I am thinking of making some seabird puppets that glow in the blacklight for a song my team will be performing in October. I thought about making a group of them to sit on the ship mast.  Is that the right word? Anyway, I was thinking about rod puppets so that one person could pull the rod and they would all sing together, but I really don't know how to do that.  I'm not very "engineer" minded.  Any ideas or suggestions?  I could really use some brainstorming help. Also, I have no budget so I try to make things out of inexpensive items or things I already have.

How about having them sit in the crows nest on top of the mast? That would help to hide some of the mechanics. Rod puppets would be best for this. Steve

I agree with Steve, a basic cable control mechanism (ie. an elastic hinge on the mouths of the birds, with a string or cable attached strategically on the jaw that could be pulled down by the puppeteer) would work well. You'd just have to figure out how to get all of the mouths to work at the same time, meaning they'd somehow have to connect to the cable at the same point. You could run the cable down the length of the mast, and at the bottom have the puppeteer hold the mast and pull the cable.

You could make it fairly cheaply; I did a cable-control foam puppet of a fish once. Just some block foam, a piece of dowel for the rod, an elastic, and some fishing line for the 'cable'. Oh, and some glue

Here's a link to a rod mechanism shown by Practicecactus over at Puppet Hub. Looks like a bit of work to build but the results seem pretty effective. Best of luck! http://www.puppethub.com/profiles/blogs/bird-rod-puppet-update

Angel - are you a member of the yahoo group, Christpup?  Steve Axtel started it, and I think there are pictures of puppets using the mechanics you describe.  If the pics are not there, ask, as I am sure that is where I saw them.

There was a class on making this type of puppet several years ago at I-fest.  Not sure if it is one they made a video of, but might be worth checking.

Na's reply is the same as I used when I built a choir wall of nine puppet heads that sang in unison.

Just drop a black fishing line from each bird mouth to a level below audience eyesight. I then tied each line to a small circular ring. A dowel was slipped through all the rings. When you pull down on the rod, all the mouths open at the same time. You can also reach the strings just above the rod and pull on those to be able to have individual birds sing.

Used this same technique on a five girl choir. One puppeteer handled all of them and could have any combo singing, from one to five.
      Cruppetman

You all make it sound easy!  I hope I can figure it out.

@MsPUppet, I don't know about that yahoo group.  Could you send that link?

@Cruppetman, your instructions sound simple.  I will try it.

How much do you gulls have to move? Just the beak (may be just a counterweight mechanism with a string could do the trick?) Or do you want some of them flying, too? Then Maybe you could use something similar to this one: http://www.holzspielwaren-rieck.de/images/product_images/thumbnail_images/550_0.jpg

Rikka;

I'm not sure how much movement I want yet.  I know they have to sing.  I'd like for them to move a little too, but don't know if I can pull it off.  I saved that pic.  It gives me ideas.

Angel,
How many birds? How many puppeteers? Will it only be seen in black light so it doesn't matter if dowel rods are hanging down from the birds?

If you have more than one puppeteer, you can have one who only works the mouth movement and another one or two giving slight movement to the birds. If their main function is singing, you only need a slight movement of the head or whole body to give the impression of life.

Cruppetman

Cruppetman,
Those are some questions I haven't answered yet.  It will be blacklight so the rods etc will be blacked out and won't matter.  I haven't decided how many puppeteers, which is one reason I thought of having multiple puppets on one controller so I can have other puppeteers do other things.  We have a team of 12-15 but they all need to be in different places at once! LOL It's hard to figure out all the things I want to do!

Hard to explain things without drawings, but I'll try. Make an odd number of birds (3, 5 or 7). Each one should have a dowel rod, painted black, that has the body connected to the top. On your mast cross bar (where the sail would hang from) attach a short piece of PVC pipe where you want the birds to be. Drop the bird dowel down thru this pipe. Make sure you've put some kind of band near the bird's body so the dowel stops before the body hits the top of the PVC ring. This will allow your puppeteer to turn the rod making the bird move, side to side.

If you use the method I previously posted about the fishing line attached to the rod to make all the mouths move in unison, one puppeteer should be able to open the mouths with one hand while turning the body rods of various birds with the other, or have one puppeteer handle the mouths and another give some movement to the birds.

I know it might sound confusing, but you should be able to figure it out. If you're totally lost, email me.

Cruppetman

I think I understand.  Not sure if I can actually do that yet.  It really depends on how the ship is made.  One step at a time.

Okay, I want to revisit this topic.  I have not made these yet and had so many ideas swimming around in my mind I couldn't cement just one and so had almost given up.  My son and I talked about several different ways to do this, and there are so many!  But I settled on what I think will work for me given my materials, time and abilities. (Meaning, I already have the stuff and not much time to do it! LOL)

I will make 3 birds facing frontward, using the Finding Nemo seabirds  http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f48/Hel380/mine.jpg  for inspiration. I will make them with foam core backing for stability, polyfoam over the front, covered with white fabric and some white feathers for added layer/texture.  The feet will be mounted on the ship mast, or rope or wherever we decide to put them.  One puppeteer will work the beak of the middle bird and the other two beaks will be connected with a small black dowel, not sure exactly what I will use, but something light and stiff. So when the puppeteer sings and sways the middle bird they will all sing and sway.

Does this make sense?  Do you think it will work?

Check out my gallery (cruppetman) to see how I connected the mouths of all the heads on my choir wall.

Not sure if you will get any swaying movement with the description you gave. Not flexable enough. Try attaching a pvc pipe to the back of the bird. Drop this pipe through an opening in the ship mast so you can turn the bird easily. Connect these with some type of dowel rod or another pvc pipe so when you turn the center bird the others will also turn.

With this setup and the beaks connected, one puppeteer can control all three mouths and swaying motions.

It's hard to try to explain this in a message. Hope this didn't totally confuse you.

cruppetman