Another Monday Morning, another fantastic needle felted puppet. This time it’s a needle felted Beaker stick puppet made by “Rad Megan”, who based solely on this I think must be, in fact, very rad indeed.

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

Following the huge success of last year’s Kevin Clash documentary Being Elmo comes the news that Sesame Street’s Caroll Spinney will be profiled in a documentary currently in production called I Am Big Bird. The filmmakers promise that the film will make extensive use of Caroll’s personal archive of photos, films and videos and include lots of never before seen material. No release date has been announced yet, but it looks like this will be a fascinating look at the life and work of one of the world’s most beloved puppeteers.

More information about the film and nice gallery of production photos can be found at www.iambigbird.com.

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.

The big news today is, of course, that the Muppets won their first Academy Award at the Oscars last night. Well, technically it was Brett Mackenzie who won Best Original Song for Man or Muppet? (a song that doesn’t even feature any of the classic Muppet characters), but let’s not quibble over details. Despite a long association with the Oscars, this is the first time a Muppet-related film has ever won an Academy Award.

There were plenty of Muppets around all night; Kermit and Miss Piggy introduced Cirque du Soleil during the broadcast and made several appearances before and after the big show. Jimmy Kimmel even worked an Oscar (the Grouch) bit in to sketch with Billy Crystal on his post-Oscars show.

Unfortunately most of the video that’s available online can’t be watched here in Canada so head over to Tough Pigs where you’ve find a nice round-up of the evening with more videos.

…and congratulations to Bret Mackenzie on his Academy Award!

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.

The Muppets is opening in the UK today and just like the ramp-up to the film’s U.S. debut, the Disney publicity machine has been humming along dispatching Kermit and Co. to host the BAFTAs, sell milk and mock Fox News Business. One of the most interesting story angles that the film’s publicists have been pushing out to the media is role CGI played in the making of the film.

Above is a look at the role Look Effects played in helping to bring The Muppets back to the big screen. Also pretty cool is this VFX breakdown of an “invisible” FX shot by Shade VFX that involved removing several Muppets from a scene due to last minute changes that were made in post production.

I like to think I have a pretty good eye for spotting VFX work in films, but I was really surprised by just how much effects work went in to this film and how seamless most of it is. To have so much CG work be so unnoticeable is a real testament to the skill of the artists and technicians who worked on The Muppets.

Special thanks to everybody who sent these links in!

Remember when Fox News accused The Muppets of being anti-oil? Well, at a press conference in the UK last week Kermit and Piggy decided to hit back.

Via The Huffington Post.

I stumbled across this online while doing some research earlier this month; it’s an excerpt from a CBC interview with Jim Henson taped on the set of Fraggle Rock in 1983. In it Jim discusses his family, working in television and mentions the then-yet-to-be-released Muppets Take Manhattan and Labyrinth, which Jim describes as “his next fantasy movie.”

This is a nearly 50 year old film produced by Jim Henson that was recently rediscovered and released online by AT&T. Robot is one Jim Henson’s business films from the 1960s, it was shot in 1963 for an elite seminar organized for business owners on the then-brand-new topic of Data Communications.

From the video’s YouTube description:

The seminar itself involved a lot of films and multimedia presentations, and took place in Chicago. A lengthy description of the planning of the Bell Data Communications Seminar — sans a mention of the Henson involvement — is on the blog of Inpro co-founder Jack Byrne. It later was renamed the Bell Business Communications Seminar.

The organizers of the seminar, Inpro, actually set the tone for the film in a three-page memo from one of Inpro’s principals, Ted Mills to Henson. Mills outlined the nascent, but growing relationship between man and machine: a relationship not without tension and resentment: “He [the robot] is sure that All Men Basically Want to Play Golf, and not run businesses — if he can do it better.” (Mills also later designed the ride for the Bell System at the 1964 World’s Fair.) Henson’s execution is not only true to Mills’ vision, but he also puts his own unique, irreverent spin on the material.

The robot narrator used in this film had previously starred in a skit for a food fair in Germany (video is silent), in 1961. It also may be the same robot that appeared on the Mike Douglas Show in 1966. Henson created a different — but similar — robot for the SKF Industries pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair.

Kudos to AT&T for releasing this fascinating little piece of Muppet/Henson history!

Via Tough Pigs.