Tag Archives: Bunraku-style puppetry

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 [...]

Lesley Raybon’s Terrific Demo Reel

You don’t have to work for the Henson Company, perform on TV or have years of experience to have a good demo reel. For example, I think Lesley Raybon’s demo reel is excellent. I’m unfamiliar with her work, but her resume seems typical of most puppeteers. She seems to have mostly done local or regional [...]

Swazzle’s Demo Reel

This is Swazzle’s demo reel. Like the reel for Puppet Heap that I posted yesterday, Swazzle does the montage thing I advise against. And this is another example of an exception to that rule, because this isn’t just a puppeteer demo reel, it’s promoting their company and all of the services they provide. There are [...]

Does Fighting Gravity Got Talent?

Over the past few years America’s Got Talent (as well as its British counterpart) have given some fantastic exposure to deserving puppetry acts like Gareth Oliver, The Gluvets and (most famously) Terry Fator. The latest puppetry act in the spotlight thanks to the “Got Talent” franchise is Fighting Gravity, a black light puppet and dance act.

Michael Jackson Puppetry

My first professional puppetry job was with Famous PEOPLE Players (FPP) back in the mid-to-late `90s. A big part of their act has always been using Bunraku-style black light puppetry to pay homage to famous artists (hence the name “Famous PEOPLE Players”) and they do puppets of celebrities just about as well as anyone out [...]

Yamasong

About a month ago I was in Winnipeg for the Plastic Paper festival of animated, illustrated and puppet film. One of the festival’s highlights was a special “best of” edition of Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams that featured one of the first public screenings of Yamasong, a puppet short directed by Sam K. Hale.

A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance)

Puppetry students at the University of Hawaii re-create The Evolution of Dance with a puppet. I love Bunraku-style puppetry, so I really enjoyed seeing A Study of Movement (The Evolution of Dance), a final project for a puppetry class at the University of Hawaii inspired by the famous YouTube viral video.

Even More Kobe & LeBron Puppet Ads

Nike’s MVPuppets campaign has been a huge hit with basketball fans. Nike’s MVPuppets campaign (see previous posts here and here) keeps rolling right along. I think the bigger a fan of the NBA you are, the more you can appreciate these. The storyline in the ads has been following along with the NBA playoffs; in [...]

The Making of Abba’s The Last Video

Take a look behind the scenes of Abba’s The Last Video. This is a follow-up to the post about Abba’s The Last Video; it’s a making of video that shows how the puppetry and effects in the video were achieved. Special thanks to “Scuba Steve” for finding this!

Plato: Sony’s Little Blue Alien

Plato is a little blue alien created to promote Sony’s Walkman brand. “Plato” is a blue alien character created for a series of Sony Walkman ads (watch them here and here). It’s always a little hard to tell watching heavily compressed video on YouTube, but I’m pretty sure he was realized as a Bunraku-style puppet. [...]