There has been a great deal of buzz about the tutorial that Project Puppet has just recently been offering on their blog.  I am a huge fan of Project Puppet and a great admirer of the amazing talents of puppet builder and designer Pasha Romanowski.

This tutorial is an excellent resource for beginners and experienced builders alike.  It takes you step by step in modifying one of the Project Puppet Simple Series patterns.  Like many others I am eagerly awaiting the finished puppet.  I don’t know about anyone else, but an instructional DVD from Project Puppet would be one of the best gifts I could get for myself.  I hope they have plans for one in the not too distant future.  Check out the tutorial here.

The Wippets just introduced a new character to join their cast of puppets. The new character was built by the very talented Jarrod Boutcher! I think this new character is a perfect example of excellent character/puppet design by Ron and, of course, a beautiful follow through by Jarrod. Take a look at the Wippets Blog for the original sketches on which the puppet was based.

I’m looking forward to see Phil in future episodes of the Wippets!

I have been debating over the last little while about if I should or should not be posting about the things that our own contibutors to Puppet Buzz are doing in the puppetry world. I have come to the realization that some of the stuff they are doing is too great to not post about so I have decided to do it as often as I feel the need to.

Now, I am a huge fan of Project Puppet and the amazing patterns they sell. Well Puppet Buzz’s very own Pasha Romanowski (owner and operator of Project Puppet) has decided to offer his amazing Glorified Sock Puppet Pattern to people who want to sell them. They are now being offered on CD and you can buy them at a “wholesale price” (essentially lower than the rest of the public) and sell them for the commercial price. The result is that you cannot only make some extra cash but you can compliment any number of puppet related activities that you are doing.

For example, I finished doing a puppetry workshop with students a while back and I have toyed with the idea of offering a workshop for adults. This is a great way to offer the participants a truly great pattern and I could walk them through the building process. I would probably include the CD in the price of the workshop, but you have a lot of options with how you are able to offer these CDs.

I think Pasha has done a great service for many puppet builders with his offerings at Project Puppet and this CD is no exception. Great job Pasha, and the design work on the packaging is super incredible!

To find out more, you can visit Pasha’s site or contact him by going here. By the way if you have a chance, check out the new design of his blog.

Enjoy!

It’s a bit crazy, even scary, to imagine a million puppets of all sorts in one place, but that’s the objective of the Million Puppet Project which was launched yesterday (on World Puppetry Day) by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Western Australia. Under the project, people from around the world are invited to make and send a puppet to Perth, WA, to participate in a new Guinness World Record: The World’s Largest Puppet Display! This will be part of the UNIMA 2008: 20th UNIMA Congress and World Puppetry Festival, which is being held in the southern hemisphere for the first time.

If you need a jump-start to make a puppet, there are various simple puppet design templates ready to dowload, or you can strike out on a design all your own. Let your imagination run free! Puppets will not be able to be returned to you, but they will be donated to charities afterwards. And when the display is being finalized in April 2008, you will be able to see the installation in progress via a web cam linked to the site.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted last, but now I’m back and starting anew with this video I’ve found on YouTube. I haven’t been able to get any info on it, but it looks amazing! Enjoy for now, and I’ll post here again soon.

Link

Something that I have been thinking a lot about recently is the idea of creating a “name for yourself” (reputation) as a builder. I know I have worked very hard to do so and it is always a thrill when someone says they know my work or that I built a puppet that inspired them. When I build a puppet I have always been the only builder who makes it. What I mean is, I create the patterns, cut fabric, glue, sew, etc. I build the puppet.

Now that may not seem very unusual until you take into account some realities that may exisit in a puppet building workshop. The idea of working with a group of builders on a project. For example in a puppet studio you may have a team of builders all working together to build one puppet. One person does the fabric patterning for the head, another person does the patterning for the arms and legs. Someone adds the features and details, another works on the head sculpting, and yet another person does all of the sewing and gluing. When you consider all of the people who work on the build, I am left with only one question. Who built the puppet?

Not so easy to answer.

What amazes me is that for years I had admired the puppets of certain builders and only this past summer did I meet someone who I never even realized was the primary person who had done most of the building. I had been a fan of her work for years and I never even knew it. What I have come to see is that often the lead builder may get credit for a puppet, but there are often other builders who do a good amount (and in some cases most of) the work.

As a result of this new insight, I am now more curious than ever to find out who the “real builders” of some of my favourite puppets are.

It will be an interesting investigation. Keep tuned in for future posts on some of my favourite and some lesser known puppet builders.

When starting a new puppet it’s good to make a drawing of your ideas before you begin to build. Perhaps you’d like to try out some charachter designs, changing hair, placement of eyes, nose etc. Why not use your computer for this. You can get great results using photoshop and illustrator. Here’s
a link i found that got me started doing this. It shows indepth how you can youse photoshop to add depth, textures and other usefull things to your drawings and photos. The above picture is my puppet Eric that i made from the glorified sockpuppet-pattern, made into a drawing in photoshop. I could have made something completely new but chose to do this puppet just to show what you can do. I’ll be doing a complete tutorial on how i did this in the near future, so stay tuned…

Ben Jones, one of the contributors here at Puppet Buzz, has added a puppet supplies section to his site, PuppetMinister.com. What is the first item available you ask? The ever elusive half dome eyes that typically are very hard to find or can only be purchased in bulk. Thanks Ben!

Paul Louis from Puppetsnstuff.com has a free puppet-making video tutorial on ExpertVillage.com. It’s actually a series of videos that starts at a list of materials and ends with adding arm rods. Check the videos out here!

When you’re cutting fur, there are a few things to think about. First of all, don’t cut through the fibers of the fur. The fur will be cut straight and it will look very unnatural. Punch a hole with the scissor where you are going to start cutting. Then cut with the tip of the scissor through the back fabric only.

When sewing fur, always hand-stitch. If you are using a sewing machine, the fur will get stuck in the seam and it will not look good. The needle on the machine will also most likely break. When you stitch, only stitch through the back fabric of the fur. This way the fur will not get stuck in the seam.