I’m an independent filmmaker and puppeteer in Toronto, Canada who blogs about puppetry and film.
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European Buildings built out of paper by Megan Brain.
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Hand craved foam puppet head by Phil Fletcher.
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Simpsons couch gag animated by John K.
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A Bunraku aquarium is performed on Japan’s Kasou Taishou. Something that really seemed to really catch on in a big way on the web this past year was Kasou Taishou (see earlier post), a sort of semi-annual costume contest on Japanese TV that features amateur groups and solo artists performing short skits which frequently utilize...
Legendary Japanese animator Kihachirō Kawamoto has been making stop motion films for over 50 years. Kihachirō Kawamoto (link goes to his official site, in Japanese) is a Japanese animator, renowned internationally for his work in stop motion animation. As a boy he was inspired by the work of the acclaimed Czech stop motion filmmaker Jiří...
The puppet-loving Scissor Sisters’ video for She’s My Man draws inspiration from Kasou Taishou. The Scissor Sisters are well-known for incorporating large-scale puppetry in to their act (see previous post), but I couldn’t help noticing that their music video for She’s My Man looks an awful lot like this video that I first saw last...
A boy makes friends with a stick figure in a sketch from the most recent Kasou Taishou competition in Japan. I’ve mentioned the Japanese TV show Kasou Taisho before (see previous post), a semi-annual competition on NTV in Japan that features amateur groups and solo artists performing short skits, often using Bunraku-style puppetry. I’ve spent...
The wonderful puppets of Kobotaro are examples of great Japanese design. I’m a big fan of Japanese design as well as Japanese puppetry and for awhile now I’ve really dug the puppets of Kobotaro (link goes to a Japanese language site) because I think they are an excellent example of both. Take a look at...
A Bunraku master discusses his craft on YouTube. YouTube has a video of a discussion with a Bunraku Master (or Omozukai) about how traditional Bunraku puppets are built and performed. Even though Bunraku is a very old form of puppetry, the mechanisms used to control Bunraku puppets are incredibly sophisticated and not all that different...
Animatronic Panda Bears perform a beat-down on a hapless offender of their dignity. If you were to believe a series of viral videos on YouTube from Japan’s Buildup Co. (among other things, they rent out animatronic Panda suits) you’d think there was an outbreak of Panda related-violence sweeping the Far East. From Panda snipers to...
No, that’s not a digital effect you’re seeing in the picture above, just some good old fashioned Bunraku-style puppetry from Japan. Recently I wrote about Kasou Taisho, a crazy-fun Japanese TV show where amateur groups of black-clad performers compete for prizes by staging skits and routines using Bunraku puppetry techniques. The show is extremely popular...
A Bunraku aquarium is performed on Japan’s Kasou Taishou. That great Bunraku-style skeleton dance I linked to earlier this week is from Kasou Taisho, the same biannual Japanese TV show that the famous “Matrix Ping Pong” sketch originated on. I’ve only seen clips of Kasou Taisho, but as far as I can tell it’s built...
Morning Musume performs some cool-looking Bunraku-style puppetry on Japanese TV. Just watch, I think you'll like...
Puppets do their best Queen cover on Japan’s Hotch Potch Station. Here’s a video of someone singing Queen in Japanese with puppets. This is from a Japanese TV series on NHK World called Hotch Potch Station, a kid’s show with a lot of humour that’s aimed squarely at adults. They’ve also done similar videos with...
X-Bomber (known as Star Fleet in the UK and some other countries) is a Japanese T.V. series from the early `80s created by manga legend Go Nagai. The show is kind of an east-meets-west cultural mash-up of Thunderbird and anime. The series was advertised as being filmed in “Sūpāmariorama” – a Japanese version of Gerry...
