Dave Privett- www.PlaySoup.com

[Iokitek]

The puppets I'm working on now look like Pokemons. I hope I won't get sued

I think artistic styles etc. cannot be owned by someone. In that case Spitting Image was "ripped off" from Leonardo da Vinci. Every charicature in that style for that matter. Even if he was alive today I think he wouldn't have any problems with people using his techniques. Actually back then that's how knowledge was passed on. By actually passing it on instead of keeping it all to themselves. Fortunately we still have libraries and the internet these days. But the old days of masters and pupils seem to be almost gone. Right now you need to be wealthy to go to art school. Either that or get a scholarship. To my surprise I actually found a workshop for puppeteers here in the Netherlands. But it costs loads of money. So I can't afford that.

Everyone, and I mean everyone copies from other people. God might aswell sue us for making puppets of frogs etc. Because they were originally His creations (actually there are people who believe this, but that's another story alltogether). Derivatives are unavoidable. But ofcourse direct copies are not.

Buck I don't see why someone would say that your puppets are derivatives of the Muppets. I really don't. I don't think they look like Muppets at all. There might be similairities. But that's it. Actually they are quite original. As far as such a thing exists.

 

[BorkBork]

Hi everyone.

I do want to help people improve the quality of what they're building, and to do that I'm considering creating a DVD that explicitly shows how to pattern foam with this technique. Anyone interested? It could be out this fall.

I'm really interested in buying a dvd if it were to be made. I did buy David Pannabeckers videos and they were really helpful, but i'd like to learn some more. I have not been doing anything in about 2 years that has to do with puppet-building, but i'm having some thoughts on starting a production-company that is aiming on puppet-building mainly, in the near future. Especially since i have some very close contacts to some TV-/media-production companies here in sweden. So for me it would be great to be able to learn as many techniques as possible.

 

[biblebetty]

Oh Boy, I would be very interested!!!!

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Hi everyone. This is my first post on Muppet Central. Happy building, Dave Privett

Welcome! Come back often and visit us. Lots of good things to talk about in the puppetry forum that isn't necessarily about the Muppets. Thanks for postin'.

 

[puppetsmith]

My two cents...

So you see, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, "there's nothing new under the sun."

These threads lately have been GREAT! I figured I'd put in my two cents.

My theory is that all puppets come from the 2-D world. They are drawings or cartoons brought to life. One thing I've always found interesting is that nobody says that Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck or Garfield have "Muppet eyes". They have white eyes with black pupils. When you bring a white eye with a black dot for the pupil into the 3-dimensional world, all of a sudden you have "Muppet eyes"! I used to try to stay away from "Muppet eyes" because I didn't want to copy, until I realized the eyes don't belong to the Muppets. They are eyes! There is only so much you can do to change them before they're not eyes anymore. All the same techniques that contribute to creating strong 2-D characters apply to our ever beloved 3-D characters, puppets.

The key is character creation. A person can be handed the greatest pattern in the world and have master puppet building skills, but if the character that he builds with that pattern is weak - he's not going too far. Conversely, even if a person has mediocre building skills, if the character is strong - success! And that all depends on the creativity, the imagination, and the thought time put in to the creation of character, not the building of the puppet.

 

[Iokitek]

Although I do not think they belong to Muppets exclusively I must say that Muppets have pingpongball type round eyes. While the examples you mentioned have more or less saucer type eyes. Not entirely flat but not round like Muppet eyes either. Does that make sense? I think that garfield etc. have eyes like the Melonpool puppets. Wich are great btw.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Melonpool Rocks!!

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I'll second that! Isn't Steve around here somewhere?

Just further to Io's post, I think that the whole notion of a Muppet style is really false; they've done puppets in almost every style imaginable. I think when most people say "Muppet style" they're referring to the classic Muppet style that's used on Sesame Street. I think it is unfortunate when puppet builders only mimick that look, but sometimes it's an appropriate stylistic choice. In Avenue Q it works brilliantly because it's a send-up of Sesame Street.

 

[shtick]

The aforemntioned "Muppet Style" is a great way to break into puppetry before developing your own style, okeh.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Absolutely.