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Stained Glass adds a lot for many houses, especially haunted ones. Nearly every copy shop can easily make TRANSPARENCIES

Google Images is a vast trove of delightful memes that awaken our imagination. On our current focus of stagecraft, we need dioramas in our vocabulary at this point, and this month, halloween dioramas. Most dioramas are shoe-box sized, and contain a miniature scene, emotionally or by...

Reaching into the Virtual Stage Here's just one of the new Hand Gesture Readers (Microsoft) and some thoughts on how they can be useful to puppetmasters.. These can control robotic puppets, orchestrate, direct, and choreograph robot musicans or dancers. You will be able to reach into the space...

Deciding on 1:12 Scale for Props and Stages CLICK ABOVE TO SEE GOOGLE ON "HAUNTED DOLL HOUSES"

This is a 1:12 doll house kit. With some paint to make it appear aged, and an owl and a few jack-o-lanterns, this doll house builder converted the design into a haunted house. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/marilenz/3856394806/ 1:12 (one inch equals one foot) is standard doll house size. For...

Table of Contents: Theaters, Stages, and Venues Click for Seaside Cottage closer view (a favorite of mine) I should mention again, I don't work for or represent any company selling materials I show here. I'm sharing what I've found via Google and other sources. I welcome your reply...

Happy Halloween 2012

Programming with Sprites and a Virtual Theater Around 1983 at LFL Computer Division I was given the fun task of doing the "scrolling tile" backgrounds (similar to HTML backgrounds about a dozen years later) for the Labyrinth game (based on the Lucas/Henson movie with David Bowie). Back then...

That last point is important, the usefulness of magnets on almost ANY topological surface shapes. It's good to have the finest tools, but you can do a lot with less. A couple of bandaids can hold magnets to your fingertips, if control gloves aren't affordable. Suites of graphic programs costing...

Puppetmaster's Control Gloves With one or two gloves like this, a puppetmaster could (through the Lexan plastic) orchestrate a whole orchestra of tiny musicians (hand-sized), or a swarm of bees, two flocks of birds, a sinuous snake, ocean waves, or up to 10 facial features... One could be among...

I had no plan in mind when I came to MC, but find I'm enjoying sharing info and insights from my years in media and engineering, and looking to the future of the arts. Some of the exciting areas that overlap are stop-motion, go-motion, robotics, theater design, and virtual sprite animation...

More about magnets: Neodymium magnets can be damaged by water, so they're coated with nickel plating, and in a couple of cases of the distributor I cited, gold plating. I have no connection with that company. I like their many affordable magnets. Nickel plated ones are less than gold. CLICK...

Magnetic Puppets, why not? If you've ever played with a magnet to make a paper clip move through cardboard or a table, you know it takes a strong magnet to do it well. Neodymium magnets are ideal for this, and N52 type is the strongest you're likely to find. (Please keep these and all small...

Flexible "armature" is often used to make dolls. CLICK HERE TO SEE. It's very strong, bendable, and long-lasting. This example is about 1/2" diameter. It can be had from about 1/4" to 2-1/2" diameter (for really big puppets). CLICK HERE for another source. You can glue an inch or two of its...

{Above I said "small LEVERS with of course leverage, and complementary cables" describing Jerry Mahoney's head mechanism. I later realized that was an error. Rather than cables, Jerry's head contained "bar linkages" similar to rod puppets. I've administered several BBSs and never had a bad...

I've discussed cable puppets using rings to pull the cables, but another method with advantages was used as far back as the 1940s - 1950s, small LEVERS with of course leverage, and complementary cables that don't tie up the puppeteer's fingers. This is the head of popular ventriloquist dummy...

In an effort to imagine an optimum cable system for a puppet, I considered a kind of vest that could be quickly easily donned or doffed in a brisk live performance. The best cable practices would be used, with Teflon sheath and quality fish-line, to assure the cables would work perfectly over...