Pawpets, Pawpeteers and Pawpetry

Trying to get a job dealing with either puppet creation or actual puppetry, ended up making a little compilation video of all of the takes (minus all of my talking).

I had to relist the fox puppet auction since somebody bought it a couple weeks ago and never sent payment for it. See the auction here! --> http://www.furbid.ws/cgi-bin/auction/item.pl?item=232349315

I also still have a bobcat puppet up on FurBid as well, still looking for a new home! --> http://www.furbid.ws/cgi-bin/auction/item.pl?item=232348879

Current Mood: rushed

Having some fun, thought I would share ^^ (No... I have not taken the cup off yet from the Holiday pawpets show....)

I just recently got interested in puppetry (as in this past weekend) and I'm hoping this comm is still alive in some way, shape or form.

You Tube had a problem with the video I uploaded
until I can get back into you tube you can see the video of the 35 ferrets at
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/408514

There was some talk yesterday during the FPS/PA Pets show about the record number of puppets up on stage at one time. I found the video and encoded it last night and put it up on you tube

right now ,5:45am CST You Tube is still reporting that they are encoding. Hopefully it will be be up and viewable soon

Pawpet Idol is less than a week away and we're looking for another pair of future puppet stars! On Sunday at Midwest Furfest 2007: Furries of the High Seas, the 2nd Annual Pawpet Idol will be held and our master panel of judges will be back looking for the next great puppeteers!

Who can enter this contest? Why you of course! What you need to do is come up with a puppet act and bring it with you to the show. We will take any sort of music or voice performance acts! Got a puppet? Great! Got a CD with the song you want to play? Excellent! Don't got either of these? Don't fret! We will have puppets and music to pick from during signups as well so you can give this a try. If you have a voice performance you want to try, you're more than welcome to do that here too! Whether you want to enter as a single contestant or a group, we will take anybody willing to try this out!

Everybody will be given a five minute time limit to go on stage and to do their performance. Once on stage, you will be in the spotlight to run through your puppet performance with our master panel of judges sitting infront of the stage watching every part of your performance. You will be graded on how well you perform your act in various categories and, at the end of the show, we will declare a winner in the Novice and Master categories and each winner will receive a prize!

Do you feel up to the challenge at seeing if you can be our next great puppeteer? Then come on down to the ballroom on Sunday at Midwest Furfest and join in on the show! Any questions, e-mail Wildfox at puppets@furfest.org and he'll get back to you as soon as he can.

( MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - November 2007 )

I am looking for last minute substitutions for the following panels at MFF...

*Pawpet 101
*Puppet Improv Workshop

If you can help me out with this, PLEASE get in contact with me in the next couple of days (by Wednesday night at 10pm Eastern) by either e-mailing me at puppets(at)furfest(dot)org, or find me on IRC, or leave me a message here!

Unfourtunately, I lost a panelist in the puppet track at MFF and he was a huge contributor to the track as well.

Current Mood: distressed

( MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - Puppetry Newsletter October 2007 )

Current Mood: excited

Pawpet Idol is back and we're looking for another pair of future puppet stars! On Sunday at Midwest Furfest 2007: Furries of the High Seas, the 2nd Annual Pawpet Idol will be held and our master panel of judges will be back looking for the next great puppeteers!

Who can enter this contest? Why you of course! What you need to do is come up with a puppet act and bring it with you to the show. We will take any sort of music or voice performance acts! Got a puppet? Great! Got a CD with the song you want to play? Excellent! Don't got either of these? Don't fret! We will have puppets and music to pick from during signups as well so you can give this a try. If you have a voice performance you want to try, you're more than welcome to do that here too! Whether you want to enter as a single contestant or a group, we will take anybody willing to try this out!

Everybody will be given a five minute time limit to go on stage and to do their performance. Once on stage, you will be in the spotlight to run through your puppet performance with our master panel of judges sitting infront of the stage watching every part of your performance. You will be graded on how well you perform your act in various categories and, at the end of the show, we will declare a winner in the Novice and Master categories and each winner will receive a prize!

Do you feel up to the challenge at seeing if you can be our next great puppeteer? Then come on down to the ballroom on Sunday at Midwest Furfest and join in on the show! Any questions, e-mail Wildfox at puppets(at)furfest(dot)org!

MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - Puppetry Newsletter August/September 2007

First of all, for those of you who noticed that I didn't post a newsletter at the beginning of August, I apologize. My life was reaching a hectic point in it's life and I completely forgot to type this out. So, this newsletter is to combine the two months. (And I'm once again late with it due to post-MFM stuff! Yipe!)

( MFF 2007 Puppet Newsletter )

I see this is a very quiet comm, but I'll just join anyway and say hi.

so hey, I'm Ken Redtail, many of you have already met me before.
I'm a precocious foxdragon from Illinois.

My love for puppetry began when I was a small kid. Both my folks are talented puppeteers. My father had a rabbit puppet that he could convince anyone it was real and my mother had a number of puppets, including a lifesize horse head that made for entertaining renactments of The Godfather. My father was also gifted at making my stuffed animals as a boy move and have the illusion they were talking to me, usually by finger squeezing the back of the neck to create a bobbing effect in the head to simulate talking, a technique that I use to this day.

My first puppets were a duck, a lamb and a turtle that I think was an old Folkmanis. All are long packed away, but I loved making them move and do goofy things.

Another influential puppeteer in my life was my church pastor who had a lamb puppet who was extremely shy and would only whisper what she had to say into my pastor's ear. This was a good way to avoid poor ventriloquism and add a certain amount of cute to the character itself, a technique I'm still fond of doing.

Today, I have two main puppets, both Folkmanis, one a anthro fox in rural wear named Tom (whom you may have met at RCFM 2007 as the Security Puppet), as well as my shoulder dragon Fidget, who is a loud obnoxious dick of a dragon.

( MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - Puppet Track Newsletter - July 2007 )

Current Mood: busy

( MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - Puppet Track Newsletter - June 2007 )

( MFF 2007: Furries of the High Seas - Puppet Track Newsletter - May 2007 )

I'm actually making progress with my puppet stuffs- slow though it may be. Between my researching and some very helpful advice garnered from the lj community puppet_blood and the Yahoo! Costumers group, I've worked out the materials and construction techniques I'm going to use for DeeDee the skeleton rollergirl. Time to a)make scale patterns and b)go shopping for supplies. The Dixie Derby Girls' first bout of the season is April 15; so that's my deadline here. Afer DeeDee is done, I want to make some furry character puppets.

Random Fandom Observation: (About Furry puppets)

Fursuits tend to be more "anthro" in presentation (perhaps somewhat dictated by that human upright bipedal walk); puppets tend to be more naturalistic, if capable of being just as cartoony, animal characters. (Folkmanis puppet company sure gets a lot of furry business). Steve Plunket's has a antho vixen puppet, and I think maybe Babs has an anthro looking puppet character too, but it's mostly just talking animals in the convention puppet shows. A mention to SantaFox too, who has done some very interesting costume as puppet concept costumes, his work and other rare quad suit work again tend to be animal not human based in appearance.
Anyway, I'm interested in trying to make appealing anthro puppet characters. I suppose size affects this dichotomy too--obviously, fursuits as wearable costumes are human sized or maybe oversized. Most puppets, especially the hand puppet sorts used at shows, are by necessity smaller. You can have a realistic looking aminal puppet be closer to life size for the animal, note the popularity of the Folkmanis ferrets and foxes. This is why buraku style puppets interests me; they work on a larger scale.

*Gets up momentarily to go look through movie collection for "Labyrinth" and "The Dark Crystal". I also have Tim Burton's stop motion puppet movies. Dammit, *pout* I think my copy of Dark Crystal must have gotten trashed somewhere along the way. Btw, did you know that Henson's studios is making a Dark Crystal sequel.*

I've been looking the net over for a decent pattern for a mustelid puppet but so far have came up blank. Maybe one of you in the community here would be able to help me out?

Current Mood: hopeful

Hey, everyone!

MegaPLEX is preparing to run a live Family Feud game at the con this year, in keeping with our game shows theme. But, in order to do this, we need survey responses to create the hidden answers for each round. So, please take a moment (and a moment is all it takes) to complete our very quick, ten question survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=350623131935

There's no special prize for this, but you do get the satisfaction of knowing that you helped out, and you might just get to see your answers show up on the puzzle board during the game - it all depends on whether or not your responses are the most popular!

I've made fursuits before. I've made plush before. But I haven't made puppets....

I keep playing and replaying the Counting Crow's video "ACCIDENTALLY IN LOVE"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vPRdJMjlgEk
cause I am rather taken with the cute CG bunny (an animated avatar stand-in for lead singer Adam Duritz). So, I'm thinking I want to try making a puppet reproduction of Accidentally Adam. Cute little guy, about 3 1/2 foot tall, with his long ears, pot belly, crooked toothed smile, goatee and dreads. Look for me and my new friend at FWA... :)

(OT but interesting: I think Duritz is a little bit furry, or at least bunnyish. One of his tours was called "The Devil and Bunny Show." He's got a repuatation for dressing up on Halloween as a bunny. One of his songs, HOLIDAY IN SPAIN, has a line about a bunnysuit. In an interview he joked about wearing a bunny suit to be able to walk about anonymously. Stuff like that. :) Oh, and it's gotta be a winking lagomorph fan in-joke when the boyfriend in Accidentally ends up wearing a pancake on his head, ala Oolong the pancake rabbit. And here is a link to an article about the animation company that did the CG work for the video: http://www.fxguide.com/press-111-print.html )

I am still in the early stages and just getting started on the pattern making for this project.

Even tho it's a new format for me, the puppet idea really appeals since then I would then be able to animate the figure (just like the plush comes to life in the video). Such an animated figure then also provides more opportunites for interaction and involvement when showing off the project. It would most likely be a fullbody hand & rod puppet (think of Kermit the Frog), so the head can turn and the mouth can open, and the arms can be given motion as well. Reproducing the plush to the same scale as the video figure might be a bit cumbersome as a puppet tho, I think I would have to shrink the size proportionally a bit.

Whatjaallthink? Can you point me toward some good resources/tutorials for puppet building?

ps)...Santa Fox, this is all your fault! I saw your goat puppet/costume on the fursuit community) and was all inspired and stuff.