Finding Work

[ravagefrackle]

aww that sounded so sad and defeated, ravage!

just being realistic.

 

[staceyrebecca]

I wonder if one of the ways to be successful as a puppeteer is to move to a city where there is little to no puppetry. Now, that probably won't get you any video work, but you'd be working.

Phoenix certainly has our hub of puppetry, but its not saturated. I don't really ever find myself without something going on.

 

[mrhogg]

staceyrebecca, are you always with lots of paying work, or more puppetry things to do?

Part of the problem I have is focus. I have (as does everyone) such finite time to do any of these things, especially when it's not my day job, that if I'm adding something such as classes, or etsy stuff, or anything like that, I'm taking away from the time I have to make video puppet things, and to make shows. And to find advertising/tv/film work, which is the goal.

On the one hand, if I pile things up, each thing takes longer to finish, not just because I'm splitting my time up, but because switching from thing to thing is pretty disruptive, so it's not just four times as long to finish four things at once, it's, say, six times as long. This is a good way to get myself depressed, as I get no sense of momentum going on, no matter how much momentum I may genuinely have.

On the other hand, the classes and the Etsy won't pay all that well. And if my goal is to supplant my income, to enable myself to build puppets and make puppet shows/productions full-time, then doing classes, or doing one-off craft pieces, isn't the most efficient way of doing it. I can reach my goal with less effort if I can get more advertising/tv/film work than if I make craft puppets, and that extra time will allow me to spend more time on my personal shows. I don't want to run into a situation where, sure, I'm replacing my income with puppet-building, but I have to do more than full-time hours to accomplish it, and it leaves me no time to work on dotBoom, Ask Palpatine, or any of the other shows I have in the pipeline.

Ad agencies can pay a **** of a lot more than a person who wants a puppet for personal use, after all.

What I'm going to do is:
Finish the couple for-pay puppets I'm in the middle of.
Film, edit, and release the Colbert Puppet Challenge video (which will be, if done right, a nice bit of advertising for myself)

Then I'm going to start on a demo reel. Will be a mix of text-based description of what kind of puppets and puppetry Hoggworks does, but also how it will benefit people. Why people (read: ad agencies and production companies) should buy them. Plus I'm going to assemble a video detailing the things I've done. As part of the video I'm going to build a couple new sets, and a number of new, high-quality puppets (Colbert quality and as much higher than that as I can achieve) and record some specific bits for the demo reel using the new puppets and the new sets, to show not just what Hoggworks has done, but what it CAN do.

And when I've got that done, I'm going to send it to every agency I can think of, world-wide.

I'm going to continue making Palpatine while doing this, and do the odd puppet rant (and possibly an Inside Hoggworks or two), but other than that, everything's on the backburner.

I'm paring things down, and going to focus on just a couple things, so I can burn through them. With a direction and a definite, concrete goal in mind.

The demo reel will likely take me a couple/few months, and it might get interrupted by paying work (if any of my pitches ever come back to me), and it will be a **** of a lot of work.

But it's the important thing to do, right? The first thing a potential customer will see. Which makes it the most important thing I do for Hoggworks.

 

[staceyrebecca]

Brian, feel free to email me for specific details. Especially since you're trying to figure out if this is something you can live off of. I feel like I'm overpaid for a lot of things, you might be surprised...then again, you might not. I've no idea, I suppose.

I teach puppetry in a school 2 days a week, I did library workshops, I'm in the middle of a big project for Craft Magazine, I do summer residencies. The indie film won that contest (! it's so terrible, i have no idea how), I write & perform for puppet slams, & the occasional touring show (we just do our slam pieces at venues around town), and then every now and again someone buys a puppet or two on Etsy. Last year was much more consistent than this year with Etsy, though. All of those pay & I've never ever felt that I've been underpaid. A lot of the time I feel overpaid.

I constantly question myself! I think everyone does. And if you don't, then stomp on your toes for me, please. I have to remind myself to play. I think we all should. What good is this life if you can't play?

I'm just attempting to do what I love and have fun every moment. I hope that others see that fun & want to have some sort of part in it. If nothing else, I'm having too much fun to know that I'm miserable. And so far, people have wanted to be involved! Yay that, right? I'm grateful that people have wanted to play alongside me.

Most of the time people are come to me. Usually through networking, but once recently through flickr, oddly enough. Oh I think the Craft Magazine connection originated through flickr as well.

Also, its important, too, to keep in mind that I'm married. And while that comes with its own sets of extra financial issues (house, preschool, child), it does help to have two incomes. I don't make nearly as much as my other half, but it's more than enough to fill in the blanks. For us, anyway.

Like I said, I'd be happy to share specifics.

 

[staceyrebecca]

Also, this idea of "craft puppets" confuses me.. I suppose I use craft puppets as professional performance puppets. I've never thought of them that way, I just don't build my puppets in a traditional muppet-contruction way.

A topic for another thread,that has probably already been discussed at legth, I suppose.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Also, this idea of "craft puppets" confuses me.. I suppose I use craft puppets as professional performance puppets. I've never thought of them that way, I just don't build my puppets in a traditional muppet-construction way.

A "professional puppet" is just one you're paid to perform with. I think that the term is almost meaningless.

I don't know if my personal story will be helpful in terms of this discussion or not, but about eight years ago I started a puppetry company and in the beginning it went very well. This was before most people figured out how they could use the internet to market effectively so there was much less competition and we were insanely busy building puppets for everything from TV pilots to theatre shows and private collectors. Unfortunately, I knew a lot less about business than I did about puppetry and I made a series of mistakes that compounded and the whole thing rapidly spiraled out of control and I ended up about $45,000 in debt and really depressed.

For awhile I did some non-puppetry stuff part-time that was thankfully well-paying enough that I had spare time to work on a few things, but it wasn't enough time and I didn't have enough money to do what I wanted to. I got very frustrated until finally I decided to make some radical changes.

I enrolled in a federally funded program for entrepreneurs - basically the Canadian government paid me for a year to start a new puppetry business - spent six months taking non-puppetry classes and workshops and developed a very practical five year plan for myself. I realized that I couldn't afford the cost of living in Canada while doing the work I wanted to with the minimal income I earned initially from puppetry so I decided to move to Mexico, where I could work on stuff for Canada and the U.S. but have a much lower cost of living.

I just mention this because I think there are a zillion (or so) different paths you can take to finding a way to doing puppetry full-time. From my own experience and what I've read of others here over the years the path you start out on is rarely the one you end up on. It's ultimately about what your goals are, what you're willing to do (and not do) and what you're willing to sacrifice to get where you want to be.

 

[staceyrebecca]

2) you MUST promote yourself a every opportunity. You never know who's sitting next to you at a party or who your bank teller might know that can get you a job.

Because I'm a talkative kiddo, I think this has been what has given me so many opportunities. Basically the right people have asked for private workshops & I had no idea that those people were the "right people."

Gazillions of ways to go about it. And again, the one that's right for you is the one that makes you wake up in the morning without any feelings of ick. (oh the mighty wordsmith am I) From the sound of it, you're not thrilled with the idea of doing shows/etsy/workshops, so that probably means you should stay away from it.

 

[mrhogg]

When I say craft puppets I don't mean the look or style of the build, I mean the intent and the use of them. When I say craft puppet I'm talking about something intended to be sold one-off, for personal use. There's nothing at all wrong with that kind of puppet, and I apologize if that's how what I said sounded.

I'm more interested in getting commissioned puppet work for ad people, really. That doesn't mean that my stuff is more professional because there's a larger paycheque attached to it, of course, nor does it make it more valid.

That may or may not provide clarification, but hopefully it does. Hopefully it doesn't make me sound like even more of an ***.

 

[staceyrebecca]

Totally provides more clarification. I can see that difference.

I use the same building style as I do for my show puppets, but usually the non-show puppets are shorter.

It really sounds like you should put that free-time you have into making a post-card/pamphlet to mail to ad agencies. Like I said, you may not hear back right away, but they don't file all of them in the trash. Unique ones they keep. Puppetry is unique.

 

[mrhogg]

How did you land the Capital One gig Brian?

A friend I used to work with was working at the ad agency that did the commercial. When they decided to pitch puppets, the next question was how to build them, and my friend thought of dotBoom.