Inside Hoggworks

This is something we’re working on (based on a design provided to us). This is the paper-prototyping stage; once it’s nailed down, we use the paper pieces as the pattern to make the foam skeleton.

Here I link to a post on complex.com, listing 5 puppets and hip-hop collaborations. And I’m not even going to add any commentary to it:

http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/08/12/the-unauthorized-history-of-puppets-in-hip-hop/

Okay, my only bit of commentary is that I hadn’t seen many of these, and while the Kanye West video is technically nice, I don’t dig it all that much, but the puppets on the Outkast video are neat looking.

Brilliant commentary, right?

We review the new Clone Wars movie, with help from a special guest: Darth Dracus from the forums!

This is unrelated to puppetry, but it’s tremendously cool. Lightning in extreme slow-motion; fantastic!

By way of Andrew Young, I came across an article in the National Post, called “Puppets Ahoy!” The tagline is “Against all odds, the googly-eyed are making a cultural comeback.” It’s true, certainly, and it’s a reasonable encapsulation of some of the current spots where puppetry is blooming, but it seemed a fairly superficial rundown to me.

There’s a brief historical reference, and a mention of the Puppets Up! festival occuring this weekend in Almonte, ON (which I had been planning to go to, but for an unfortunate set of deadlines coupled with a lack of a place to put the dogs up). Then there’s talk about how puppetry, not just Jim Henson-related, is hitting the cultural scene, but just about everything discussed after this involves Henson properties (there was a mention of Avenue Q, and also of the recent film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which featured a puppet musical at its climax, but those puppets were made by Henson!). Even in the very furtive mention of puppets online, focus lay not in the plethora of puppeteers and puppet enthusiasts putting out so much great content, but in the Muppets videos that have been coming out for the past few weeks. It’s great stuff, to be sure, and a nice return to form in some ways, but hardly indicative of the state of online “googly-eyed” content.

What you’re probably thinking right now, and you’re right if you are, is that I was expecting Hoggworks generally, or dotBoom specifically, to get a mention, and you’d be right. It was something of a critical hit, and certainly it’s the largest scale puppet-based production online (that I’m aware of, though Apollo’s Pad looks pretty intricate in some places). Did it get a mention, though? Did anything other than the Muppets get a mention, really? What about the excellent puppetry-troupe the Wippets? What about Jigsaw? What about the Johnson brothers and all of the content they produce at Swazzle? What about the JibJab puppet eCards? Heck, what about the Potter Puppet Pals? It’s got to be the most popular online-specific bit of puppetry out there, and it didn’t warrant a mention? (I am forgetting a large number of people, and that’s part of the problem — there are so many great bits of puppetry being made online today, I couldn’t possibly list them all!)

I may be sounding a bit bitter for not rating inclusion in this article, and that’s a fair consideration, and perhaps I am, to a small extent. But we’re just one group among an increasing number making great content online using puppets, taking part in our small way to bring puppetry back to the forefront, not to make it relevant again, but rather, to show that it’s always been relevant. Whether or not our specific work deserves a mention in a National Post article, surely the author of the article should do research enough to learn that even though they’re still quite popular, the Muppets aren’t the only thing online?

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One last thing: Ronnie Burkett, referenced in the article as Canada’s most prominent puppeteer, said:

Puppetry has always been the domain of the loner weirdo, and certainly in my day you did it in your basement alone.

Now, sure, when I started dotBoom, it was in the basement, but that’s just because it was the space I had to stage it in, and I chose not to do any live performing. Despite that, the intent was never to only do it for myself, and I’d guess that most people are working on their puppets and puppeteering because they want to perform, and to perform, you really need an audience.

I question his assessment that an inherently public art would be relegated to the sublevels. Perhaps he was going for a good quote, but it doesn’t seem a very accurate statement, to me.

(Full title edited in deference to the fact that it contains the swear words)
(Which I like. I LIKE the swear words. But it might be off-putting to have it in the title)

A friend of mine sent me a link this morning to “ED’s Furry Fucking Guide to Metal,” a video by the character Edward Tubbs, who’s a star of the MTV UK show FurTV. I’ve seen bits of the show, and found it heavy on the shock (not unlike dotBoom), but light on the characterization and heart (unlike dotBoom), and it’s not a show I’m hunting down to watch; I think that shock works as a platform for content, but if you don’t say something meaningful after you’ve gotten someone’s attention, instead making another fart joke, I think it’s something of a waste.

That said, the video is well edited, the puppetry works well, and it’s got a good kinetic energy. Also, hey, it’s puppets, and I always like seeing more puppets in the culture. There’s always room for more of that, as far as I’m concerned.

(Warning: This does contain a fair bit of foul language, in pretty much every moment of it)

Since this blog is meant as a peek behind the curtain, we thought we’d pass along links to some public Evernote notebooks we’re using right now to keep track of things we might look to for inspiration, and things me might want to buy to help build puppets.

Here’s our photoreference feed: http://www.evernote.com/pub/hoggworks/PuppetPhotoRef

Here’s our supplies-to-possibly-buy feed: http://www.evernote.com/pub/hoggworks/Supplies-ForReference

(In case you haven’t heard of it, Evernote, according to the website, “… allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.” It’s a very handy service, and it’s making its way into our workflow pretty handily)

Phillip Hatter’s work is both inspiring and depressing. Man.

Hey all,

Here’s the recent (much-delayed) episode of Ask Palpatine, where he answers the question that led us to our very first contest. We hope you like it!