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.

How To Train Your Dragon Live is a new $20 million arena show that opens next March in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It looks pretty incredible; all of the dragons in the show were created by the Creature Technology Company, which was previously responsible for the internationally touring arena show Walking With Dinosaurs (see previous post).

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the animatronic dragons in the show are being created:

Videos via Kari and Cartoon Brew (lots more can be seen in CTC’s Vimeo profile).

I was doing some animatronics research the other day and I came across the YouTube channel of veteran FX artist Greg McKee, who has lots of great videos posted on YouTube. This video of a Mon Camamari from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is probably my favourite, but who doesn’t love Nute Gunray? Or for that matter, who doesn’t want to see a Terminator Robot Kangaroo?

Be sure to explore all of the videos in Greg’s YouTube Channel.

Last week I posted the demo reel of Australian shadow puppeteer Stephen Mushin (see previous post). This is the music video for Lior’s I’ll Forget You. which was featured in Stephen’s reel.

Here’s a look behind the scenes at the making of I’ll Forget You:

Special thanks to Hil for discovering this!

A beautiful show reel of shadow puppetry by Australian puppeteer Stephen Mushin.

Me and My Monsters is a new live action series about a family who relocates from Australia to the UK only to discover there are monsters living in their basement. The Jim Henson Company is one of the show’s co-producers and three monsters featured in the series were built by The Creature Shop in the UK. It looks like a fun series; you can catch a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse in this Australian news report.

Me and My Monsters is a UK/Australia co-production and currently airs on CBBC in the UK and Network Ten and Nickelodeon in Australia; check their respective websites for broadcast schedules in those countries.

Just following up on my recent post about the giant Mayflower marionette commercial, above is the Australian TV spot that I referred to that also features a giant marionette. If, as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Royal DeLuxe should feel extremely flattered. Giant marionettes like theirs have been turning up all over!

Here are a couple more examples:

These two puppets – a giant girl and a Terracotta Warrior – are from a play called The Warrior and The Girl that was staged at the China Millennium Monument in Beijing in 2008.

This giant marionette was performed at the Almagro International Festival of Classical Theatre last year.

One of the more original takes on the “giant marionette” concept is from way back in 2006, the giant marionette in Reykjavik hoax/viral ad, which didn’t actually involve a giant marionette at all.

Special thanks to Frank for pointing out the videos embedded above!

Corporate Creatures is a new initiative from puppeteer Gary Friedman. I talked with Gary about this project about a year ago and it’s really exciting to see it coming to life. Through Corporate Creatures Gary is providing live interactive corporate workshops, corporate performances and a variety of corporate multi-media offerings.

Now the basic idea behind Corporate Creatures – puppets illustrating business problems in an entertaining and educating way – isn’t exactly original. Jim Henson pioneered this concept in the 1960s and it requires you to walk a delicate balance between information and entertainment. Although there have been a lot of imitators over the years, I’ve only ever seen the Muppets pull it off effectively. Despite that, I think there’s definitely a market for this sort of thing and Corporate Creatures seems to be on the right track.

You can watch a Corporate Creatures preview on Vimeo and find more videos here. I’ll let you judge the videos for yourself, but personally I kind of like the CNN International feel of the weekly Corporate Creatures Business News podcast. It’s hosted by a character named “Con Quest” (a play on the name of CNN International personality Richard Quest) and really just talking heads discussing business, but it’s also well-shot, professional and seems more intelligent than most of what’s on the big business networks these days (Mad Money anyone?). I’m looking forward to seeing more.

The Monster’s Birthday Party is a short film by Phillip Einfeld that’s in the same vein as Spook House Dave and Transylvania TV (me thinks me does detect a trend here). The puppetry in it is sometimes a little stiff, but the level of detail and work that went in to this film is really, really impressive. I hadn’t seen Phillip’s work before so this was a nice treat. The film is available to watch on YouTube in two parts, here and here.

Gary Friedman is once again teaching workshops in film & TV style puppetry in Sydney, Australia. The course runs from mid-April to early June 2008 and is “suitable for film makers, puppeteers, performers, and others interested in learning about how puppetry is made for the screen.” Participants will learn how to build their own puppets and how to develop, perform and direct their short scenes on camera. Gary has uploaded a short video to YouTube with information about the course and if you’re interested in enrolling you can email Gary directly at info@puppetrynews.com.