Hello.  My name is Asa, and I live in the frozen wastes of Winnipeg.  I have been building puppets since I was ten years old, but seriously for the last five years only.  I have attended classes in Toronto, at the Banff Centre, and also in Prague.  I'm most interested in marionettes, though I've also done shows with rod puppets and shadow puppets.  I've produced two shows for the Winnipeg Fringe, and they did pretty well, though I still ended up losing a lot of money on them.  Foam rubber isn't cheap!  I'll post some pictures soon, but you can see some OK stuff of mine on my youtube channel.  Just search for Asa Nodelman.  Anyone here do any crazy trick-stringing?  I love that stuff.  I once had a math teacher who said that he hated Euler because of his many young accomplishments, and I feel a similar hatred for Joseph Cashore!

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff. I can not wait to see pictures of your work. Make your self at home her at P&S.

Billy D.

Great pictures you uploaded in the Gallery!  I am interested in how your joints work on the marionette, I don't know that I have ever seen that.

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff!

I invent all my own joints!  They are mostly string connections.

Very clever!  I want to try and do this!  I might have some questions on how to wrap the cord around the pegs but I'll experiment first before asking more question. It looks like it would be a pretty tight joint with very little "wobble".

Anyone here do any crazy trick-stringing?

What exactlyn is trick-stringing?
Welcome to PnS by the way!

Trick stringing is when you want your marionette to do something beyond basic movements, so you add some strings to allow for a specialized movement.  For example, you want your puppet to put on a mask, or eat food, or whatever can't be accomplished with standard strings.  Trick stringing is good for impressive effects, but tends to get in the way of other actions.  Still, if it is the mechanical side of puppetry that interests you then you might want to pour many hours of thought and experimentation into making some new and clever machine, like me!

Here's one of my favourite trick puppets.  No magnets used!

Should,
This is a good start for learning about trick marionettes. http://puppetnet.com/trick_marionettes It is an old book but gives the basics.  I really need to move that to PandS and finish uploading the rest of the pages.