"A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer."
Detailed instructions for designing and constructing puppets, including materials, tools, and techniques.
Puppetry History and Culture: Understanding the history and culture of puppetry is essential when starting to learn about the art form. It covers the evolution of puppetry through time, various styles of puppetry, and the cultural significance behind puppet performances.
Puppet Anatomy: Understanding the anatomy of a puppet is crucial to creating and designing puppets. Knowing the parts of a puppet and how they work together is essential.
Materials: An important aspect of creating a puppet is knowing the right materials to use, such as fabric, foam, and wire.
Sculpting: Sculpting is the process of shaping the puppet's head, hands, and other specialized body parts. It is crucial for creating custom puppets and accurate representations of characters.
Molding and Casting: Molding and casting involve creating molds of puppet parts and casting replicas in various materials, such as rubber, silicone, and resin.
Fabrication Techniques: Fabrication techniques are used to assemble puppet parts into a complete puppet form, such as sewing, glueing or riveting.
Mechanics and Animatronics: To bring a puppet to life, a variety of mechanics can be used for movement and animation purposes. These include hand manipulation, rod manipulation and more technical choices, such as motors, levers and sensors.
Painting and Finishing: Painting and finishing involves painting the puppet and adding final touches to bring it to life, such as attaching hair or clothing.
Stage Design: A puppet needs an accompanying stage that can highlight its movements, enhance the puppet's acting, and draw the audience's focus.
Script Writing and Performance Techniques: Writing and developing performative skills, such as character voice, timing, and blocking, are essential skills for puppeteers. Understanding how to develop a script and create authentic performances is an art form that relates to both puppetry and theatre.
Audio Engineering: Creating the right sound effect is an essential component of a puppet performance. Knowing how to use microphones, software and to create sound effects is important to achieve rich, engaging performances.
Lighting Design: Puppet lighting is an essential tool for establishing a stage's mood and drawing the audience's attention to the right areas. Understanding lighting design techniques is vital to ensuring audience engagement.
Storyboarding and Direction: Finally, storyboarding attempts to simplify the puppet's actual production, by combining a particular sequence of puppet movements and defining camera angles, while direction and blocking are intended to ensure artistic coherence and comprehension.
Hand Puppets: Puppets that are designed to be operated by one hand, with the puppeteer's hand inside the puppet's body.
Finger Puppets: Small puppets designed to be worn on the fingers, often used by children's entertainers.
Marionettes: Puppets that are suspended and controlled by strings or wires attached to control bars.
Shadow Puppets: Puppets that are operated behind a screen, with the puppeteers manipulating the puppets to create silhouettes.
Rod Puppets: Puppets that are manipulated using rods or poles attached to their arms or other body parts.
Glove Puppets: Puppets that are operated by a hand that is partially inside the puppet's body and partially inside a fitted glove.
Body Puppets: Large-scale puppets that are worn by a puppeteer who operates the puppet's movements and expressions.
Blacklight Puppets: Puppets that are designed to glow under ultraviolet light, creating a visually striking effect.
Muppet-style Puppets: Puppets designed to resemble the characters from Jim Henson's Muppets, typically operated using rods and hands in a similar manner to hand puppets.
Object Puppets: Puppets constructed from everyday objects, such as bottles, boxes, and utensils.
Animatronic Puppets: Puppets that are electronically controlled, often featuring complex movements and expressions.
Bunraku Puppets: Traditional Japanese puppets that are manipulated by three puppeteers, each responsible for different parts of the puppet's body.
Ventriloquist Puppets: Puppets designed to be used by a ventriloquist, with a movable mouth and other features to enhance the illusion that the puppet is speaking independently.
Body Mask Puppets: Puppets that are designed to be worn as a full-body mask, with the puppeteer controlling the puppet's movements and expressions from inside the suit.
"The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet."
"The puppeteer often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part."
"Puppetry is a very ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece."
"Two simple types of puppets are the finger puppet" and "the sock puppet."
"It is formed and operated by inserting one's hand inside a sock, with the opening and closing of the hand simulating the movement of the puppet's 'mouth.'"
"A 'live-hand puppet' is similar to a hand puppet but is larger and requires two puppeteers for each puppet."
"A Marionette is a much more complicated type of puppet that is suspended and controlled by a number of strings connected to the head, back and limbs."
"A rod puppet is constructed around a central rod secured to the head."
"A shadow puppet is a cut-out figure held between a source of light and a translucent screen."
"Bunraku puppets are a type of Japanese wood-carved puppet."
"A ventriloquist's dummy is a puppet, often human-shaped, operated by a ventriloquist performer's hand."
"The performer produces the puppet's voice with little or no movement of her mouth, which creates the illusion that the puppet is alive."
"Carnival puppets are large puppets, typically bigger than a human, designed to be part of a large spectacle or parade."
"They are made from a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use."
"They range from very simple in construction and operation to very complex."
"The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppeteer with the puppet are typically used in storytelling."
"[A finger puppet] is a tiny puppet that fits onto a single finger."
"plus sometimes a central rod attached to a control bar held from above by the puppeteer."
"Carnival puppets are typically bigger than a human."