La Bricoleuse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
labricoleuse) wrote2008-01-16 01:02 pm
labricoleuse) wrote2008-01-16 01:02 pm
Entry tags:
Artisan Focus: Hobey Ford, rod puppeteer, and other links
Because we are eventually going to be talking about macropuppet mechanisms in Decorative Arts this semester, I've been scoping around online for cool links and images and such to show my students. I came across the work of NC master puppeteer Hobey Ford, who specializes in rod puppets. He's just finished a week-long residency here in the Triangle area, courtesy of the Carrboro Artcenter.
You can view a video of highlights from his show Animalia on the Loyd Artists website. The quality of the video is a bit grainy at times, but the magic of the mechanisms comes through anyhow--i particularly love his caterpillars that cocoon and emerge as butterflies. There are a few of his puppets that look like they are glove-mounted rod puppets, which are of particular interest because we're addressing ergonomic safety with respect to glove-based costume projects (a subject i touched on last year in this post on the Edward Scissorhands gloves.
Puppetbuilding.com is an excellent resource for all kinds of puppetry information; of particular interest to me is their aggregate of macropuppet posts. I particularly enjoyed reading the step-by-step post about how a bunch of Star Wars fans built a life-size 3-person Jabba the Hutt in some dude's driveway.
They also maintain the Puppet Building Wiki, which is a cool idea in theory and seems to have a fair number of cool, useful articles (like how to make stilts) but the enormous masthead of spammy links at the top of the pages is distracting and irritating.
Puppeteers Unite have such a huge links page that it'll keep me busy for days just paging through all the cool stuff.
PuppetVision has a group on YouTube where they've collected a whole host of over 100 video clips of puppet performances and construction how-tos as well!
You can view a video of highlights from his show Animalia on the Loyd Artists website. The quality of the video is a bit grainy at times, but the magic of the mechanisms comes through anyhow--i particularly love his caterpillars that cocoon and emerge as butterflies. There are a few of his puppets that look like they are glove-mounted rod puppets, which are of particular interest because we're addressing ergonomic safety with respect to glove-based costume projects (a subject i touched on last year in this post on the Edward Scissorhands gloves.
Puppetbuilding.com is an excellent resource for all kinds of puppetry information; of particular interest to me is their aggregate of macropuppet posts. I particularly enjoyed reading the step-by-step post about how a bunch of Star Wars fans built a life-size 3-person Jabba the Hutt in some dude's driveway.
They also maintain the Puppet Building Wiki, which is a cool idea in theory and seems to have a fair number of cool, useful articles (like how to make stilts) but the enormous masthead of spammy links at the top of the pages is distracting and irritating.
Puppeteers Unite have such a huge links page that it'll keep me busy for days just paging through all the cool stuff.
PuppetVision has a group on YouTube where they've collected a whole host of over 100 video clips of puppet performances and construction how-tos as well!
no subject
he's got a few of the photos from our production up here, and there is a video link as well.
http://www.basiltwist.com/productions/hansel.html
when i get home tonight i'll dig around for my cd of photos of our production and see if i can find some great photos of the different puppets. every character in the show except hansel & gretel was a form of puppet. but really watching the witch(henson studios built her) move is just amazing.
no subject
no subject
from stage
and these are all from one of the first few dresses so it ended up a bit more refined
with hansel to show scale even up close
different angles
oh! and i'm not sure if you have any idea how the witch was pulled off but she houses 4 people inside her. the singer is her from the waist up. he's standing in what i believe are snowboarding boots mounted to a base. under that are the 3 puppeteers that drive her. they're all on some kind of a mount that they use for film cameras which explains the fluid motions of her dancing.