Monster Much?

Wilko, purple monster.

Along with the foam headed band replica puppets, I also have a collection of furry monsters I created from the basic sock puppet pattern I downloaded from ProjectPuppet.com. Not only is it fun to build the furry monsters but they also make pretty good presents for people. Unfortunately the two puppets I made for my family have been 'borrowed' back by me, and are living in my front room again.
The possibilities for these simple sock puppets are endless, the crazier the fabric the more fun they look. My very first hand puppet was made from an off cut of purple fuzzy fabric I got from a bargain bin in an upholstery shop. I wanted to build my very own Muppet, I suppose a little in the style of Elmo from Sesame Street. Having found some discarded ping pong balls I set to work on my monster. After sewing part of him to my jeans by mistake and a few early finger burns from my glue gun; he came

Annie-bomnible. Girly monster! :D

Orange-Satch-squash

out pretty well for a first effort. In those early days, I was interested in trying out all my ideas in a simple fashion to see if any of it worked at all. My first music video is a very straight forward affair. Set to an original song we recorded way back in the mid/late 1990's (how long ago!?) I used this opportunity to see if I could get green screening to work, as I was the only one puppeteering, and there were three characters. The results were sort of successful in the fact that it did work - not massively exciting, but it worked. Once I had a small

Quick Weevil music video, puppets on a simple set.

handle on iMovie, I began playing around with effects. I took my purple monster (Wilko - named after Wilko Johnson, who we had seen at a gig in Norwich. Not that they look alike, I just wanted to use the name!) and combined two of my favourite things - Muppets and Ghostbusters. I made the puppet a uniform and a Proton Pack to see if I could use after effects to make him fire it. The job took AGES! (watch it here)

Wilko, Ghostbusting with the best!

It was quite a pain staking process. Although the end results looked nice, it had become far more complex than I wanted. This test footage of me playing with 'Special Effects' only proved to harden my resolve that I would want to do everything as 'live' as possible. If I was having to rely on my ability to add huge special effects to get my puppet videos to work, they would NEVER get finished! Low-fi was definitely my future...