Exclamation Points.

Made this cute little cupcake this weekend. Om nom nom nom...

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:26:19 -0500

Made this cute little cupcake this weekend. Om nom nom nom nom.
(Not a puppet, still kinda cool)

My brand new Arduino Uno arrived this week. Time to do some...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:11:47 -0500

My brand new Arduino Uno arrived this week.

Time to do some science!

Josh and Tamra

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:44:10 -0500

On Friday night I got a chance to see NYC’s Josh & Tamra through the 2013 Chicago Improv Festival and then did a workshop with them on Saturday afternoon. Josh Cohen is a Henson / Muppet trained puppeteer and went over the basics of good puppetry (proper lip syncing, character development, etc)

This is my favorite puppet from the show. Her name is Jessica and she’s essentially just a doll with a puppet head. Real unique but also creepy and hilarious. Weird combination.

Recently submitted this video to Hannah Hart’s...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:08:38 -0600

Recently submitted this video to Hannah Hart’s Pitchin’ Kitchens. Come visit me in Chicago, “My Drunk Kitchen”!

Me and the new orange girl puppet!

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 22:02:56 -0600

Me and the new orange girl puppet!

My most recent puppet project! Finished! Arm-rods on both hands!...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:30:01 -0600

My most recent puppet project! Finished!

Arm-rods on both hands! Pose-able hair and fingers! Yeah!

Happy Monday! Here are two Pig Puppet-Heads. Bodies are still in...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:41:49 -0600

Happy Monday! Here are two Pig Puppet-Heads.

Bodies are still in the works but hopefully done soon!

Who’s my cute little killer? Yes you are. Yes you...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 20:46:30 -0600

Who’s my cute little killer? Yes you are. Yes you are.

Spider puppet: 100% complete. All legs and fangs are operational AND it shoots silly string. BAM!

Annoyance Theater - Sunday December 9th @ 4PM!

Foam body for a Spider Puppet I’ll be using in a charity show at...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:28:07 -0600

Foam body for a Spider Puppet I’ll be using in a charity show at The Annoyance this Sunday the 9th (4PM! You should go!)

Its about 18” long and pretty scary already. I’ll post more pictures once I finish it.

Its been a while - so here’s something I’ve been...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:37:02 -0600

Its been a while - so here’s something I’ve been working on over the past few days. Almost complete. Need to: 1) build another arm 2) fix the first arm 3) accessorize the head a bit more

Puppets! Poop! Puppets!

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:16:07 -0500

My friend Chris is involved with the Annoyance Theater’s upcoming production: Steamwerkz the Musical (opening June 22nd!) and hooked me up with a sweet gig making 4 poop puppets for them.

I’m not 100% sure what these bad-boys are going to be doing in the show, but it has got to be good. Go out and support them if you’re in the Chicago area!

The first two are plain and simple poops:

And the second two have a little more character…

Marl.

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 17:14:26 -0500

Marl.

Basically finished sandwich puppet. Could use some tomatoes in...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 17:13:45 -0500

Basically finished sandwich puppet. Could use some tomatoes in the mouth and some finishing touches on the eyes.

Sandwich puppet is almost done! Right now he looks like a...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:48:38 -0500

Sandwich puppet is almost done! Right now he looks like a grilled cheese vampire.

SketchFest Wrap-up

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:48:00 -0600

SketchFest was a hit! Everyone loved the puppets; people were really interested in how they were made and seeing them up close. Here are some snapshots of one of our rehearsals:

Puppets/SketchFest in review. Things I learned and developed, etc:

Dollar store gloves work much better for puppet mouth control than socks.
No matter what: You are going to burn yourself with the glue gun.
I am much better at stitching now, but should still buy a sewing-machine.
Cardboard and duct-tape actually can make pretty impressive puppets. Look into not being a cheap-skate (buy real foam).
Just because you haven’t seen it in a puppet doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Everyone loves puppets.

Cool Ranch

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:36:52 -0600

I had a lot of trouble deciding what I wanted to do with the last puppet (number 6 of 6) for SketchFest. My original plan was to make a Cool Ranch Doritos bag but a couple obstacles came up.

1. People told me a doritos bag wouldn’t be exciting enough

2. Chris didn’t want me to write “Doritos” on it in order to avoid some sort of copyright infringement.

I had an internal struggle with both of these things and ultimately decided I didn’t care. I couldn’t think of a better puppet idea than Doritos and, although I left the word Doritos out of the final design, I still think it looks pretty great.

I didn’t take any pictures during the creation process of this puppet, but here is the final product.

I think we can all agree that Cool Ranch Doritos are the funniest type of Doritos out there. Amiright? I’ll probably add the word Doritos eventually, to make it even more obvious.

I’m hoping some idiots and I can use this bad-boy to make a commercial for the annual Dorito’s Super Bowl Commercial contest and win a million dollars. I don’t think any other submissions involved puppets, so this is a good start.

Internet: Don’t steal my idea. Please?

My Little Buttercup

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:36:21 -0600

The cookie is done and it was time to move on to puppet #5. I decided to make a Cupcake instead of making an ice-cream cone. Luckily I was able to use the same fabric as before (pink / tan) and I felt like it would be a more enjoyable puppet to look at.

Designing the structure was a huge challenge. I made the bottom and top baseboards of the cupcake-stump first and then bent a front-face piece of cardboard onto it to pull it all together. Here is the frame of the stump:

That part was easy, but we all know the best and most important part is the tops - Top of the muffin to you! I made a basic cupcake frosting frame out of leftover DiGiorno boxes because they’re flexible and I clearly eat too much pizza.

I covered the whole thing with duct-tape to give it a complete surface. Surprising how good it looks once you get over the intense metallic color.

When I started covering the cupcake with fabric, I saw how cute it was. It was obvious that this puppet needed to be a girl. It was the princess, the smurfette of the bunch. Eyelashes made it a girl (hilarious, I know) and here is what the final product looks like:

This is the puppet I ultimately got to perform as in the show since it was my favorite.

Me want Cookie-Crisp.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:35:47 -0600

I’m cranking out puppets pretty quickly at this point - and its getting more and more enjoyable. I went back home to CT for about 10 days and all I wanted was to get back and make more; I can’t believe how addicting it is. Luckily I’m on a deadline to get these done. Originally I had to make 6 puppets in 6 weeks. Taking out 2-3 between planning and time back in CT, my schedule was 6 puppets in 3 weeks. Awesome.

I decided to change the donut puppet into a chocolate chip cookie because I felt like the idea for the mouth of the donut being the donut-hole wouldn’t read as well as a real-life Chip’s Ahoy cookie from those “Smack Dab In The Middle” commercials.

Squeezed! In the Middle! Smack Dab! In the Middle!

I made the front and back panels of the cookie with cardboard circles of different diameters. Then I used bent cardboard to make the rounded edge portions of the cookie. Everything was duct-taped together an insane amount. Its actually pretty embarrassing how low-budget these puppets are. I think the total cost of these 6 puppets amounts to around $60. $10 per puppet is ridiculous. Here is what the internal structure of the cookie looked liked before I sewed everything on.

Jim Henson would slap me in the face at this point. I love you - eek!

Moving on. When I was back in CT i stopped into A.C. Moore’s craft store and bought 6 sets of doll joints. Doll joints allowed me to attached the eyes to the puppet and still let them rotate. This is completely unnecessary for this project, but I thought it would be a cool feature to add for future ventures because the eyes of the puppets can be more easily removed and can also be rotated to express different emotions. See below:

Happy puppet-

Angry puppet -

Crazy Puppet -

I also watched some great tutorials online about creating movable eye-lids on a puppet. This is one of my goals for a non-SketchFest puppet.

The day before SketchFest I put the chocolate chips on this bad-boy and here is the final result:

Isn’t he gorgeous?

Wonka.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:16:33 -0600

Hershey Bar was probably the least exciting puppet of the 6 during the creation process. Coming off the high of creating two beautiful and vibrant puppets, a dark square puppet wasn’t exactly the best next choice. No challenge. Unfortunately, I was still fighting an internal debate over which puppets I wanted to make afterwards, so it was the only option I was sure of. If it didn’t have the aluminum foil to give it flair I probably would have scrapped the whole idea.

Here is the dude before I added the chocolate portion that sticks out of it.

Two days before SketchFest I made the actual chocolate portion of it by painting some foam board that I glued together. Originally I wanted the foil on the top portion to flair out as if it was in the process of being eaten, but it looked too sloppy and would have been destroyed when we tried to transport it. Ended up not looking too bad though. Kinda cute if you give him a chance.

Many thanks to Stasia for letting me use her paint. Also thanks to the Hershey company for creating the universal image for a chocolate bar.

Meow Meow. Willy Wonka. Meow Meow.

Ninja Turtles

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:25:20 -0600

While JT and Kogler finished up the fries to go in fry-box, I started working on the pizza slice puppet. Once again, I love them for their hard work.

I made the pizza frame out of cardboard boxes that I stole from work (thanks, Federal Mogul!). It was pretty simple, just a big, fat triangle. Here is the fabric, halfway through the sewing process when I decided to call it a night.

Once again, I got the fabric from Joanne’s, they had some 50% off deals going on so I didn’t hold back. I’m slowly getting better at stitching and it felt cool to show JT and Kogler the best way to do it.

One goal of mine for the SketchFest puppets was to make them all uniform. I wanted people to see the puppets and know that they were part of a big set and not 6 random puppets we happened to have. The most important part of that was to make the eyes and mouths look the same on all of the puppets. I used a standard size/shape for the mouths on all of the puppets and the same type of eyes. Worked out pretty well. Here is my roommate, Stasia, showing off the pizza puppet before it was given crust and pepperoni.

It looks like a block of cheese, I’m not upset about that. Stasia is going to kill me for posting this picture. I started working on the Hershey Bar puppet and had Stasia finish this guy up by creating the crust and the pepperoni. She did an amazing job, here is what it ended up looking like.