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Hey all, Anybody else notice that the number of puppeteers doing video podcasts lately has been exploding? As some of you no doubt already know every Wednesday I do a weekly "round up" of new episodes of puppet podcasts in my PuppetVision Blog. What I think is really impressive is not just the...

That's pretty normal. Most foam starts to break down after about five years. If you store the puppets carefully away from light they will last longer, but they don't last forever unfortunately. :(

Charlemagne Press is a small Canadian publisher that specializes in puppetry. They are based in Vancouver and are mostly an outlet for Lumad Coad (he owns the company), who is a very well-regarded puppeteer on the West Coast. Ray DaSilva used to publish puppetry books in the UK, but he is...

It really depends on the height of your sets and of your puppeteers. I have used a lot of professional tripods that were fine in terms of height. They usually have long centre columns that can get a camera up quite high, but the drawback of that is that the further the centre column is extended...

That's a good question...there are special dolly rigs for doing shots where puppets have to walk down a street, but other than that usually cameras just get either mounted on some kind of crane/jib/dolly or raised in the air using their tripods/base or by placing the camera on some kind of boxes...

Pricing is a tough issue, have you looked at the calculator that's mentioned in this thread? It's not perfect and isn't applicable to every situation, but it can be helpful (I hope!) in figuring out pricing when you are building puppets.

It took me a couple days to track down this link, but this looks like it would be fun to make and use...a homemade jib arm.

Safety isn't nearly as much fun as reckless endangerment (sigh). :p

Many (if not most) of the Muppet FX you see in old sketches were not actual explosions, but fire extinguishers or air cannons. That's still the easiest and safest way to create explosion effects. As Stacey said, some stuff for fire/explosive effect (like flash paper and small flash pots) are...

The main problem with dark coloured foam is that if it's covered with fleece or another fabric, unless the fabric is very opaque some of the colour will show through. It also doesn't take paint/colour/dye well, as Stacey mentioned.

A good option that can work really well if your camera is only a couple of pounds is a cheap camcorder jib (kind of like a camera crane). They usually go for a few hundred bucks, but you might be able to find one for less on ebay.

The best example I can think of off the top of my head is Puppet Rapist, which if I'm remembering correctly had some nicely shot and edited action sequences. The best way to tackle something like this is probably Bunraku-style with puppeteers in-shot and then take them out using wire removal...

There is a lot of people starting to make a decent living off web series - or at least paying their production costs. It's hard, but do-able. The most successful shows seem to target a specific niche. Blip.tv is helping a lot of shows get sponsorship, but you do have to demonstrate that you have...

Cute Zombie Onath!

I guess Sean forgot to tag the posts with those steps, that's why they are missing from the URL above. You can find those missing posts in the February Archives - http://swazzle.com/blogs/2007_02_01_puppet101archive.html (scroll down to find them).

Take a look at the "Lady Fromage" rod puppet tutorial on the Puppet 101 blog - http://swazzle.com/blogs/labels/Lady%20Fromage.html

Have you read Figure Making Can Be Fun by Michael Brose? It's probably the best book on making specific types of mechs and a great investment. The designs have to be modified slightly to work with foam puppets, but the book explains the basic principles involved. I don't have my copy handy but...

Veoh has a copyright policy that complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; there are details here. That being said, why not leave it up for people to enjoy and share? It's a great show btw!

I mentioned Newsy Vents above, but the latest post there has another good example of a "straight drop" mouth - http://newsyvents.blogspot.com/2007/10/big-fella.html

Do you have a picture or video? If you do or can point to one I am sure people here can help you figure it out. Is this what you're referring to?