Happy Halloween!

I'm interrupting the summer recap posts to wish everyone a happy and festive Halloween!

These are our jack-o-lanterns for this year. We were joined last weekend by our very good friend, Bill. Anyone who knows Bill would agree that he's pretty awesome. I could go on and write a huge post about the great friend he's been but I know he wouldn't really like me to do that so I'll just sum it up with the words: roll-on turf. Needless to say we were pretty happy to have him for the weekend.

We had a great weekend of frisbee golf, cider mills, waffles, donuts, a corn maze, a ham steak, movies and nature walks (sorry no pictures... having too much fun). This has become a mostly-annual tradition starting in Connecticut that I look forward to keeping! My only complaint is that the weekend was too short. Thanks Bill!

...Before the Break... Part 1 the Viking Puppets

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The next few posts will briefly update the happenings of the past several months. To do so I'll start with a pair of puppets that were commissioned, designed, built, and finally sent.

The client needed two viking muppet-style puppets a man and his daughter. These were the designs agreed upon:

Now both puppets had mechanisms inside their heads which adds to size, weight, and complexity. Each puppet has a thermoplastic 'skull' of sorts to support the rigging of the mechanisms.

The daughter had blinking eyes. Isn't she a lovely! If anyone sees a muppet-style puppet lady who is actually "really pretty" please let me know, I would love to see it! I think "pretty" and the across the face mouth are at odds with each other. I figure it is to be embraced.

The Fella had a horn on his helmet that needed to be able to slump forward and back up when needed (to be used as a fib detector, akin to Pinocchio's nose, which I thought was a cute idea of the client).

He also needed eyebrows that went up and down. As you see, apparently the mechanism controls my eyebrows as well. I always knew I made faces while puppeteering, it's still surprising to catch a photo of it in action... especially since in this photo I'm not even performing, we're just posing for pictures. sheesh!

He was a fun puppet to build and movable eyebrows are the most worth while bang for your buck mechanism if a mechanism must be had. ... just so you know... cuz.... well... it's good to know.