Hello all!  It has been a while.  We have been busy planning a whole new Puppet Buzz.  We have updated the site (a huge thank you to the incredibly tallented Mr. Pasha Romanowski for the new look) and added some new contributors.  First, I would like to welcome back Pasha Romanowski, Tom Stewart and Zack Bouchman.  They have agreed to continue their posts as our veteran Puppet Buzz contributors.  I would also like to extend a warm welcome to our three new contributors.  From Canada, I’d like to welcome amazing puppeteer (among other things) Tim Gosley, from the USA a highly talented puppet artist and owner of Little’s Creatures puppet company, Jonathan Little, and from Germany, we are honoured to have the amazing puppet builder Norman Schneider.

I was fortunate enough to do some background puppeteering for Big and Small.  The show is another of The Grogs great productions.  Amazing puppets, some very cool green screen bunraku puppetry and one of the best crews I have ever worked with.  It makes me wish that I had more free time as a teacher to work on more of these types of shows.  Check out the show on Treehouse in Canada or on CBeebies in the UK.

I received a message from a buddy of mine named Dave Pavelonis.  He has teamed up with Omovies to create an amazingly entertaining political comedy show called PGOV: Puppet Government.  With comedy by Jay Leno’s head writer John Macks, puppets by Dave Pavelonis and directed by Omovies’ Sean Haines.  You can find videos on their Youtube page.   PGOV is an amazingly well produced online show.  Check out the first episode here.   I look forward to many more episodes.  Great job Dave!

I met Mark Gale in New York years ago.  I was struck not only with his talent and ability to keep me entertained, but also how kind he was.  Mark Gale has teamed up with Frankie Cordero to give you a funny Youtube series about a horse in New York.  Check out Frank The Horse.

I have a high level of respect for people who suffer for their craft, but when those people are really talented, I really respect what they do.  Let me introduce Near Far Productions, more accurately Aaron Salvato and John Barger.

You may have heard about Skippy Shorts, a high energy Youtube series with an off the shelf store puppet answering viewer questions.  Well it is just one of the shows that the company known as Near Far Productions has produced over the last two years or so.

These guys are working with less than professional equipment and still their stuff is entertaining.  Imagine what would happen if someone who has the means actually sees what they can do and gives them the opportunity to work with some sort of budget.  I have a feeling it isn’t a far off reality.

I have known about Gaston Morineau for a while now.  This write up is another in a series of posts about people who I think are worthy of note for a special reason.  With Gaston, the idea for me is how he can inspire creativity.

Ever since Project Puppet has come on the scene they have helped thousands of would-be puppet builders with their easy to use and affordable professional patterns.  The only problem is that there seems to be a saturation of generic puppets with little individuality made from them.

This is definately not the case with Gaston’s creations.  He uses Project Puppet Patterns and the variety of characters he is able to achieve is remarkable.  I really like his monkey puppet.

His puppet shows are up on Youtube and show the same amount of creativity.  So, to feel creatively inspired go and check out his blog and view some of his videos, they are worth it.  Oh, and you can see some great pictures over at his Flickr page.

Blinky Bill is a cute koala character that was popular in Austrailia and New Zealand. The character was from a book published back in 1933. The show was made into a cartoon in the 1990s and a puppet live action version back in the 1980s.

Check out the other video on youtube here.

One week left to vote! Head on over to PuppetContest.com to vote for your favorite space character in Puppet Contest 2008: A Space Odyssey. The voting will only be open through December 7, 2008!

I think this is a hilarious response to a puppet show.  This poor child seems pretty terrified.

There is a saying that goes “Put your oney where your mouth is.” and this leads me into the subject of The Devil’s Minstrels.  As someone myself who has put a good deal of my own money into personal puppet projects, I respect those who believe enough in their idea to do the same.

Dave Maynard (the creator) has a full-time job and has created this puppet concept along with four of his high school friends.  For them, the Project really took form when we hooked up with John Kennedy in 2007 who custom built their puppets.

I give them respect for the amount of time energy and effort that they have put into their project thus far.  I wish them all the best of luck.  Be sure to check out their stuff on Youtube.