Hi
we are planning to use soft toys in a project.
The issue is we have no clue how we are going to animate them...these soft toys need to walk, talk,e there  jump and do a lot of action stuff..we need advices as to how to attack this situation.
Are there any specialized rigs to do this? Is it possible with puppeteering?
Ideas/suggestions are most welcome

regards

sandy

Hello Sandy, did you say you are using stuffed toys?? you mean as they are or are you modifying them to be made into a sort of simple puppet?? if you are simply using the toys to sort of do puppetry, then that is fine, puppetry is manipulating something to give it life, you can create a charector through anything, even a potted plant can be brought to life if you manipulate it properly!!
and the answer is YES, i think you could easily use these stuffed toys to do what you need to do, you just have to play around with them and hold them in different ways to see what works and what you can do to create the appearance of life, i have been doing these sort of things my entire life. take for example, if you hold a teddy bear with your thumb and first finger sort of pinching the neck,you can get it to turn its head and jiggle a little as if it was talking, and with your middle finger under one of its arms, you can make it wave, but if you simply change your grip so that the thumb and middle finger is pinching the neck, you can get the teddy to do other things, you can get him to nod, sneeze, fall asleep, look up into the sky thoughtfully, etc..... there are many different ways you can manipulate a stuffed toy to give it life, the main position i use(d) with stuffed toys, was the middle finger and thumb pinching the neck, with the first finger at the back of the neck pushing and pulling, so that you can get the toy to look in almost any direction, with the other fingers manipulating the arms, or simply holding the toy up!!

if the toy has clothes, then your hands will pretty much be hidden, but if not, then you may have to think whether you want your hand to be seen or not, however its really not that complicated, the puppeteer is generally seen and in the case of Avenue Q, the puppeteers are always seen controlling the puppet. but saying all of this, one of the main things that makes a puppet a puppet, is that the hand is INSIDE or ABOVE controlling the actions, whereas with a stuffed toy, your hand is on the outside doing the same, you could even temporarily attatch some arm controll rods so manipulate both the arms!!

anyway, maybe im overloading you, but i think that you can do whatever you want with a little experimantation, just pick up the stuffed toys and see what you can come up with!!

hope this helps,  feel free to ask anything you want if you need any more help.

Ben.

There are several folks on the forum here who have modified stuffed toys into hand puppets or even marionettes. In fact one of our members just posted about making a marionette out of a stuffed toy. http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php/topic,6605.0.html

Making a stuffed toy into a hand puppet is not very hard either most the time and involved simply removing some of the stuffing from inside and then creating a way to access the inside of the head of the puppet. Many stuffed animal mouths are made just like a hand in mouth puppets mouth so it is just a matter of getting your hand in there to manipulate it.

I agree with what the others have said, but also you can attach rods to the toys. This is sort of a 'bunraku' style or table-top puppet. I've done it before a couple of times, you can rip the fabric or unpick a seam, use some heavy-duty contact cement and insert a piece of thick wire (ie. coathanger thickness or similar) into the area. Leave to dry.

It also helps if any rods have a handle, and you can easily do that with a large wooden bead glued to the end of the wire. It just makes it more comfortable and easier to grip.

Works particularly well if you don't want hands visible all over the toys, because you can also paint the rods black and then have black gloves - or at least the appearance of distance between the puppet and the puppeteer.

I do recommend reading more about table-top puppetry as that's probably the best method that fits with what you're interested in doing.

wow....thanks a lot for the replies guys..much appreciated.
We want to use soft toys without showing hands or any other source used to animate them. Thats the biggest challange i guess.
We thought there should be a way in puppetry where we can use it for motion but hand or the rig are not seen..We will look into table top puppets more...
The action is happening on a miniature set..its like small toon town in a jungle..something like http://www.noddy.com/


sandy

There are many ways. Blacklight for instance (using UV light), although that means your toys will need to be fluorescent (neon coloured). You can use a light curtain if you have the equipment:
http://www.schoolofpuppetry.com.au/tutorials.php/what-is-a-light-curtain
http://www.schoolofpuppetry.com.au/tutorials.php/how-to-use-a-light-curtain-with-puppets

But really the simplest thing to do is to have rods and gloves as described above. The puppeteers will still be visible, but very barely and most audiences won't notice the performers after a while. (Avenue Q does this well)

Are you performing on stage, or is it for film? There are limitations to performing onstage, but film has more options.

this is for a tv show..something like http://www.noddy.com/ but with stuffed toys and no computer graphics..

Ah, ok. In which case the best thing to do is use a green screen... only you're not using graphics? Does that mean you can't use a green screen either? (Or do you mean you're not using graphics for the characters themselves?)

I think that Noddy is animation.  Perhaps you are looking for a technique called Stop Animation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion 

THe characters are stuffed toys not computer generated..infact nothing is computer generated..its a physical set...and we want to make our stuffed toys to do the action there..with puppetry or any other medium where we dont see hands or control objects. Hope i'm able to coney it right.

sandy