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:

Well, this certainly looks like it’s going to be good. Not that I would expect anything less from these fine folks.

Via Flicks and Bits.

This is a stop motion re-imagining of the intro to the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show. It was directed  by an Oklahoma filmmaker named Kyle Robert for the Toy and Action Figure Museum and has been generating a lot of buzz online.

Here’s a look behind the scenes and the making of it:

Via Strange Kids Club.

I’ve always believed that computer graphics and puppetry are complementary art forms, but there are of course a lot of people who insist that the two mediums have a competitive – and possibly combative -  relationship. While I don’t personally subscribe to that theory apparently certain Muppets do.

Earlier this week Scooter appeared at the TED 2012 conference, making a tongue-in-cheek presentation called Can Tactile Icons Survive in an Integer-Driven Environment? in which he made the case for puppets over computer generated characters and got pretty worked up about it. Unfortunately, the quality of the video isn’t great, but hopefully a better version will surface online soon.

Via Tough Pigs.

A really, really awesome fan-made set of opening titles for this summer’s upcoming The Dark Knight Rises created by Doğan Can Gündoğdu.

Via Forget The Film, Watch The Titles.

This great little video parody/tribute was made by a couple of Canadians - Ken Priebe and Scott Hastings – using a combination of stop motion animation, papercraft, found object puppetry and a vintage Fisher Price Animal puppet for Virgin Radio’s Fake Film Contest in Vancouver. If you like it as much as I do, be sure to vote for it on Virgin Radio’s contest page.

Via The Muppet Mindset.

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.