Hello there! This is my first post here 

Well, my nickname is Alucine, I'm from Argentina, I'm 26 and I've always been strangely attracted to the art of puppeteering, but never did anything about it.. I have done some stop motion very short films, and always have loved the technique, but I'm thinking now that maybe puppetry's immediate feedback, the art to express yourself in "real time" through an object, may be more suitable for me, and I decided to give it a try

So for a few days I've been reading some info about a variety of themes related to puppetry, but I'm narrowing my search now to look for the materials and design for my puppet, which is inspired by the work of, from my perspective, the best puppeteer I've found, who's emotive plays have almost made me shade some tears. This is Bruce Schwartz, who I've known through "The Double Life of Veronique" (Krzysztof Kieslowski) where he performs a very short and beautiful puppet act. There's almost no info about him on google, except for a great interview with John Henson in 5 parts, here I leave you part 4, with my favourite play on it (after he talks). Yo can see the other parts of the interview on google:

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https://youtu.be/A9x5SS5uROY



Ok, so, I want to build that type of rod puppet, I've just fallen in love with it I'm thinking on doing it with cold porcelain or paper mache, adding a string (cotton string?) in between the 3 arm parts (upperarm, lower arm and hand; sorry, I don't know the exact words in English :P) and I'm figuring out how to do the head joint in order to make it flexible, to be able to move it with my hand, as you see on the video. I though of doing a hole on the bottom of the head, adding a piece of foam there and insert a stick on there with some glue (the neck..) so, I think that way the stick will keep the head attached to the body and the foam will allow for the head to move easily. Well, I don't know if it'll work, but I can't find a tutorial or any tips on internet on how to do this. If you have some source for this information, it will be highly appreciated :D. I just wanted to keep it simple (if possible). Also if you have any book to recommend.

Meanwhile, I leave you some of the info I've found useful on rod puppet consruction and other things:

Basic way to build a rod puppet:
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwsfa/library_howto_rodpuppets.htm

"Paper mache rediscovered", a great article about the technique, by Ronnie Burkett, an important Canadian puppeteer (with recipes):
http://home.eol.ca/~props/papier.html

Some pictures of a head control on a rod puppet:
http://www.hobeyford.com/album/ichabod-crane-universal-head-control-rod-puppet

Control Mechanisms for Rod and Shadow Puppets, By Hobey Ford:
http://www.hobeyford.com/files/workkshopfile.pdf

This is a Russian article, but the images are explanatory, and you can use google translate :P
http://rifmovnik.ru/lib/1/book1_2.htm



Well, thanks to all and I'll keep you posted on my work if things go well :D

Alucine.

Welcome Alucine! As is happens to be I am just experimenting with a Bruce Schwartz type of puppet myself. (First I wanted to go in the direction of Richard Teschner http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3635345497947695973 )but since I do not have associates helping... I do not have pics or a video yet (I hope to get one done over the weekend, but I am a VERY slow worker and VERY behind my personal schedule!), but the puppet came from the oven recently. I put a lot of thinking and experimenting into it, too and I arrived at the BJD. Of course, ball jointed dolls are no puppets, ordinarily- but I just put hooks into the hands to place the arm rods and I really do think it might work out. This is an english tutorial on BJDs: http://www2d.biglobe.ne.jp/~dhnoah/make_00.htm
My mistakes up to now are that the sockets of the hip and knee joints are not deep enough, I have an idea how to fix the knee, but that will have to wait until the next puppet.
Oh, material. I had some problems with an airdrying material- at least concerning the details and for me it is hard to let something dry for several days. It might be that curiousity kills the cat but my cat kills my puppets first! I never used papermache- I guess Shawn would be the person to tell you all about it. I use a polymer clay (over here the brand is FIMO, of course, since it's German. Maybe you have a more easy time to find sculpey- if I did write that correctly). FIMO Puppen keeps details pretty good and I harden it in the oven at 130°C (266°F if the calculator was correct) within half an hour. I use the inner roll of a toilet paper roll and tin foil for stability. And make sure you get the stabilizing stuff out! You'll need the puppet to be hollow to put the stings in. I have brass hooks in the wrists (connecting hand and arm) and the ankle (connecting foot and leg) and within the head (next time I'll have to try to get it into the neck, somehow. I don't feel too hot about opening the head anytime the puppet needs to be restrung!) for the elastics.

Rikka is correct about ball joints. That is what allows the head to move the way you see it in the videos.  Not sure of the control though that he is using down below. This is a link to a video of an interview with Hansjürgen Fettig. Sorry I can't embed this one. ; Gary did an article on this puppeteer over at his site. http://africanpuppet.blogspot.com/2008/05/german-puppet-master-celebrated.html I doubt you are going to be able to find his book anymore since it is out of print unless you are lucky enough to find it in a library.

Here is a series of videos I did on creating a ball joint for a head.

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The videos do not show how I created the heads themselves but once I had the ball joint embedded into the stryofoam base that I then covered in papermache', I sculpted the features on top of that out of Creative Paper Clay.

YES, that was what I ment!

Hi Rikka and Shawn,thanks for the answers!! A lot of interesting material!

Rikka: I had read about Richard Teschner but couldn't find a video on youtube, those puppets are beautiful. And I'll have a deeper look into ball joint dolls, which I hadn't done yet, thanks for the tutorial.

Shawn: wow I think I'll try your joint method before experimenting with the one I came up with (that has absolutely no technical bases at all hahah), it is simple and works so well!! By the way, what a beautiful head designs you make! Incredible! I loved the big cheek woman :P
Also thanks for the info on Hansjürgen Fettig, I didn't know this interesting man. I found one of his books on this site: http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=zk159h8zUN,8aCMQqlSPAn4amns_4916057645_1:108:793&bq=author%3Dhansjurgen%2520fettig%26title%3Dhand%2520and%2520rod%2520puppets%2520a%2520handbook%2520of%2520technique I don't quite understand, but I think those are used copys on sell... but it's too expensive for me, and anyway I'm just starting and want to do something simple for now.

Also I found this video on a demostration of rod puppets of John Blundall. Great puppeteer.

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https://youtu.be/-EFkhhyEjxM

Thanks a lot! I'll surely come back with new questions and info

Alucine

You're welcome. Yes, the Fettig book is way out of budget in English, but since he is German I did get a cheap copy (not that this will help you, unless you understand German?)- German's don't seem to get into dolls and puppets: I consider that a shame. Sadly the pictures are of a VERY poor quality (the book is from the 1970's- it's been out of print for quite a while), I am still working on a way to illustrate the "Faulenzer" (I've not forgotten! I guess I will just have to build a model and take pictures. I just have to get all of the mechanics in my head straight. I think it is so hard to work without good pictures, I am hopelessly visual).

Hi Rikka

What's a "Faulenzer"?

I read somewhere, maybe on this forum, that someone said that in the UK, I think, it was allowed by law to photocopy 5% of a book for study purposes. Maybe you could ask someone with a better copy to send you some of the pages you need... just an idea :L 

Hi Alucine, I don't think that there is a better copy than the published book- only maybe Mr. Fettigs original photographs. Sadly, I do not know him personally (he lives in France, too), so that would be kinda hard. I did try several times to get a decent copy, but it was no good. You get a pixeled mix of white and black (which is more or less the thing to begin with, it is very hard to accertain from some of the pics what he meant, others -the drawings- are a bit better). I don't have the ability to use a program to make better copys (I would not even know what program to use!) and even though my husband is a bit better on that, he could not get something out, eigther. Maybe my sis, who would be the only one I know who could do it better than Stephan, but she and I don't live in the same town. I should ask her next time I see her. We don't meet in person all that often. Well, yeah, the Faulenzer. For puppeteers who are standing up (mostly with a muppet- style puppet) it is pretty hard to hold up your hand all the time. Having a a staff holding up your puppet makes the whole thing a great deal more relaxing. For somebody who would sit in front of the audience (Like a ventriloquist, somebody who has the puppet on his arm and makes believe not he is talking for the puppet but the puppet talks by himself- they don't move their lips while talking, know what I mean?), the Faulenzer (meaning something along the line of "lazy person") would be more complex. I did try to get the pictures out, but since those are photographs, I couldn't make heads or tails of those, the quality is too bad. The text is a bit complicated and I am a very visual person. I did try to get something out, but I have been sick more or less since may and now my husband just came from the hospital yesterday, so I was not paying too much attention to the puppetwork. But it is still on my mind.

Oh, ok, so you have the book but the quality is poor... Well, one day when we are recognized puppeteers we can buy and share a better english copy :P