Worst/creepiest puppets/puppeteer work

[D'Snowth]

I feel almost offended watching this:

This offends me as a puppeteer.

 

[Drtooth]

I feel almost offended watching this:

This offends me as a puppeteer.

Awww Darnit! Now I have to go to YT and delete it from my history before I get nothing but Big Brother videos.

But it does suck.

Anyway.... I found this little "gem"

I watched like 2 minutes skipping around and I just said "GAW!!!" and gave up. Terrible.

Apparently, there's a rabbit that everyone but the teacher can see and that feels.... kinda creepy.

 

[mr3urious]

Those are some poorly constructed and poorly performed puppets right there. Only the bunny manages to look decent, as he kinda resembles Bean Bunny in build quality.

 

[Drtooth]

The real thing that made me go "BLEECCHHHH" was the poor construction of the kid puppets. The teacher, I'd admit, seems like it could have worked out better in the right hands, but those oversized heads with wrongly placed oversized noses just look all kinds of amateurish.

The concept just comes off cheap and clumsy. The part where they slowly rattle off names of colors for the sake of naming them at the beginning sets the tone of poorness for the rest of the project. It's almost religious puppet show levels of cheap and terrible.

 

[D'Snowth]

I could have sworn I posted this already, but since I apparently didn't:

Try watching this with a straight face.

 

[D'Snowth]

Drtooth is always complaining about the recommended videos he gets on YT that have little to nothing to do with videos he's actually watched, well, I got this after listening to some SST songs today, and, well . . .

Wow. Prototype Barney is insanely frightening. Insanely frightening.

 

[Drtooth]

Well, he's more dinosaur like, I'll give him that. Guess that's what happens when you have little to no budget. And ugh..the colors are puke purple and a nauseating green (that's at least nauseating in contrast to the purple). Not the more TV friendly pinkish magenta and complimentary green that we all know.

When it comes to Barney, I'm a life long detractor, especially on a Sesame Street fan level. And I'll agree looking back on it it's not so much bad as saccharine and cheap. This show did speak to people and I'll give it respect for that. Just don't like it personally. But, I have to admit one thing. Barney is a pretty good looking character design. He's cute and friendly looking, and perfectly huggable from a 3-5 year old's perspective. They certainly got that much right. But I agree, they didn't find that magic design that made him plush toy cute until nearer to the show's...well.. becoming a show instead of a series of DTV projects. Of course, I never liked season one Big Bird either. He's a lumbering goof, and it seems he should have antlers and pal around with squirrel that's smarter than him. Not the adorable overgrown six year old with a full head of feathers.

 

[mr3urious]

Here's a lion telling us some "good news" about Jesus. The head looks decent, but it's the constant flailing of the puppeteer's hand that makes it fit into this thread, not to mention the obvious looping of the dialogue in the studio due to the wind outside that would have been picked up by the mic. Even then, they couldn't be opted to use a pop filter or at least some pantyhose stretched over a wire hanger if they're that cheap because of all the popping sounds.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Drtooth is always complaining about the recommended videos he gets on YT that have little to nothing to do with videos he's actually watched, well, I got this after listening to some SST songs today, and, well . . .

Wow. Prototype Barney is insanely frightening. Insanely frightening.

I actually think its pretty good,considering how cheaply made that whole show was.

 

[Drtooth]

Here's a lion telling us some "good news" about Jesus. The head looks decent, but it's the constant flailing of the puppeteer's hand that makes it fit into this thread, not to mention the obvious looping of the dialogue in the studio due to the wind outside that would have been picked up by the mic. Even then, they couldn't be opted to use a pop filter or at least some pantyhose stretched over a wire hanger if they're that cheap because of all the popping sounds.

I'm very programmed. I can't even read the words "Good News" without hearing Prof. Farnsworth in my head.

Anyway, yeah. This is one of those rare cases where they actually have a good puppet, but everything else is wrong. I really rather like the lion here in design terms. Sure, he's no Theo, but he's relatively cute and cartoonish enough to be professionally built. Than they just hand it to someone who seems to be doing a bad impersonation of Sarah G. Latto from Gumball who doesn't have strong enough puppet skills. Almost seems like the production company (hehe heh using the term loosely) bought some puppets at an auction or something and just threw it to whoever was willing to perform it.

I actually think its pretty good,considering how cheaply made that whole show was.

It's a good build, but the colors are wrong and he's not (to quote a Garfield Barney parody) cute and non-threatening enough. Not a bad character design, but nothing that says lovable to a toddler. The dark purple just doesn't do well on screen as his lighter, pinker build he got once he hit television. Whatever I can say about Barney, someone knew that a brighter character would stick out, even in a brightly lit studio. The dark purple either blends in with a dark scene or it doesn't photograph very well on brighter ones. It probably looked great in person, but it seems like the TV show corrected the color theory these early ones lacked.

Now, to move onto another example, here's another clip from that show that has inconsistent puppetry.

This show puzzles me. There's just something to how inconsistent it is. The writing's inconsistent, the puppets are inconsistent, the puppetry is inconsistent. You either have puppets that look professional and well made, or ugly, amateurish things side by side. And as you can see in this sketch, the puppeteering is off. They can't even seem to look at each other, and they somehow feel they need to dart their heads back and forth from each other to the camera and everywhere in between. And the long headed puppet looks out of place with the humanoid ones. Like they're trying for a Muppet Show style of Scooter and other abstract looking characters being side by side with Wayne and Wanda and more cartoony looking humans and somehow still fitting together. But somehow it looks like they bought a box of puppets at a rummage sale and said "yeah, let's just use them."

The puppets here aren't bad looking (though the long headed one just doesn't work in any design sense), and sometimes the show seems like it could be entertaining genuinely. And unlike that purple thing that looks like it came out of a Cathy comic strip that's constantly shouting angrily about God and Jesus, it doesn't seem like this show is painfully trying to be preachy. It just seems to fall apart quickly.