restoring the Skeksis

In this video installment of the Jim Henson Co. Podcast from earlier this year, the Creature Shop’s Head of Puppet Fabrication, Julie Zobel, explains the process of restoring several Skeksis puppets from The Dark Crystal that are on display at the Jim Henson Company lot in Hollywood.

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (see previous post) was mostly panned by critics and didn’t fare too well at the weekend box office, but it features some of the most sophisticated animatronic puppetry ever seen on film and for that reason alone I think it’s worth checking out.

Most people probably won’t appreciate just how much of this film was done with practical, on-set puppets involving no CGI. Especially impressive is the villain Mr. Tinkles, which is played exclusively by an animatronic puppet with no live animals or computer animation involved. Animatronic Supervisor Dave Barclay – who built most of Mr. Tinkles’ mechs – calls the furry feline the “most sophisticated animatronic that has ever been built”.

The team of puppeteers who worked on the film included Dave Barclay, Bruce Lanoil, Michelan Sisti, Adam Behr and Geoff Redknapp. Animatronic cats, dogs and other animals were built by Romaire Studios with Dave Barclay supervising.

Bionic Lobster

My apologies for the lack of the traditional beginning-of-week inspiration here yesterday. It was a long weekend here in Canada and, well, I was having a glorious, computer-free weekend. To make it up to you, please do enjoy the adventures of Bionic Lobster, who’s sort of a viral video mascot for Leatherman’s Wave multi-tool.

And in case you were wondering – and I know you were – the bionic lobster (as well as presumably all the other ones) were built and performed by Puppet Heap (see previous posts).