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Who sells it with the $100 minimum order?

Scott Foam is a brand name. Tell them you are looking for reticulated foam. I am not aware of anyone in the GTA who sells it in small quantities, although you can buy small pieces at Canadian Tire (they are sold as filters for humidifiers). There is at least one company that sells in bulk, but...

Puppetry is an art form, not a genre! But I understand what you mean.

Hand sewing tends to give you better-looking results, but takes much, much longer. When you are covering a puppet with "skin" sometimes you have no choice but to sew certain sections by hand. The only thing I always sew in by machine is the puppet's mouth.

I have to say that the Project Puppet Patterns are very reasonable for what you get. If you sell one puppet made from them for as little as $100 you've made back the cost of the pattern, your materials and have a few bucks to spare. That's pretty good. Price does not necessarily determine...

Hi Freggel; the URL you posted doesn't work.

Jim Henson was like a Picasso, or a Matisse or a Brando. He was one of those artists who comes along once in a generation, smashes the existing mold of an artform and chartes a new course for other artists to follow. That's an extremely difficult thing to do and there are few people who can...

It probably has something to do with the ownership/rights associated with the characters and the contract Rick Lyon has. Someone emailed me awhile back because they were looking for names of builders for a community theatre production of Avenue Q and said they weren't allowed to copy the...

There is a good page explaining them here.

This is actually an old thread; a couple years ago I was thinking about doing this, but it wasn't practical to ship stuff from Mexico (where I was living at the time). I have a lot of puppet building patterns and information I plan to put up for free on PuppetBuilding.com when I have the time to...

In the last couple years I have started using very flexible vinyl because it allows the puppet's face to be extremely expressive. This only works if the mouth plate conforms roughly to the dimensions of your hand though; for larger mouths I find it's usually best to use a more rigid material...

I think (not completely sure) the A&E Biography special on Sesame Street has some footage of Carol getting in or out of Big Bird.

"Chroma-key" is the same as color keying, greenscreen and bluescreen. Chroma-key is just software that allows you to substitute one colour with another (to create "green screen effects"). The most popular software is probably Adobe After Effects, but most decent video editing programs have some...

Who is licensing the Avenue Q show anyway? I had someone ask me about this the other day. Does anyone know?

You have to be careful with a hot wire cutter; it's melts the foam and gives off toxic fumes. Using any kind of heat on foam produces toxic results (won't necessarily kill you, but the chemicals are not good to be exposed to over a long period of time). For mouth size, you have to measure the...

Brad Bird is fond of saying that "animation isn't a genre" and I think that's equally true for puppetry. Very few people watch something because of the puppets in it. They don't care about the puppets, or the technique, they just want to be entertained. They don't care if it's puppetry...

Supposedly it can. It does have a mild odor and has to be used with some kind of ventilation, but unlike regular contact cement you don't have to use a respirator, although I usually do. If you do want to use a respirator, you need one approved for use with latex...regular organic vapour...

I believe it's just one puppeteer and as you said it's done in a way that's very similar to Big Bird.

I believe the actual puppets are covered with Antron Fleece, which you can find lots of information about by searching this forum. Some kind of polar fleece would be a good substitute if you are working on a budget or pressed for time. I think Trekkie's hair is made from feathers.

There are a few retailers listed in The Puppet Builder Directory.