Dave Jones recently wrote in to share his amazing outdoor performance piece Highly Strung, which combined large scale puppetry and animated projections. The performance was staged outside of a grain silo with a 45’0 tall puppet that required 10 puppeteers to operate. It’s a really impressive piece of work; lots of pictures and info can be found on Dave’s blog.

I really like this animated spot that John Kelly directed for Chipotle. It’s about a farm losing its way by because of industrialization…and then reverting back to a sustainable, happier path.

Have a behind-the-scenes look at the making of it:

Via Director’s Notes.

The year is drawing to a close and that means it’s time for JibJab’s annual year-end salute to the year that just was. I’ve been chronicling these videos here for several years and it has been interesting to see how they’ve evolved. JibJab began making these back in 2005 with Flash animation, but after using puppetry for a several shots in Never Had A Year Like `09, they fully embraced it for last year’s So Long To `Ya 2010 and the tradition continues this year.

If you want to take a peak behind-the-scenes, as always JibJab has put together an extensive “making of” 2011, Buh-Bye! on their blog.

Although I know that a few JibJab fans have griped about their decision to move away from Flash animation, I think it’s really cool to see how they have experimented with combining different techniques and I like the low-fi aesthetic they’ve embraced. I think we’ll see even more mash-ups of puppetry and animation like this in the year ahead.

The Panda Rabbit is a really cool mash-up of puppetry, stop-motion…and a giant panda suit. It’s the debut film of Randy D. Rosario and, if this film is any indication what he can do, he’s a filmmaker who is really worth keeping an eye on.

Here’s a fascinating look behind-the-scenes to see how he made The Panda Rabbit:

Via Motiongrapher.

Although the independent feature film Bunraku has little or no connection to puppetry, its brilliant opening titles are filled with it. The sequence takes the audience from the creation of the earth, to the dawn of human civilization and up to the present day. A key theme in the titles is the increasingly rapid development of human warfare and different styles of puppetry and animation are used to represent each passing era.

It’s a brilliant piece of work by Guilherme Marcondes, who is probably best known for Tyger (see previous post), a really popular short film that was made about five years ago using a combination of animation and Bunraku-style puppetry. The Art of the Title has a fascinating interview with Guilherme about the process of creating the titles that includes lots of great sketches and behind-the-scenes material.

Bunraku is currently playing in select U.S. cities; it will hopefully have a wider release in the near future.

Animation legend John Kricfalusi animated the opening “couch gag” on The Simpsons last night. It’s was a special surprise and done in John K’s signature style and full of lots of delicious, over-the-top animation. You can see some of the sketches and concept art for the sequence on John’s blog.

Over at my Machin-X: Digital Puppetry blog, I did a post today about “facial puppetry” a really interesting and quickly emerging computer vision technique. You can see an example above and read the full post on Machin-X for links and more information.

Star Wars is coming to Blu-ray on September 12th and as we’ve come to expect, it’s arriving with a few new tweaks from director George Lucas. The revisions have been met with the predictable outrage from many Star Wars fans and one of the most extensive is the replacement of the animatronic Yoda puppet in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace with a new CGI version similar to what was seen in the rest of prequel trilogy.

Here you can compare the original puppet:

…with the new CGI version:

Personally, like Navneet Alang over at the Toronto Standard, I’m from the Billy Corgan school of art; if you’re going to make something for film/video, why not make it as good as possible? No disrespect to Nick Dudman (who led the redesign of Yoda for Episode I) or the rest of his team, but the Yoda puppet in The Phantom Menace looks, well, odd. By going back and replacing it, Lucas seems to be trying to correct a mistake and make the film more consistent with the rest of the prequel trilogy (something he’s done before).

So puppet or CGI Yoda? Which do you prefer?

Via /Film.

Something Left, Something Taken is a very cool little hand-crafted film by Tiny Inventions, an animation studio in Brooklyn, New York that consists of Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata. Together they primarily produce animated commercials and produce their own short films on the side. They have an incredibly extensive (and somewhat technical) “making of” for Something Left, Something Taken on their blog that walks you through their unique workflow for mixing real-world models with computer animation.

You can watch Something Left, Something Taken in its entirety on Vimeo.

Kind of an oldie, but a goodie…director Rob Shaw used a clever blend of 2D and 3D animation techniques to bring this great video for I’m Impressed by They Might Be Giants to life back in 2007.