My name is Brian Douglas. I'm a Government Contractor working in the Middle East.  I also perform magic.  Entertainment has several types of media.  Below I'll briefly describe my evolution.

As a child I discovered that I could manipulate my sisters stuffed animals to bring them alive.  Alive to convince her to share her Halloween candy with me, but alive just the same. Now, before you think 'That's so sweet!' I also use the same stuffed animals to pull the heads off her Barbie Dolls; and put the head on ends of pencils, and surround them with her stuffed animals.  I then would tell her that they were cannibals.

I always like puppets as a kid and received a clinging monkey puppet back in the late 70's.  I was even stopped by the aircrew (no TSA back then) when I tried to bring it aboard a plane (thinking it was real).  In my teen years I did puppetry for our youth group until I messed up my hand.  The cartilage in my right middle finger (I'm right handed) at the knuckle would lock, forcing the finger straight. Don't know what cause it but there is still a scar at the joint 35 years later.  Thus ended my puppetry.

I always like drawing and doing comics but I couldn't really draw.  Flash forward to 2008 and I discovered online comic generators (Toondoo's).  I belonged to a private magician forum and began doing comics using the characters from the forum.  Eventually they gave me my own section and I switched to Bitstips.  When Bitstrips was sold I decided to try my 'hand' at CGI characters. I invested some time and money and soon was making detailed characters.  When the Magician forum closed I needed to find a new media output.

So I found a puppet online that resembled one of my characters and had it modified to be a near perfect match.  My hand that caused me to drop out so many years ago also seems to be fine.  No more locking finger.  So I ordered a second, and a third.  Sam Wilkes was my first ( I'll post a pic of him soon) and my Avatar currently has Me and Behemoth.  Both Behemoth and Sam are custom orders from Axtell, and my third, Eddie the Dog is a custom order from Pavlovs.

I plan on using my free time this year to work out all the bugs and do green screen work.  Sam will do Tarot readings online and argue with Behemoth.  I expect to have everything up and running by Jan 2019. Eddie is slotted for a second series along with 5 additional puppets.

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff.

Hello Brian and welcome to this crazy, and yet addictive place in the universe that I myself always come back to. I have just read your bio, which was awesome to say the least.

As a child I discovered that I could manipulate my sisters stuffed animals to bring them alive.  Alive to convince her to share her Halloween candy with me, but alive just the same. Now, before you think 'That's so sweet!' I also use the same stuffed animals to pull the heads off her Barbie Dolls; and put the head on ends of pencils, and surround them with her stuffed animals.  I then would tell her that they were cannibals.

Yeah, that part cracked me up the most. So much my kind of thing.
Like you, I once was into the discovery of puppetry and then life happened and left for a while, but the bug always seems to find me again. So here I am myself. Glad to see that I am not the only "unique" one out there.

So a huge welcome to the family. Something tells me that I will learn a lot from you.
See you behind the curtain,
Sandra

Nice background and welcome!!!

Thanks for the welcomes. I'll be flying to the Philippines on Saturday and I'm bringing along Sam to have his suit tailored to fit, and a proper arm hole installed.  He is a vent style puppet so I will see if I can have shoulder pads inserted into his coat (like the 80's) to reduce the length of his neck.  If I don't keep an eye on him he has a tendency to 'turtle'.   Hopefully the shoulder pads will compensate.