Thanks for the welcome everyone! Thanks also for checking out the videos... The Mountain Dew ones were done REALLY quick! The short 12second ones were shot and edited in less than an hour each (usually on my own or with my daughter providing the puppets right hand!).

The longer video was shot over 2 nights and edited/dubbed the following 2 evenings (in an Iowa hotel room), after I was shipped on location for a film shot. About 90% of the video was re-dubbed because of varying character voices and crickets all over the original sound (hazzard of a night shoot in a garage)! I also knew I'd be speeding up the footage and applying various FX, which would require I re-dub quite a bit. Qiote a bit of work to be doing all on my own... (building 2 extra puppets, operating all of them, running camera, editing, dubbing, sound mix... Basically the whole deal on my own, in 4 evenings, while working!). I like that challenge, but a few extra days would have been nice!

Bottom line, it was a lot of work. The puppetry suffers a little from working blind (no monitors and just lining up shots, starting the camera and going for it!) and having to do so much fixing in post. Still, I think they're fun (and certainly watchable) videos! Enough so that I wanted to put them online and share... So, enjoy and don't let anything stop you from getting your own stuff out there!

The best way to learn the stuff is by trying different things and learning from your mistakes (and successes!)... Believe me, I've had a some videos that seemed like they just wouldn't work, until I went in and did quite a bit of tweaking! It's really amazing what a little bit of editing can do...

Mike

Welcome to the site. - insert random and witty thing here -

Hi MikeFX, as like many, animatronics fascinate me and I do hope to be able to build some in the future. So your expertise will be of much help to alot here, including myself, who are interrested in that field of puppetry. So a HUGE welcome the our growing puppetry family. Oh, and dont think that you are a freak, no, its the none-puppetry one's that are not normal

Welcome to this great site.....sounds like you have a diverse background in many fx departments....hope you learn and we learn from you.....Welcome!   

Daryl H