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You have to order it online. I believe that the Puppeteers of America online store, Amazon.com and Grey Seal Puppets all sell it.

I know, but some people do think of it as a genre rather than a unique art form.

The term is pretty much meaningless. I did a blog post on this subject earlier this year.

You can make three balls using a wedge pattern scaled to different sizes. Each ball will need about eight wedges. Then connect them together, cut holes for the mouth and your arm.

John K. (the creator of Ren and Stimpy) has a great blog where he's constantly railing against the declining value of skill in the arts. One of his best posts on the subjects is here. This is a quote: Nowadays we have cartoons by people who can't draw (or write), "voice actors" by people who...

To paraphrase Brad Bird, puppetry is an artform, not a genre. :)

Do you mean an actual tree puppet, or a rack for hanging puppets on?

Yeah, I studied broadcasting in college and that's what I was taught too. Television's history is complicated because there wasn't a single inventor and the technology for it was developed over about 60 years beginning in the 1870s. Another part of the problem is that a lot of North American...

Actually, TV was invented in the mid-1920s and the first broadcasts were done around 1935 or 1936 I think. Large scale adoption of it didn't start until after WWII, I guess because of the Depression and the War.

This is kind of an example of what I mean about "myths" about puppetry and it's appeal outside of the child/family audience though. There has always been popular adult oriented puppetry. Examples from the past decade alone are Crank Yankers, Puppets Who Kill, Ed The Sock, Triumph, Wonder...

I completely agree with Scary Larry, the web is the future. Over the next 2-3 years you're going to see web video, TV, iPods and even mobile video (on cell phones) come together in a big way. A lot of innovative stuff is coming out in the next year that's going to totally transform the TV and...

I think you're very right, doing your own thing is the best way to go. If nothing else, it may open other opportunities to you down the road. Even the Muppet people will tell you it's a mistake to pin all your puppetry hopes and dreams on working with them. I don't know about a market for...

I like ball and socket armatures, but if you don't want to go to all that trouble 1/16" armature wire should work fine. It can be a little expensive, but it works really nicely. You might want to go with a heavier gage if the puppets are really big. You should be able to find it in most fine art...

What book was that?

This is a really interesting issue. There are a lot of puppeteers who make a good (not necessarily great) living doing puppetry full-time. They don't exclusively do film or TV and they're not freelancers, they are entrepreneurs. They tour, do shows for schools, etc. It's a lot of hard work, but...

From what I have been told Disney uses costume performers and puppeteers interchangeably in Florida, but in California they are treated as two different jobs. They don't pay very well, but the experience is incredibly valuable. A lot of professional puppeteers start their career "paying dues" in...

Aw, I wish I got TBS in Mexico.

Vacuforming is pretty cheap, but takes some practice. The advantage is that once you learn to do it you can make almost any kind of eyes you want. Search the forum for old vaccumforming threads or Google it and you should find some very good tutorials.