PUPPET PAGES!!!

Meet my puppet creations! My biggest hobby/passion/profession lies in the area of live and stop-motion puppet performance. Here you can catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse into this amazing artform.

Stop-Motion Animation is a form of film animation that pre-dates hand-drawn or computer animation. It is achieved by photographing a model or puppet, moving the puppet, and photographing it again, repeated over and over to create the illusion of life and movement. Film runs at a speed of 24 frames per second, so the puppet must be moved 24 times for each second of film (unless it is shot "on twos," meaning each movement is photographed twice; this will still create the same illusion at 12 movements per second, depending on style or speed of the action).

I built these puppets for my student film Bad News, a work that has sadly been shelved. Historians shall find this project under "incomplete works." A new film is in progress, and pictures should be available here soon. Hamish McFlea and the Clockwork Monkey of the Apocalypse are built around plastic doll armatures so they can stay in each pose they are moved into.

Hamish is only seen in the film from the waist up, so I saved time by not giving him legs. He's not very happy about that. Instead I created a wooden base and affixed the armature to it with propoxy putty. The armature is covered in mattress foam and fabric. Only his head and hands are made of modeling clay, since they express most of the action and emotion. His eyes are basically beads made out of FIMO.

The Clockwork Monkey was also built with foam and fabric over the armature. I made his head out of a styrofoam ball, using foam for the base of the muzzle. It's crucial that the puppet be made of as many light materials as possible, to battle the evil deeds of top-heaviness and gravity. His teeth, feet, and eyes are FIMO, and his muzzle is covered in clay so he can smile and sneer. Credit must be given in thanks to my friend Meeka's dad who made the Monkey's cymbals.

Here is a picture of the set at VanArts where I shot the scene for my film. I used a regular 8mm video camera fed into a computer and capture card, and used StopMotionPro to shoot and capture my animation. The background was a wash of Rosko Video Paint, which allowed the characters to be super-imposed onto an outdoor live-action video background using AfterEffects.

Me at work...

THE MANY FACES OF HAMISH...stills from "Bad News", an abandoned film.

Meet Skraboonikus the Hooded Goblin! (and my friend Sarah, too!) He is a live-action puppet I made for the Michigan Renaissance Festival in 1998. Skraboonikus is short on words but he likes cookies, and he made it into a fantasy novel I wrote in three days called "Joseph and Moon." Click here to read it!

Stay tuned for more puppets!