Now ye're talking - to a puppeteer

hullaballoo wrote: »

Have you ever worked with Lambert's? What was it like?

Haven't had the pleasure unfortunately.

Some day though, perhaps soon .... at a festival in Dun Laoghaire ...

Tommy Richard Fingers wrote: »

Hi Ray,
What techniques you use to give unique personality to your puppets? (Do you ever say switch arms for a particular puppet to give it totally different movement profile?)
Thanks
TDF

Woah that's a brilliant question there, Tommy!!

I guess what I do is I spent a good bit of time 'walking through' my characters. This tends to give you keys or 'ways in' to the physicality. Walking through will teach you funny things like physical or verbal ticks; like ear scratches or exclamations or they way they might lean or drum their fingers.

Once you have a few of these, hopefully the rest will fall into place.

But the most important thing is to just spend time with it on the end of your arm. in the mirror or in the monitor.

I should get all cosmic now and say, Let the puppet teach YOU how to use it, maaaaaaan!

Thanks, great question!