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Nice!

No problem! It is really important to design moving mouth puppets with their mouths open if you're dealing with a flexible material (fabric, latex, silicone, etc.) so the mouth can open properly. "Hard" heads sculpted or cast in wood, plastic or something similar are generally the opposite, you...

You have to pattern the mouth so that it is in an open position so that the mouth can open and close naturally. If it's patterned so that the mouth is closed by default (e.g. you just cut a slit) then fabric has to be displaced every time you try to move the mouth and it doesn't look right...

This has come up many, many times over the years....these are not photos of the actual Animal puppet, but a diagram of the puppet's mechanism and photos of a similar one originally created by Terry Angus: Drawings - http://www.puppet-planet.com/images/blinkeye2.jpg Puppet Photo -...

All Muppets are puppets, but not all puppets are Muppets. :D

They're spending millions and millions building new prisons here and making prisoners serve longer sentences even though our crime rates are at historic lows. Our Prime Minister had the Republican Governor of Texas (Texas!) write him a letter arguing against our new "tough-on-crime" laws because...

There are probably no images because of licensing/rights issues.

To be fair, we have issues here too. On some issues, like crime prevention, we're actually becoming much less progressive than the United States. We are definitely a more socialist country and generally uncomfortable letting people hunt with assault weapons. I don't really believe that many...

There is currently a big issue in Ontario (the Province where I live) over Catholic Schools trying to ban "Gay-straight alliance" clubs. The Catholic Schools here are part of the public education system (due to some Constitutional issues that go back to the 19th century that I don't pretend to...

What really upsets me most about this controversy is that I've been told Chik-Fil-A is actually pretty good (we don't have them in Canada) and now I'll never be able to try their chicken sandwiches without feeling horribly guilty. I live in Canada, where we watch these sorts of pitched...

I would suspect there was probably some sort of contractual arrangement that reverted the rights to TMS to Henson after a set period of time or that Henson bought the show back at some point.

There is a system and I think there always has been unfortunately. I'm sure the system is a little different now compared to how it was when the Muppet Show was made, but I'm sure it was just as frustrating and probably even more difficult then. I was at a Jim Henson Legacy panel discussion in...

What do you want to be, ideally? A writer? A director? A writer/director? I've been lucky enough to have a few pitches/projects optioned in the past few years (none have been produced yet though) and my experience is that generally the industry wants to be able to slot you in to a nice little...

Don't glue it. It's much better to machine sew the fabric for the mouth to the hole that's cut or patterned for the mouth (the "lips") together and then glue the mouth fabric to the mouth plate afterwards. A little practice is sometimes required, but this will almost always give you the clean...

With respect, I think you're focused on the wrong things. I've been writing about people doing puppetry on the web for over eight years now and from what I've seen and watched trying to out-Muppet the Muppets, or copy expensive TV shows is the wrong approach. It almost always fails. I certainly...

I know that last post might make me sound like a horrible, jaded jerk, but I am right about this. Art is art. Business is business. Learn this. Know it. Live it. I wish someone had drilled this in to me years ago. I'm working to get the puppet pricing calculator back online and available for...

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond in this thread. Unfortunately work and life seem to conspire together to keep me really busy and I'm not able to check the forum here as often as I used to. As I've said before, the puppet pricing calculator spreadsheet is really designed for someone who...

This is a video of some amazing puppetry and puppeteers that I saw and met during a recent trip to a puppet festival in Taiwan. It was filmed for PuppetVision: The Movie, the puppetry documentary that I'm working on (and mentioned in this thread). You can learn more about the puppeteers in the...

These controls are often a lot simpler than you think. Maintaining complex systems that use Waldos is expensive and time consuming so I think a lot of shows with talking character heads use basic mechanical controls like what Fragglerockr describes. Some shows use expressive, servo-driven heads...

I think they went back years ago (back in the `90s?) and digitally removed all the rods from the original Muppet movies. If you're watching it on DVD or TV these days, chances are you're seen an altered version of the film. Rods don't bother me, but sloppy puppeteering where the rods are held...