Well, if you'd been following along in my other thread, you'd seen that I've had a lot of my content plagiarised by a certain website. Actually, I discovered a couple more... But anyway, it's gotten me thinking about the kind of stuff I've been adding to my School of Puppetry website.

The tendency to get sucked into putting up tutorials and stuff for kids/teachers/parents is very strong, and that's not what I wanted to do with the site. I want to add more info for people who are interested in or are currently, making and using puppets on a professional basis.

So what would you guys be interested in? I know patterns and tutorials are still handy, but one thing that comes to mind is that not a lot of discussion is available about 'theory'. The 'why' do we do things, and I thought that would be a good topic.

Another thought would be to have some sort of podcast with interviews with various puppeteers on different topics. Something I'd love to do is interview someone who does caricature puppets, and find out how they create a puppet from a photo of a real person.

Keep in mind, I'd like to ensure that there's some sort of money-making aspect to this. Sales of patterns have considerably dropped for me over the past year, and I need to figure out some way of keeping the webhost bills paid. (I did consider maybe that 'pros' could pay for an annual subscription, to which all patterns/tutorials can be obtained 'free' with a code. So you'd end up paying a heavily discounted price for access to everything, compared to now which is paying per download per pattern... but that's another discussion for another time)

... Any other thoughts? What kind of stuff are other puppeteers interested in that's less beginner-ish?

Since I am no pro but I am in contact to people who make movies, at least there is a tip to cut down plagitarism (maybe). Do they use your original footage? How about watermarking your material with your logo? As far as I know it is not too easy to get rid of a watermark, but it is not too hard to put one in with an overlay effect and transparency on top of that. And your logo is cool, so it should look pretty charming- on your page...

My plagiarism - as far as I have investigated, which isn't much - is solely to do with text. You can't watermark text.

As for videos, yes, all of it is original and mine, except for music which is taken from a website which gives it away for free with attribution. (I give attribution) I insert my logo on videos and images, as well as a watermark on images which is the URL for the website. For videos, there is always a "copyright by..." at the end.

However, for text, it's much harder because you can't prevent people from viewing and copying it. I do have a copyright notice on all of my downloads/website pages, but obviously people can simply ignore this and think it's ok.

At any rate, the text itself is what I've seen being copied and that's being dealt with. I haven't even begun looking into whether or not my videos have been stolen.

Just thought of something to add to the possible list: how to make patterns.

I know most people struggle with how to make their own pattern from scratch, and that's definitely something more for the intermediate/pro puppeteer.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Just thought of something to add to the possible list: how to make patterns.

I know most people struggle with how to make their own pattern from scratch, and that's definitely something more for the intermediate/pro puppeteer.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

That is actually what I was going to request. :D Getting the right shape and sizing it right.

Na,
I was thinking the other day that it might be nice to do a post on "Basic Skill Sets". In other words what types of classes or workshops that could be taken that people may not even realize are part of puppet making. I was trying to think back to when I was a young pup and the classes I had in school that where not particularly puppet related but did in the long run give me a good foundation that allowed me to make puppets. 

I have no idea if schools offer it now but when I was young there was what was called "Home Economics". At the time it was seen as a "girls" class but it really did teach fundamentals that I think are helpful in puppet making. Sewing is obvious but you also learned how to cook and cooking takes following a recipe. Think of all the recipes that a puppet maker has to follow, in fact a pattern is much like a recipe.

I had some pretty decent schools that I went to when I was young. They offered wood class (a guys class) which is a skill set needed often in puppetry even if you are not going to carve out of wood.

They also had art and craft classes.  One craft class was jewelry making. Learned the concepts of mold making  along with how to form metal. Learned concepts in art class about proportions of the human face and body. Granted I can't always remember the calculations for that but I know about them and how to get to them when I need them.

Speech and debate goes a long way to prepare you to be on a stage. I was lucky in high school that we actually had a drama department those subjects where expanded on even more but I think even those that don't often still have classes in at least debate or have a debate team that meets after school.

Music. Every school I know of has some time of music program even if it is just band so they can play at football games.

I don't know if there is really something there for you to use but like I said the idea was on my mind the other day and your request seems to kind of fit right in to it. Part of being a Professional means you need to have training and experience right? 

I particular like Na's style of writing. She has such a way with words and would like to learn the basics in how to write a script, content of a web page, things that would be of interest to others. Again I feel Na's frustrations of folks copying content from her web and not giving her credit.

I definitely think discussing patterning and translating drawings into three dimension shapes would be something useful for growing puppeteers But, in all, I think any techniques, which may seem simple to you, can always be of great use to others. Sometimes it's the little things that get us excited because we never thought of that!

Thanks guys. All these suggestions are really helpful.

I am currently 'on holiday' from working on the site during September, but when I get back to it I will be adding an 'advanced guide to puppetry' (I already have a beginners' guide which leads to definitions, basic design concepts, etc etc).

One of the things I will do is try to cover pattern making on a range of different types of puppets. I haven't seen anything at all on pattern making for shadow puppetry, and I'm sure many people would be interested in pattern making for other things too. It won't be available for free, since this will take a lot of work to make; but it will be reasonably priced.

If you continue to have any ideas or questions you'd like covered, please add it here and I'll put it on my list of things to do in the future.

Na,
I was thinking the other day that it might be nice to do a post on "Basic Skill Sets". In other words what types of classes or workshops that could be taken that people may not even realize are part of puppet making. I was trying to think back to when I was a young pup and the classes I had in school that where not particularly puppet related but did in the long run give me a good foundation that allowed me to make puppets. 

That dsounds like a good idea. But I think that would be more of a 'free article' for beginners/intermediates than for pros. Mainly because as a beginner you don't know what skills might be necessary for puppet making.

I have no idea if schools offer it now but when I was young there was what was called "Home Economics". At the time it was seen as a "girls" class but it really did teach fundamentals that I think are helpful in puppet making. Sewing is obvious but you also learned how to cook and cooking takes following a recipe. Think of all the recipes that a puppet maker has to follow, in fact a pattern is much like a recipe.

I did do home ec. at school, but it focused mainly on cooking and a few "social skills" classes, like learning how much a standard glass of wine is (sounds weird, but it's a way to combat underage drinking/getting drunk) and so on. Sewing skills was left to an optional "fashion" class you could take in later years of high school.

I was fairly lucky in that we had a lot of arts options at the school. I had semesters of woodworking, glass making (more fun that I thought it was going to be and not about glass 'blowing' but stained glass design), photography, fashion, fine arts (painting and drawing), sculpture... and theatre. The only thing I don't get to use now is my glass making skills. I still have the notes from the classes though.

Keep in mind I was at a private all-girls school, so none of it was considered "for the girls" or "for the guys".  And the above doesn't include music, which I never really had an interest in, but did a few semesters of as well.

Part of being a Professional means you need to have training and experience right? 

Oh, totally. But right now I'm trying to look at ways I can increase the profitability of the site and I thought that pay-per-download booklets on topics for professionals might do that for me. Sales of patterns has been slow, and as I said above the more I look on the net at what's available, the more frustrated I get that it's all aimed at making things for kids. I've gotten distracted by it myself, because the people who are paying are mostly teachers/parents and so it's easy to get sucked in that way. But my real aim is to discuss things for professional performers/builders.