Whatnot should I get?

Oh! Oh! Check out FAO.com! You can order a Muppet Whatnot made to your liking. For me, that's the tough part because this is something I definitely want to support. First I was lead to the eyes that look like Kermit's, the karate gi, and the ostrich feather hair:

But then I thought I'd try the real hair...and I wanted it to look a bit more female. Also I thought the orange one would seem more human. But I couldn't give up the feathers--they move so well! Luckily they had a costume with those:

But she didn't end up how I'd like. So I changed the hair and went back to blue. Also, I went with the wide eyes and the standard hoodie:

Now, she's rather cute but a bit boring...so I thought I'd try the curly hair and a more interesting shirt:

That's awful cute, isn't it? Yep...I think I like her. But then I thought...maybe I need two:

Isn't he handsome?

No Boring Parts for Students

I’ve been working on materials for my Radcon 2009 Workshop.
Three hours is not a lot of time, so I don’t want to waste it doing things that a person can handle on their own…like covering balloons with Papier-Mâché. This is something I think that everyone probably has done some time or other…probably in elementary school.
It’s something I do for the basic puppet head; however I build and construct so much off of it that most of it will not be seen in the finished head. It needs to be dry and strong though…a nice firm surface to work with.

Besides…to do six balloons it takes me a whole movie. At least 2 hours with the help of a hairdryer, of course. Plus I know what I’m doing and work pretty fast. I’ll only have three hours total at RadCon.
BTW, can't ask for a better assistant than Domo:

Puppet Guild Website Updated

I've been helping out with the Greenwood Faire website and the webmaster there found an excellent feed reader widget that I had to add to the PofPS guild website!

Tell me what you think:
http://www.geocities.com/pofps/

I got the code here:
http://www.springwidgets.com

What I’m doing for RadCon 2009

So last year I was on a kimono panel where I found myself dressing (kitsuke) some of my friends in kimonos much to the amusement of their boyfriends. The other folks on the “panel” were Japanese clothes collectors and though they had nice collections they deferred to me for kimono kitsuke. That’s okay, because I love doing demos. I must’ve done too bad a job either for they asked me back this year. I said yes at which point the ask-er turned me over to the program chair…who happens to be in Greenwood with me…who knows I do puppets. Well one brainstorm lead to another and now I’m giving a workshop on Papier-mâché and its uses for costuming…masks, anime props, Girl Genius Clanks etc.
This is overwhelming if you think about it…sure I do lots of papier-mâché puppets and I’ve done the occasional mask or head piece. The process is the same in all…but how does one teach in 3 hours something that will demonstrate the possibilities without over tasking the students with deciding what they want to make. The answer I’ve come to is: you can’t. If you are going to teach the process, it works the same in all subjects, the first thing that happens after presentation is a highly structured practice. Once a student has practiced it a few times…then they are ready to move into production. I don’t have time to get them that far. So they must make some prop that has some element of mask to it and some element of anime prop as well as something I’m not to bad at myself.
You keeping up so far?
Okay, so I bounced a few ideas off my favorite victim for such an assault (Frank) and we came up with a practice subject that I think just might fill the bill…a head on a stick. Huh? What do I mean? Think jester stick. Think about all those walking stick props you see with snake heads or skulls. Think Card Captor Sakura and her moon-topped staff. Think Inu Yasha and Jaken’s staff. Think a king’s scepter. Think José Jalapeño on a stick. Plus you get to make a smaller version of what could be a mask. Also…it’s a puppet, is it not? Sí, señora!
Now…what do you think of that plan?

Well…We Partied!

I was mentioning to one of my non-puppeteer friends that I needed to post the pictures from the After-Christmas Christmas party and she told she was pleased to hear the party has come and gone because now I’ll update my blog! My blog…which is only about puppets…has followers that are not puppeteers. This comes as a bit of a surprise to me. I’ve oft been told by my dear mother that my blog was uninteresting to her and that I need to have another blog in which I journal the story of my life. See Mom, other non-puppeteers don’t mind that I blog just about puppets!
At the party, the subject of my blog came up, and to my delight Rob D’Arc announced that he liked my blog. However, when I stated that I had not posted in a while, he assured me that my *not* posting was one of the things he liked. Once you read my blog, you’ve read it and now it’s over. Not sure how to take that one…
Speaking of the party…which I meant to do this blog post…I got a book about finger puppets! There was actually a bit of a theme towards finger puppets for the whole event. Both my sister and Becket got actual finger puppets. The puppet that Becket made was finger puppet sized and I think the item that Mylinda got was on the smaller size as well. It looked like a toy theatre story. I made a glove puppet…a Christmas Punch! See:

The food hit of the potluck was Joan King’s fabulous baked beans. I took deviled eggs myself…which is usually a liked dish. It’s the first thing I ever learned how to make as a kid. Mom once told me I used to make a real mess of it too. She’d find little shells every where.

Rob told the best humor story of the evening…he regaled us with the adventure that was performing his “Flea Circus” show in Galveston this last December 2008. FEMA, being the snappy organization they seem to always be lately, had not yet recovered Galveston from the hurricane. But the show must go on! Kudos to Rob for donating his performance fees back to the town. “What was the story,” you ask? Alas, I cannot do it justice. You’d best ask him to tell you. But make sure he doesn’t leave out the part about the Texas Suite.