Here we go again...!

Hey...It's good to be back again! :)
I've been busy recently...and now I'm on my new project for a new puppet.
This new puppet will be using the fleece with darker color. But to be honest, I still have no idea of what this puppet will be look like.

Here's the preview....

..and, ACTION!!!

Here's a short clip about  PuppetO doing a performance for a birthday party...

I decided to use an additional feature for Dunnow's face, because I wanted him to play the role as a father. So, he became "Pak Dono", and had moustache on his face.....

Check this out...!

FYI, you can see in this clip, my co-puppeteer had some difficulties controlling Dunnow's hand. Perhaps, because it was his first experience playing a hand puppet with hand-rods. Well, that's okay....I guess we still need to learn a lot to master our puppets :)


Practice makes perfect, right?

Alter Ego?

One night, I was looking at Dunnow.
I stared at him for a while, and then suddenly an idea came up to my mind.
A nasty idea perhaps...:p
I took some materials that were on my table, and did something silly to him.
He couldn't complain at all when his alter egos began to show up....
Hahaha......
Check it out!

Dunnow Why...(End)

Ah....finally, after a hectic month, I could go further to the next step.

As I mentioned in my previous posting, I've managed to finished the arms for this puppet.

So the next thing to do was to attached both arms to the puppet's body.

I used a glue gun to attach the inner foam of the arms to the body, and then I applied hand stitches to the fleece covering both arms.

As for the hand-rods, I added a piece of wooden grip at the end of each rod. These hand-grips will allow the puppeteer to easily move the puppet's hands. In the picture below, the grips are inside the red circle...

Finally, got to give this buddy something to wear...

So here it is....:)

Meet Dunnow!

Dunnow Why... (Part-3)

Time to move on!

After the hands were done, the next step was to cover them with the fleece.
The fabric pattern was the same as the foam pattern but it's a little bit wider around its edge. This would give more space for the stitches.
I used the ladder stitch to make the seam virtually invisible.
Here are some pictures of the result...

And ...voila! The hands were completely covered with the fleece...!

One step closer to the finish line, I guess....:D

Dunnow Why... (Part-2)

After I've cut the hand parts, I put palm support plates for the hand-palms, made from cardboard. But  unlike my previous puppets, I wanted this puppet's hands to be able to hold things. So, I added some florist wires inside the fingers. This would let the puppet's hands to hold stuffs. I learned this from (again) the great Projectpuppet.com. So, many thanks to Projectpuppet.com!
I also put a thicker wire on each hand as the hand-rod, just like I did to my other puppets.

The next step was to finish the hands by gluing the other parts of them together. What so interesting about using the PU foam for the hands was : you could make rounded-shape hands. Just simply put the glue around the edge of the hands and press it together...and, voila! You would get a round edge...

The hands were done, so it was time to cover them with the fleece. Stay tuned, cause I'll write it down on my next post...!

Dunnow Why... (Part-1)

Do you remember this guy above?

Yep...it's Dunnow. He was my third puppet I've made. 

But unlike my two previous puppets, he remained bodiless and armless for a quite long. 

I don't know, but it was just like meeting a dead end every time I tried to build this guy. 

I have succeeded in making his head, but failed to build his body immediately. Not until three or four months later, when I finally completed the body.

Phewww...I guess it is true that the biggest challenge would always come from within yourself :(

But recently, I pushed my self to finish the building process for Dunnow. 

The next step for Dunnow was his arms and hands. You can see in the picture below, I was still using a foam sheet.

I got the hand pattern from Projectpuppet.com. Thank you so much, Projectpuppet.com for the pattern. You've got my biggest respect!

As for the next step, I'll explain it later in another post. So, stay tuned.....!

:)

Monster, monster, monster !!!

Do you know Oscar the Grouch, from a famous Children's TV Show : Sesame Street?
Yes, he's one of the "cute" monsters in the show, who lives in a trash can.
I really inspired by the way this green guy argued with the others. So funny, you know...
And I thought to myself : "Hey, why don't I make my own trash-monster?"
So, I decided to make the character.

This guy was different. Instead of making a new puppet from foam sheet, 

fleece fabric, etc, I decided to recycle some used materials from around the house, to built the character.

I haven't got a name for him, but he already did a performance in some birthday party, with the theme about "Loving your Environment". Well, I guess he could wait for the name. Someday I will give him a perfect name.

The Harmonica Puppet

About a year ago, I had a crush on a specific music instrument called : Diatonic Harmonica.
I was like totally amazed by its magical sound. I bought some harps (harmonica) and tried to learn to play them.
Soon after that, I had a new hobby : playing the harmonica...!
I really enjoyed every moment when I could play this instrument.
One day I came up with an idea : Why didn't I make a movie about my hobbies?
So I decided to give it a try : a short movie about a puppet playing the harmonica! Yes, it's the Harmonica Puppet!

Here it is...:D

Looking back...

It's been a while since PuppetO started it's journey. Some performances have been made, and  I'm looking forward to do the next steps : doing more shows and making more puppets. I hope I can start those stuffs as soon as possible.
Now, take a break for a minute or two, and see some of PuppetO's journey in this picture.
Enjoy it...:)

We're on screen, mate...!

Last year I had a chance to go to an Electronic Fair in the city. There, I bought a low-end video camera. Well, it wasn't that low, cause it had that HighDefinition (HD) thing in it though.....:D
I didn't use it very often until the Christmas was about to come. So I thought it would be a great idea to do a short film with my handycam. And it just came up to my mind to make a kind of a Christmas Greeting with the puppets.
Forgive me if it's not that good, because I had no experience in video-editing before.
So check this out...!

Up to the Stage...

For every dream comes true, there is a story that needs to be done....

Yup!
My dream was to do a show with my own hand-puppets and all I needed was a perfect time to do that.

It turned out that the moment was on my daughter's 2nd birthday. Me and my wife planned to make a simple party for her, at one of the local McD's restaurants. The only entertainment for kids provided by the restaurant, was a clown show. So I thought, why didn't I do my own puppet show for my daughter? Wouldn't  it be a wonderful birthday gift for her? 

My wife and a friend of mine supported me to take this chance, so I decided to do the show. It was the first show for Mono and KinKin, and they sure did make my daughter very happy.

Here are some pics of the very first performance of Mono and KinKin :

Meet the First Trio...

Finally, after some painstaking experiments of hand-stitching, I did finish the skin for some of my puppet heads with fleece. Infact, I managed to continue to make the bodies for my first two puppets. I actually wanted to make three of them, but I got stuck on the third one. Anyway, here are my first trio : Mono, KinKin and Dunnow.
Mono and KinKin would soon do their first performance, while Dunnow was still under construction.

Below is the picture of them (clockwise) : Mono, KinKin, Dunnow.

Better not be naked! (Part-2)

The fleece was ready, and  next step was to cover the puppet head with it. This means, I had to do some stitching to complete the puppet head's skin. Unfortunately, I had no experience in sewing fabrics at all. So, I searched again in the internet and found this article about stitches.
Not long after that, I started to do hand-stitching to sew the fleece covering the puppet head. It was a painstaking process to do, but hey..no pain no gain...!
So, here are two pictures, depicting my first completed puppet head before and after I covered it with blue fleece.

Better not be naked! (Part-1)

The heads were done and I was thinking of something  I could do about them. "Time to take it to the higher level!", I said to myself.

The next level was to cover the finished head with a certain fabric as the "skin" for the puppet. This was like a giant step for me, because I absolutely had to learn a lot about fabrics and how to sew fabrics.

First thing first!

Looking for the perfect fabric for the skin is very important. Since I was a big fan of The Muppets and Sesame Street, I decided to use the fleece fabric to cover my puppets. Why? Because that was the kind of fabric used by most of the puppets in The Muppets and Sesame Street. And to be more specific, it was the Antron Fleece.

But here in my country, Indonesia, it was not that easy to find that typical fleece, even in a metropolitan city like Jakarta. It took me a while to finally locate the store that sold such fleece fabric. It was in the heart of Jakarta, a well-known location to buy textiles and garments called Pasar Tanah Abang. Previously, I went to another textiles and garments market in southern Jakarta, called Pasar Cipadu, but couldn't find such fleece.

What could be a problem was that, the seller did not call the fabric as "FLEECE". Instead, they called it "Kain Emen". Perhaps it was not quite the same with the Antron Fleece, but at least it had some similarities to the Antron, so I decided to use it anyway.

Heading for more heads...

Like I've written in the previous post, I finally did my first attempt to build a puppet, using a free puppet pattern from Bashful Puppet.com.
It was actually a head pattern, and I didn't have much trouble building it. But then I was like meeting a dead end. I didn't know what to do after that. The head was finished and that was it!
FYI, for the material of the head, I used polyurethane foam sheets just like the ones which are used to make matresses, cushions, insulations, etc.
So, because at that time I had no idea what to do next, I decided to make some heads. I tried to do some modifications. I even attempted to create a new pattern, but it turned out to be totally failed.
Anyway, here are some pictures of my puppethead-will-be.

Puppet Building - My First Attempt

I always had a dream to build my own hand puppet, and it wasn't easy to make it happen. It took me some times to finally start the process, and it was a long process, since the biggest challenge for me is to motivate my self to start it. Hey, the first step is the hardest part to do, right? I started by looking for some puppet-building tutorials in the internet. I found a lot of websites, blogs and puppetry-forums, but there were only few which showed detail informations about puppet building. Some of them provided step-by-step tutorials (and video-tutorials) of how to make your own hand puppet. Some only gave me brief explanations about it. I learned that before you could make your own puppet, you should prepare yourself with a good understanding about (at least) these things :

1.  Puppet Design & Puppet Pattern Making 
2.  Material Selection 
3.  Sewing Skills 

 Looking for a perfect puppet pattern could be frustrating, but not until I found this website. It gave me the free puppet pattern that, in my opinion, is suitable for beginners. So, thanks to Bashful Puppet, I finally could make my first attempt to build a hand puppet of my own. Here are some pictures, showing my very first try to build a hand puppet.

Someone behind Elmo...

He's one of my favorite puppet character in Sesame Street, the well-known puppetshow for education in U.S. This little cute-furry-red monster is everybody's sweetheart. What makes him so loveable is of course his voice. Especially when he laughs and giggles...His face is funny too, with those two big-round eyes, showing his innocence, and his weird orange nose LOL. Do you know the person behind ELMO? It's Kevin Clash. He did the performance of ELMO and also with ELMO's voice. Once you see Kevin, you won't believe that he is really the man behind ELMO. Kevin is probably one of Jim Henson's students. Right, Jim Henson was the big man behind the MuppetShow, back in 80's. No wonder Kevin could play ELMO's character very good indeed. Here's a video showing Kevin Clash being interviewed by Rove McManus on Rove Live.

Our first production...

On 2007, our church was selected to held a Children's Choir Festival, called PESPARAWI (Pesta Paduan Suara Gerejawi). It's a kind of Choir Festival for Sunday School children.
One day, me and my friend had an idea of making a special opening for the Festival. At the beginning, we didn't take the idea seriously, but later on, we decided to give it a try. We planned to make a short-movie with puppets for the opening. So we made a simple story for that. It didn't take too much in making the movie. Me and my friend played as the puppeteers, then 2 friends of mine took part as an "amateur" cameraman and a soundman. We used an ordinary HandyCam and a common microphone. As for the finishing, another friend helped us in editing the film, using Adobe Premiere. The film took place in our church's yard, so it's kinda easier for us, because we didn't have to find certain location.
Below is the un-edited version of the film, so forgive me if the video quality is not good enough. Next time I'll find the edited version to upload.

This was our first experience in making a puppet-movie. Before this, we always did the puppet show on a puppet-stage. So I guess we really learned a lot from it.
(Since 2004, me and my friends have been performing puppetshows in our church. Usually we performed on some special events , for example : Easter day, Christmas, etc.)

Meet the Ventriloquist...

Meet the Ventriloquist...

Another kind of puppeteer, who can manipulate his/her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere. The word "ventriloquist" is actually formed from the Latin word, "Ventral", which means, stomach or abdomen. And Ventriloquist literally means the "belly-speaker". The question is : does the voice really come from the Ventriloquist's stomach? Well, actually the answer is NO. So, where does this voice come from?

A Ventriloquist is a skilled person who can speak without moving his/her lips. Ventriloquists are also good with their hand in moving the puppet's mouth, synchronously with their own voice. So, what actually happens is that the audience hears the ventriloquists' voice, but sees only the puppet's mouth moving. It is a kind of illusion. And with an "extra-acting-skill", ventriloquists would easily convince the audience that the puppet itself is speaking.

Ventriloquists are different from the ordinary puppeteers. They always perform "visually" together with their puppet, so the audience can see both the ventriloquist and the puppet. As for the ordinary puppeteer, audience can only see their puppets. This what makes me call Ventriloquist, a "true-deceiver" to the audience :)

In addition, there's one difficulty faced by Ventriloquists, which is, they have to speak with their lips slightly separated. So they have to replace the bilabial sounds ("b", "p" and "m") with others. For example, with the dental sounds "v", "t", "d" and "n".

Ventriloquists usually perform in some stand-up comic shows. There are also ventriloquists who perform for kids show.

Best Position for Puppeteers...What do you think?

Puppet show? Yes... that's one of my favorite things to do. I like playing handpuppet so much. In fact, I played several performances for SundaySchool children in my church. I usually played with my friends and the performance usually took 3-4 people as puppeteers.

In playing puppet, we often found some difficulties. One of those is to set the best position to play with the puppet. We played with our hand-made-stage that resembled a box, large enough to be filled with 4-5 puppeteers. I will share about the stage later in the next post.
So, it has always been a problem for us to find the best position to play the puppet. We had try 2 different positions, i.e. : sitting and kneeling. There is another way to play it, which is to stand while playing the puppet, but we never try this one.

With the sitting-position, we found that puppeteers wouldn't get tired easily, as they could sit during the show. But in this position, the movement of the puppet was very limited, since they sit on a chair and couldn't move freely.
We tried to overcome this problem with the kneeling-position, so puppeteers could easily move the puppet from the left to the right or up and down. But this position also had a weakness. Puppeteers would get exhausted easily, since they had to kneel down during the show. Sometimes we put a mattress or a pad to support our knees. Yet, we had a problem with our arms. Yes, you can imagine how painful it would be to keep lifting your arm during the show. Anyway, we still try to find the best solution for those problems.

Standing-position could be an alternative in playing handpuppet. I found this method in "Sesame Street" and Jim Henson's "Muppetshow". They played the puppets this way. You can see a clip below, showing the crew were doing rehearsals before the show. But may be it was different since they played it on TVrecording. That means they could set the camera so that the puppeters would not appear on the screen. They could also re-take the scenes or make a scene in several taking. This would save puppeteer's energy during the show.