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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As I've mentioned before, good puppetry - much like good animation - requires a good understanding of the power of silhouette (see previous post). There probably no more pure example of that than shadow puppetry, a medium that this new commercial for Surf Twilight Sensations takes full advantage...
Greek Master Puppeteer Evgenios Spatharis passed away after sustaining injuries in a fall en route to a performance last week. The world has lost another master of a historic, traditional form of puppetry. Eugenios Spatháris – one of the world’s best-known shadow puppeteers – died yesterday at the age of 85. Eugenios was a second...
Black/White is a stark, monochromatic video that blends shadow puppets and animation. To promote their spring and summer collections this year, Gap commissioned five original songs based on a specific color and a corresponding video for each. My favourite of these is Black / White, which features a song by Danish post-punk duo The Raveonettes...
Canadian animator Michel Gagné is adapting his Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets as a video game (image ©2008 Shadow Planet Productions LLC). I think I first mentioned Michel Gagné’s Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets way back in 2005. They were originally a series of shadow puppet-inspired interstitials originally created for Nickelodeon, but now Michel and top-notch crew...
Funky Fingers is an example of Mr. Bunk’s original style of shadow puppetry. Here’s a funky shadow video from Canadian puppeteer Mr. Bunk....
Reverse Shadow Theatre is an installation created with Animata digital puppetry software. Animata is open source real-time animation (or digital puppetry) software that is “designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances”. The goal of Animata is to make it really easy to create scenes with digital puppets that can...
Children in Indonesia, Afghanistan ans Sri Lanka learn important safety lessons thanks to the puppetry work of No Strings. Tales of Disaster is a series of videos designed to teach children safety lessons about earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and floods and landslides. The videos use a combination of shadow puppetry and hand and rod puppets are...
British installation artist Sarah Jane Palmer created the “silhouette animation” The Incredible Mandy Mango. The Incredible Mandy Mango is a “silhouette film animation” of a Corde lisse performance. It was created by Sarah Jane Palmer, a British artist who works in mixed media, animation, mask making and several other disciplines. She created this using stop...
Innovative puppeteer Hobey Ford performs one of his incredible rod puppets. Hobey Ford (see previous post) is building a new site at www.hobeyford.com. Hobey is the inventor of the ever-popular “Peepers” puppets and his live shows feature some of the most graceful and beautiful puppetry I have ever seen. Check out his work from Animalia,...
Pilo Erect from the March Fourth Marching Band makes great use of shadow puppetry. Notice that a lot of neat shadow puppet films and videos have been popping up in the past year or so? Here’s another good one from the March Fourth Marching Band. Via Mary Robinette...
The music video for Little Dragon’s Twice was made using shadow puppetry. This lovely example of shadow puppetry I found on the Bebo social networking site is a music video for Little Dragon directed by the highly creative Johannes Nyholm. 17/2/11 Update: I’ve updated the URL so it now points to a version of the...
A great example of hand shadow puppetry, recorded in China earlier this year. This is a short clip of a Chinese puppeteer performing some great hand shadows. Take a look, it’s some amazingly fluid...
