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:

This is a short, but undeniably great look at the making of the Godzilla suit for the movie monster’s self-titled film debut in 1954. It was made by Godzilla expert Ed Godziszewski and includes lots of rare behind-the-scenes photos of Japanese special effects legend Eiji Tsuburaya and his team at work.

Found via Mike.

Jim Henson shows viewers around the Muppet Workshop in this 1989 segment for CBS This Morning.

Spencer Lott takes us behind the scenes of his recently shared “8-bit” puppet video for American microbrewery Tallgrass Brewing Company.

In light of the recent flap over Michael Bay’s planned (CGI) “re-imagining” of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’s worth looking back to a simpler time – the early 1990s – when the turtles were teenage mutants and animatronic. This is a behind-the-scenes look at the animatronic control system for the green guys in their third cinematic outing, Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles III.

This system was built by All Effects Company and looks suspiciously (ahem) like it may have been “inspired” by a certain system designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, but nevertheless it’s a cool to get such a detailed look at the state of the art in special effects before the dawn of the CG era.

Found via Tom.

The Minnesota State Lottery has just launched a new campaign called Let’s Play For… Minnesota that explains where, in fact, at least some of the money from the state’s lottery goes (according to the campaign, for every $1 spent on lottery tickets in Minnesota, approximately 24¢ is used to help fund social and environmental programs in the state). The stars of the campaign are a series of woodland puppets (the Lucky Lotto Jug Band) that were designed and built by TVTV’s Gordon Smuder with assistance from Liz Hara.

The cast of puppeteers who worked on the project include (upper row, left to right) Jeff Neppl, Michael Huyck, Charles Hubbell, Troy LaFaye along with (bottom row, left to right) Wayne Krefting, Gordon Smuder, and Liz Hara. The videos were directed by the always-awesome Tim Lagasse.

You can find more videos and learn more about the campaign online at www.mnlottery.com/where_the_money_goes.

From the Stan Winston School of Character Arts comes this nice behind-the-scenes look at the robots built by Legacy Effects for Real Steel.

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.

Following up on last week’s footage of a T-Rex rehearsal, here’s another great behind-the-scenes look at the animatronic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. This is test/rehearsal footage of a “running Raptor” for a scene that involves Téa Leoni being chased through the jungle in Juassic Park 3.

Via The Stan Winston School.

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.