The Midnight Diaries of Catty Wampus

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

This is going to be a fun post. Most of us got our introduction to puppetry through the Muppets. We were probably so young that our child brains didn’t even register the Muppets as anything other than living and breathing people, animals, monsters, and whatevers.

One of the great things about the following clips is that they were all performed in front of an audience of puppeteers and puppet fans. This gives the performers an opportunity to play around with the conceit of the art form:

I remember that when I was a kid “He’s got a beard” was just about the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

I love that Kermit is entirely self-aware while Fozzie just doesn’t seem to be able to reach that higher plane of understanding. It’s a wonderful contrast between the two characters: Kermit is smart without trying, and Fozzie just can’t be very smart no matter how earnestly he tries.

This is also a great demonstration of the rhythm that Jim Henson and Frank Oz have when they’re working together. They’re like musicians, trading off the character’s moments, reveals, and stretching out single phrases. Watch how Oz makes Fozzie’s “There is somebody…” into an entire showpiece by separating the words with gestures, repetitions, and pauses. I love that look downward that he does–all of it makes Fozzie such a real, living character… which, of course, adds to the comedy of him being controlled by someone else.

Speaking of contrast in character, sometimes it really can be just as simple as “big” and “small.” And sometimes that can be enough to imply a lot more. This is a sketch commonly known as Java, or The Javas, named after the title of the song performed by Al Hirt. You can see this sketch on the Muppet Show Season 1 DVDs (episode 22), but there are subtle variations in this performance, and I like knowing that it was performed live here:

I wonder how these puppets are controlled. They seem deceptively simple–if you watch them carefully, however, you’ll notice that the big Java does some dance moves that are pretty complicated if it was just a straight-forward puppet. I especially love the way his eyes roll upwards during one section of his dance.

Now, let’s get back to Henson and Oz. Here they are again, riffing off of each other:

While Kermit’s and Fozzie’s relationship shows contrast between smart and not-as-smart, Kermit and Miss Piggy’s relationship is a little more complex. Piggy has a big contrast within her own character: She sees herself as elegant and classy, but she’s actually crude and selfish. One of Kermit’s big flaws (and it’s a great one) is that he always buys into Piggy’s own image of herself until he recognizes and remembers her true boorish (not boarish, though) self. The comedy in this clip, for me, doesn’t come from Piggy as much as it comes from Kermit’s growing discomfort. Kermit is a great straight man, and he plays his part perfectly here.

Finally, a bit of fun that shows off how innovative Jim Henson and his team were when designing their puppets and thinking of new ways of performing. The puppeteer you’ll see here is Carol Spinney in a costume/puppet he designed himself in order to make Oscar the Grouch more mobile. Think about where his arms are as he performs here–you might need a second guess:

The end of this clip is a perfect way to go out. I am very taken with the way that Jim Henson talks about his role in the history of puppetry. There are so many labels that could be applied to Jim Henson: entertainer, entrepreneur, innovator–but all of these fall below his personal satisfaction as a puppeteer. Most puppeteers won’t achieve the notoriety of Jim Henson, but they all belonged to the same fabric of tradition he belonged to. And he belongs to the same fabric of tradition as anyone who picks up a puppet. There’s something incredibly humbling and charming about that, isn’t there?

This concludes my series of posts and thoughts taken from “Here Come The Puppets.” I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this material. The posts will continue to be accessible through this blog, specifically in the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Feel free to read and comment–I’d love to hear what you see in these puppets as well.

Cheers!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

One of the things that fascinates me most about puppetry is that the puppeteer, in addition to the puppet, is part of the performance. Some techniques call attention to it more than others; bunraku puppeteers dress in black and are in full view of the audience, while the Muppets are and marionettes tend to have their puppeteers work from off-stage. But whether you see them or not, there’s a part of your consciousness that’s aware of the puppeteer in a way that an audience is almost never aware of an animator.

In 1982 Bruce D. Schwartz opened his show, “The Stage That Walks.” The entire show was performed while Bruce was encased in a mobile-puppet theatre. Even though his body was completely out of sight, this helped keep the audience aware that this was all just one man performing everything they saw before them.

In this first example, I have to admit I have no idea how he’s pulling it off. Clearly one hand is in each puppet. His fingers must be working the puppets’ hands on their recorders. What I can’t figure out is how in the world he’s performing the music!

I love watching the interplay between the two characters. Even though they are roughly the same size and in practically the same pose as each other the entire time, you get the idea that one of them is a practiced musician, old and steady, while the other is equally talented but much more inclined to let the music carry them along into dancing. Another wonderful example of movement demonstrating the main contrast between two characters’ personalities.

The duet is a fun little piece, but what I really want to examine is this next clip from ‘The Farmer’s Wife’:

This clip makes me think about the idea of ’status.’ Now, as shaky as I am about the ground I’ve covered before, I’m even more of a novice in the area of acting and scene negotiation. But I’m going to try to analyze this scene the best I can, and if you feel like jumping in to add, or correct, or completely disagree, I welcome you to do so.

It’s been said that every scene is a negotiation for status. Not necessarily a negotiation for high status, but a status change. And it seems to me that there are many different types of status that you can examine. There is professional status as exists between a boss and an employee, there is moral status as exists between Superman and Lex Luthor, and there is intellectual/philosophical status as exists between two opposing participants in a debate. There are probably many other types of status that I can’t even think of, but this should be a good enough place to start.

We start off here with The Farmer’s Wife, who we’re told is a bit of a shrew. She is low status but thinks of herself as high status. How do we know this? Her attitude clearly suggests that she believes that she is a better and more worthy person than her husband, The Farmer: we can see that she believes her personality status is high. But we can tell that she is a bit of a complainer and possibly not very nice of a person: as an audience, we know that she is pretty low status. Also, since she’s doing her husband’s bidding, it’s clear that her status in her marriage is also low. The comedy is that, despite the fact that the audience knows that she’s low status, she acts high-status because that is how she thinks of herself. This gets even funnier later.

By the way, all of this talk of the wife being low status isn’t to say that we don’t enjoy her. She is not an annoying or bothersome character to the audience. We like her enough to laugh with her, instead of at her. Her little dance after the horrible “missing link” pun is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Even though we know she deserves a bit of a comeuppance, we’re delighted when she treats others as if they deserve one. Which leads us to…

The Devil. Now, the Devil is arguably about as high of status as you can get in every way but morally. (and even the morals in this play may be on his side) So when he is treated as low status, as a sausage or as a cow, by the actual-low-status-but-thinks-she’s-high-status Farmer’s Wife we get even more comedy.

As a brief side note, consider again the contrast in the way these two characters move: The Farmer’s Wife is frantic and moving all over the place, and the Devil is very still and calm and his gestures are sharp and direct. To tie it back into status, look at the calm, sure way he nods when the Farmer’s Wife notes that “It’s as dark as Hell down here.” Think of this moment taking place with the Devil nodding quicker–the literal meaning is the same, but notice how that would change the context and the character. It makes me marvel at all of the little choices that have to be made in order to realize a well-rounded performance.

So the Devil puts up with all of the Farmer’s Wife’s nattering on and on, and even tolerates his nose being tugged almost clearly off of his face. He finally loses his temper (but not his manners: he still calls her “good woman”) when she won’t stop slapping his shoulder in jest. And then there’s a moment that I love: the Devil makes the entire earth quake. This is a wonderful use of Schwartz’s one-man stage. In a conventional puppet theatre there may be some effective ways to shake the earth, but somehow having the entire set, puppets, and stage itself stomp and jump around adds a power to this moment that I can’t imagine being equaled any other way.

This earth tremor is the first thing to really stop the Farmer’s Wife from moving about and feeling so cocksure of herself. You can see her shaking in fear. Up until this point, we knew that the Devil was high status and the Farmer’s Wife was low status, but the Farmer’s Wife believed herself to be high status and the Devil (in her mind, the cow) to be low status. This is the first moment when the audience and the Farmer’s Wife are both on the same page about who is in control. And the Devil takes this moment to calmly (again, always patient and calm–even though he’s shaking with anger, I almost wonder if he doesn’t feel somewhat ashamed of having lost his temper briefly) explain who he is.

But after a moment’s thought and recognition, the Farmer’s Wife appeals back to the audience and regains some of her own high status by making a joke of the situation.

Back and forth, back and forth, the characters seem to say to each other “I have the status” and “No, I have the status.” It’s left up to the audience (or the performer, or the playwright, or all three) to decide where the status really lies. But what makes the scene interesting is what the characters believe about their own status in the scene, and how successful they are at achieving or maintaining those beliefs about their own status.

I could watch this scene again and again. And I have. I love it. Bruce Schwartz is clearly a master of his craft. He is still around, though my preliminary research seems to indicate that he doesn’t do much puppetry anymore. As talented and renowned as he was, it appears that there came a time when he decided “That was fun. Now I’m going to do other things.” As funny as it sounds, I really like that way of thinking about things. I know that it’s easy to fall into the trap of wondering how much wonderful puppetry we’ve been deprived of, but I really like the idea of being really good at something and not running it into the ground.

The most recent information I came across tells me that Bruce Schwartz is now a yoga instructor with his own yoga studio in Southern California. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had some puppets that he brought out every now and then, even if only for close friends and family. In any case, I hope that he is happy in whatever he is doing right now. I hope that much for everyone.

Next week: the big finally to the Here Come The Puppets posts. You won’t want to miss it!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

I wasn’t around when Fran, Kukla, and Oliver J. Dragon were entertaining American children on television in the 1950s and 1960s. This video was my first introduction to them, and remains some of the only examples of Kukla and Ollie that I’ve seen except for a YouTube clip here and there. Fran, an actual human woman who would interact with the puppets on the old tv shows, didn’t appear for the 1981 appearance. Burr Tillstrom operates Kukla and Ollie by himself. Have a look:

I’m going to take a break from talking about animation and talk a bit about comedy.

Recently, a friend and I have been discussing how comedy works. E.B. White is credited with saying “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies because of it.” But if you happen to be one of the few who are interested, and don’t mind risking a dead joke or two along the way, it can be a fascinating subject.

There’s a general theory that says that comedy comes from breaking the expectation of what’s supposed to happen.

“Knock, Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupti–” “MOO!”

The more jokes you’ve heard the easier it gets to predict their punchlines. We already have our expectations set up by our foreknowledge of the typical knock-knock joke’s structured. (no knock-knock joke would work if you told it to someone who had never heard a knock-knock joke before) In the case of this particular joke, we expect to get all the way to “Interrupting Cow Who?” When we don’t get that far, one expectation is already broken. The second part of the punchline hits us when we recognize that the “Moo” is coming from the cow and, as a matter of fact, is a demonstration of the information we already had–i.e., this cow interrupts people. In a nutshell, that’s why this joke is funny.

Let’s go back to this Kukla and Ollie clip. There’s really only one joke in here, but it’s a good one and I laugh every time I see it. Most of the performance here is the joke’s set-up: Ollie likes to bite Kukla’s nose. The set-up is long and meandering, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I say it’s meandering because it takes us a little bit to even establish that Ollie wants to bite Kukla’s nose. It comes in during part of the conversation, when Ollie stops speaking and poises himself to bite Kukla’s nose.

The animator in me feels compelled to speak up here to mention the composition of the frame. It’s no accident that Kukla is leaning backwards and occupies only a sliver of the available puppet stage here, while Ollie is leaning forward and dominates almost the entire space. This helps us understand these two characters’ personalities–Kukla is easily intimidated by the dragon, even though they are friends. And the dragon is large large large, even though they are technically similar sized puppets.

Continuing on, we get a little mini-joke when Ollie denies that he wasn’t thinking about biting Kukla’s nose, when he clearly was. But we still haven’t had any big laughs. Part of this, I think, is due to the rather clumsy interaction between the character’s. Most of Kukla’s and Ollie’s performances are improvised, and I’m not always sure that’s helpful–it feels like the action stumbles a bit here because of it. “Let’s go down memory lane in dignity,” in particular, I feel comes out of nowhere. It could be a reference to something that happened earlier in the performance (before this clip began), but the whole idea of “going down memory lane” seems like Kukla was searching for something, anything, to say.

We also get a tiny laugh when Ollie admits “I spent a lot of money on therapy to get over that.” This isn’t a real joke, but I find it interesting because it’s one of several examples from this PBS special of puppets making reference to going to a therapist. I think that this must have been a big topic at the time, the late 70’s and early 80’s. Sure, people go to therapy these days, but the way it’s referenced here almost seems like a quick tap into a sort of ‘community joke’ that you don’t really need to set up or give a punchline to–we just laugh because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do with the subject. These days you might bring up Brittany Spears or 30 Rock and get a similar reaction: we know they’re funny (in different ways, admittedly), and good for a quick audience reaction.

Still, this gets us to the song, and that’s what this is all leading up to.

Clearly, a song like this isn’t likely to be improvised. As an audience, we know this and we can even recognize that its simple structure is the kind that is likely to lead to a punchline. Like a knock-knock joke, or a poem that begins “There once was a man from Cape Cod…”. We know where the punchline will be, so we can prepare ourselves for it. Not only that, some joke structures are so old, we begin to anticipate where they’re heading. We know that we’re probably going to get four lines of song here, and the fourth line will rhyme with some other line in the song and will contain a punchline.

We’re already stocked up with the knowledge that Ollie is trying to refrain from any nose-biting tonight and now we’re given a song where we expect a joke at the end of it. By the time we get to “sweet as a rose,” you can already hear some audience member’s chuckling because they’ve anticipated the joke. “It’s going to be something about nose-biting,” they have deduced. The song slows down long enough to give the entire audience time to catch up to this idea, and await the final line–it will be clever, but the audience will already have a pretty good idea of it already.

And that’s when we get the real punchline: “You can see it coming, can’t ya?”

With that one turn to the audience, Ollie gets a bigger laugh than he could ever have gotten if he had simply finished the song. (and really, was there any kind of finish that would be remotely funny as the last line of the song?) It’s the breaking of two expectations that brings the house down here:

Expectation #1: We will hear the end of the song and it will rhyme with “rose.” (we don’t, and it doesn’t)

Expectation #2: Ollie doesn’t know that we have already figured out where the punchline will be. (he does, and we haven’t)

This is an incredibly satisfying punchline. We have followed all of the set-up very carefully; so carefully, in fact, that we believe we know exactly what road we’re on and we’re probably feeling a bit of an inflated ego about it. We believe we’re smarter than the people on stage. When the character finally tells us “Yes, I’ve led you right to the place I wanted you to be and I knew it the whole time,” we get a great release for being shown that are actually aren’t smarter than the people on stage after all. The joke is on the audience, and we have foolishly walked ourselves right into it.

I love this kind of comedy. Even given the clumsy improv part, Tillstrom successfully implants the idea of the nose-biting into our minds without calling too much attention to it. His performance never screams “This will be important later! Try to remember it!!” He simply places it in a prominent point of the characters’ interaction and lets things move along from there.

Another of my favorite uses of this type of implant can be found in Greg Behrendt’s “Crybaby Spiderman” bit. You can find it on YouTube with a simple search, or on his comedy CD or DVD, Uncool. I won’t say anything about the routine for fear of giving anything away. But if you get to check it out, you’ll see the same kind of implant happen–and again, you won’t recognize it has happened until the end because of Behrendt’s skill at telling a story and only giving you as much as he wants to give you at any particular point along the way.

More about puppetry, animation, story, and performance next time. See you then!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

I studied some classical Russian literature when I was in college. And at the risk of stereotyping, once you hear the plot of this piece there’s just no denying its culture of origin. It’s as Russian as they come.

It’s also a brilliant performance by Sergei Obraztsov. Here’s the video, with discussion to follow:

The thing that stands out the most to my eyes is the way Obraztsov separates his actions in order to tell the story. As animators, it’s always a good idea to keep this motto in mind: One Thing At A Time. Meaning that you don’t want to confuse your audience by trying to communicate two different thoughts at once. You want them to see one gesture and then see the next. It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds sometimes, and I really like how clearly Obraztsov communicates everything the audience needs to know in his character’s performance. Just breaking down the introduction, we can see the story unfold in a very point-by-point way.

Here is a glass.

It is empty.

This is me. I am the main character.

The empty glass belongs to me.

Notice that if we hadn’t had those first two actions, this shot might simply introduce the idea “I am a man with a glass.” There is absolutely no emphasis on the glass being empty here, and it would be easy to overlook it if it hadn’t been clearly shown to us directly a moment ago.

Here is a full bottle of vodka.

Again, notice how clearly we get the message of this gesture, largely because the man is not a part of the image. All we see here is the vodka and the empty glass. In addition to being a strong way to introduce the vodka, it also serves as an anticipation for the next gesture.

I will fill the empty glass from the bottle.

Each idea presented simply and clearly, and it helps the audience understand the story naturally. You can see this sort of thing done throughout the entire performance, with each gesture introducing a new important idea that helps enrich the story and/or move it forward. Even if you don’t understand the language being sung, you are able to follow along.

Sergei Obraztsov died in 1992. The theatre company that bears his name is still running in Russia, and in 2001 it celebrated Obraztsov’s 100th birthday with puppeteers from around the world performing in his honor.

By the way, if any of my readers out there speak Russian and would like to offer a translation of the snippet of the song sung in this piece, I would be happy to include it in this post.

Stay tuned next week for some classic American puppetry!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

For today’s installment, we’ll be looking at a little snippet from the Mermaid Theatre, which I’m pleased to see is still operating and quite successful. If you’re ever up near Nova Scotia you should check them out. As a matter of fact, their website lists some tour dates in the United States and South Korea so they may be coming to your town. Here’s a look at what they were up to back in 1981:

In the last post in this series, I talked a little about how contrast between two characters can help make an interaction more compelling. Here we have two characters with several visual distinctions that are immediately obvious: one is large and the other is small, one is darkly colored and the other is brighter, one is dressed in decorative robes and feathers and the other is hardly wearing anything.

You can also tell from the way the characters act that they are pretty different. The larger character is mostly silent and contemplative, and the smaller one is more of a bombastic little motormouth. If I asked a stranger to guess which of these characters prone to meditation and which was prone to tantrums, I doubt anyone would ever confuse the two.

The bigger issue to point out in this clip, however, is the way that the larger puppet is able to communicate and act even though the face stays in the same expression the entire time.

Eyeline is a huge deal when it comes to characters interacting with each other. The smallest move of the eyes can mean the difference between a character looking directly at a friend or a thousand miles into the distance over their shoulder. Where CG animation is concerned, it’s not always as simple as placing an eye target at the place you want your character to look–sometimes the eye target will be spot on, but from the camera’s view the character will be looking in the absolute wrong place.

When you’re performing on stage, you have an audience in place of a camera. I have heard that actors are often directed not to look directly at each other but rather to turn 45-degrees and look forward, essentially facing as if they are both addressing a third person. To the actor this must feel incredibly awkward, but the audience will see the two characters addressing each other naturally.

The same thing is going on here with the large character’s eyeline. Especially with a character that doesn’t have the ability to move its irises (most puppets don’t, after all), the head angle is all you have to rely on. And yet, look at how clearly this character addresses his focus:

The puppeteer, Donald, also mentions that subtle gestures in the hands are an immense help for getting the character to clearly illustrate his dialogue and the context in the scene. The use of hands and fingers is a subject which is way too broad to begin to explore at the moment, but if you watch the video again, you can see how clearly even the tiniest moves of the fingers can be read, even though the fingers are as thick as Twinkies on the ends of those gigantic hands.

To be perfectly honest, however, my favorite thing in this clip has nothing to do with puppetry. My absolute favorite thing in this clip is what happens when Donald takes off his puppet’s head. Check it out:

What a smile!

From an animator’s perspective, I love the way he has that “O” shaped mouth indicating “Boy am I glad to be out from under that sweltering head!” and then it becomes this big toothy grin that takes up almost the entire bottom half of his face. But even if I wasn’t thinking about animation at all, it’s a wonderful smile that is warm and charming and it seems to radiate that this is a genuine and friendly guy. Wherever he is these days, I hope he’s happy and still smiling.

Next up: Master Russian puppeteer, Sergei Obrotzov. Stay tuned!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

After a large positive response to the previous puppetry posts, I’ve decided to continue with some of my other favorite pieces from the ‘Here Come The Puppets’ special. This post will focus on the second highlighted performance from Peter Waschinsky (see the first piece here), a selection from his performance called “Earthworms.”

In animation terms, this piece is almost entirely about line of action and timing. Let’s talk about the timing first.

A friend of mine recently said “It seems like a lot of animated movies have similar pairs of characters in them: a lot of the time, it’s just a big round fat guy and a tall skinny guy. Is that because that’s the only thing that works in animation?” She wasn’t being sarcastic, she was legitimately curious if having those two character types are the only way to make animation interesting to an audience. I understood where she’s coming from. After all, it seems like “Big and Little” are everywhere in animation. Have a look at Mike and Sully, or Woody and Buzz, Shrek and Donkey, Dori and Marlin… heck, even Lightning McQueen and Mater.

My initial reaction was “Well, they’re not all paired up as big and small, or fat and skinny.” But the question remains, why are there so many that are? And the answer is: Contrast. The visual contrast in two characters’ design help us separate them in our minds. This isn’t just limited to animation. Just taking the “Short and Fat vs. Tall and Skinny” example, you could point to Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello. Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. If I were being a little more pompous (which I’m clearly going to be, so hang on), I might even bring up Falstaff and Prince Hal… but to be honest, I haven’t read any of the plays Falstaff is in. I just know that he was a big, tubby guy and Hal was probably a little more on the lithe side.

It’s not always “Big and Small” that creates visual contrast, however. Two of my favorite characters from animation are Futurama’s Fry and Bender. Human and Robot. How about the Lethal Weapon franchise, whose two main buddies are Black and White. Or any number of movies that pair up a woman and a man for a thrill-ride adventure, like the recent Transformers or the Indiana Jones movies.

Of course, it’s not just the visual contrast of two characters that we respond to. There has to be a difference in their personality. One is dumb and the other is smart (Pinky and the Brain, perhaps?), one is cool as a cucumber and the other is a ball of energy (Jay and Silent Bob, right?), one is neat and tidy and the other is a boorish slob (Felix and Oscar, from The Odd Couple). To call out one of my other favorite television shows, LOST has Jack Shepard whose entire personality is rooted in science and fact, and John Locke who is a dreamer and willing to follow the mystic side of things because his world is based in faith. Heck, look at fairy tales: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse!

This kind of contrast really starts making its presence known when the two characters are placed in the same situation with each other. Any two characters put in a situation and will react differently. Typically, the more different two characters are, the more extreme their reactions will be from one another.

Now, puzzle this for a moment: what if your two characters are nothing more than two fingers? In fact, they’re the same finger from opposite hands. They look exactly alike, so you can’t rely on any kind of visual contrast in their design (except maybe “This one’s on the left and the other one’s on the right). They don’t talk, so you can’t rely on one screaming and shouting while the other speaks in only a whisper. Your only tool is this: how they move. To put it another way, their timing.

Watch the clip again and notice how the worm on the left moves with slow and cautious gestures, while the worm on the right is much more jumpy and quick when moving from pose to pose. Even when Left Worm starts moving more quickly there’s still a slowness and a grace to its movements, while Right Worm slows down, but still has much more quick timing in its movements by comparison. This is contrasting timing in its very essence. And I’ll bet that if you go watch any of your favorite comedy duos, you will see that they move very differently from one another–just like Waschinsky’s simple finger-earthworms. This is what we’re responding to.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about line of action. I did a little side-by-side comparison here:

Admittedly, this is an almost comical exercise since the line of action should be pretty clear from Waschinsky’s fingers. But sometimes it helps to separate things out in a clear graphical space as if it were an animation line test, instead of seeing the details of skin, joins, and fingernails. The important thing is that you can clearly see where each character is looking, and more importantly the attitude that is conveyed through their poses.

Look at the first picture: with Left Worm just peeking out of the ground, and Right Worm pretty aggressively observing him. Things change pretty quickly in the next panel as Left Worm approaches closer and Right Worm has an almost complete reversal in the base of his pose–it’s clear that he has gone from being in charge to being startled. The third panel pushes this idea even further.

You can even see in panels 4, 5, and 6 that Left Worm’s upright position conveys a message depending on what angle he’s at. He’s not merely “standing upright,” but he is at one moment inviting, and then confident, and then happy.

Panel 7 shows Left Worm in a wonderful anticipation, while Right Worm is now striving forward to get closer. I admit I can’t tell exactly why, but I can tell almost just from that single frame that Left Worm’s line of action isn’t recoiling in fear like Right Worm did earlier. Perhaps it’s the base of his pose, which is still slightly leaning forward.

Then finally, in panel 8, we see both worms supporting each other, being affectionate. Again, you can tell that this is affection as opposed to being belligerent or standing guard or anything else. It’s clear because the lines are so relaxed and calm (they’re not struggling against each other), and they are just barely giving each other a soft little touch–literally a kiss–where they meet.

As much information as a character’s line of action can give us, I believe there is even more information when we see two lines of action playing off each other. It’s almost like the two form a Line of INTERaction. I’ve always had more fun animating two characters reacting to each other–even if one character is completely silent during the entire scene, I find that simply having them there for the other character to talk to, or talk at, or avoid talking to can help draw the audience into the personal dynamic between the two. And the line of action always helps me define where each of my characters’ attitudes are coming from.

By the way, aside from all of this cool theory and observation, I just want to point out something that might not be apparent because of the darkness of the video: Peter Waschinsky performs this entire story (and I can only imagine there’s more even after the video cuts off) while lying on his back! The “stage” is nothing more than one leg crossed against the other with a black sheet draped over it. This is a quick overlayed sketch of what’s actually going on:

One of the things that separates puppetry from animation is that the puppeteer has the choice over how much the audience is aware of their presence. Sometimes you want the audience to only see the puppets and relate to them as characters, and other times you will incorporate yourself as puppeteer into the audience’s awareness, even if you don’t participate in the story at all. We’ll get into this in a later post, but I thought it was worth noting here.

Next Friday, when we return to Here Come the Puppets, we’ll take a look at a troupe from Northern Canada. See you then!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

Jim Henson’s voice introduces this clip, part of a performance from Peter Waschinsky. I’d like to take a brief side-step from the puppetry talk to call attention to the statement that “Waschinsky is from the German Democratic Republic; East Germany.” This was 1980, remember. I’m just old enough to remember that it would be years and years before the wall dividing East and West Germany was brought down. Before that point, East Germany and West Germany were two separate countries. It was rare for East Germans to leave the country, and rare for anyone else to enter into it. I am, sadly, pretty ignorant about world politics but it seems very much like the difference between North and South Korea.

I mention this because in my lifetime, my very short lifetime, Germany has been unified once again into one country from the two halves it existed as for so very long. This kind of world change blows my mind, and I find it somewhat inspiring that things this big can still happen in our modern age when we tend to see the world as set in its ways. In my basement sits an atlas that was mine as a child; not only does it include East and West Germany, but the entire U.S.S.R. I’m sure that there are dozens of other changes that have occurred since then–countries have expanded and contracted, have been created and destroyed. ‘Twas ever thus and shall ever be. There’s a kind of hope in that, as I see it.

In any case, back in 1980, this is why Henson says “This was the first time many of us in this country had seen [Waschinsky's] work,” and why he says it with such awe. It was a rare treat. Have a look:

What stands out to me the most in this clip is Waschinsky’s use of timing. He knows exactly when to let an action linger, when to let it pounce, creep, amble, or freeze. Watch when the Leopard appears. He hangs there on his tree branch, looking around for any safe haven from his pursuer. Then he sees the man: the Leopard does a take, and then pulls back in curiosity, hangs there a minute and then pops up quickly to look over the tree to where the hunter might be (or perhaps he’s holding himself face to face with his puppeteer–what wonderful philosophical potential there is in that idea!), and then leaps down from the tree into the Man’s path.

Each action is as long as it needs to be, holds as long as it needs to be held, and each action’s timing is varied enough to feel natural and organic. Add to that the beautiful overlap Waschinsky gives to the Leopard when he leaps from the tree, and I could watch this sequence over and over.

Then, watch how the characters of the Man and Leopard come across merely in the speed of their movements. Though the man is initially startled by the Leopard, he is generally calm and casual about the meeting. He appears world-weary, a bit wise from his age, and accepting of strangers. The Leopard, on the other hand (literally–ha!), is anxious and curious. Each of his gestures is like a running stream of punctuation marks: an exclamation point! a question mark? a question mark? a question mark, an exclamation point! He needs to know if this Man is a threat or a friend.

Even when the man invites the Leopard to join him, the Man’s invitation is calm and friendly while the Leopard’s reaction is quick with just a shade of timidity.

It’s interesting to note that there are times when the Leopard moves somewhat slowly and the Man moves somewhat quickly. We recognize the Leopard’s movements as being mostly very fast–these movements help define his character, and his slow actions give us contrast to add into what we know about him. In the same way, the Man is primarily a slow mover, so the times when he moves quickly catch our attention and help to paint those actions with meaning we get from that contrast.

When we meet the Old Buffalo, we see another world-weary character who moves slowly. But unlike the Man, whose slow movement seems to slow from kindness, the Old Buffalo’s slowness comes from being abused for years of hard labor by men.

Pay particular attention to the silence after he declares “Men are ungrateful. Devour him.” This is a wonderful use of silence. That “Devour him” hangs so heavily in the air. When the Leopard and the Man look at each other, you can feel the question mark between the two of them. “Will this Leopard I have helped truly devour me?” “This man saved me from the hunter. Should I believe the Buffalo, that all men are ungrateful?” Notice how there is a (beautiful) half-second of the Man and the Leopard holding each others’ eyes before the Leopard begins to nod. And don’t we, as an audience, feel the tension of this moment–don’t we want to urge the Leopard to be merciful?

All in that silence, we feel that the Leopard is only slightly leaning towards the Buffalo’s point of view. His nod is slow and tentative; his decision could still turn towards the Man’s favor when the Buffalo pounds through the silence with an even larger question: “Why should you spare him?” And when you recognize that the puppeteer likely has enough control to place his foot softly on the ground, the fact that he disappears the Buffalo with a bass-y “thud” makes the question loom all the more heavily.

Now the Leopard moves very slowly, almost as if he’s been beaten by the heaviness of the question. He was ready to take the Buffalo’s directive, “Devour him”, because he was being told to act. But at the last minute, the Buffalo throws back a question “Why should you spare him?” and this turns the Leopard away from instinct into a more pensive state. He knows why he should spare the Man: the Man saved his life. It’s not an easy decision at all; and all of this is reflected in the Leopard’s slow movement as he crawls on top of the Man’s pack and rests his head to consider things.

I desperately wish I could see more of this performance. I want to see more of this mesmerizing puppetry. I want to know what happens next! Unfortunately, this was as much as the original PBS program showed and so it is all I have to share with you.

Watching each of the characters, it’s very clear how much the contrast of fast and slow actions, of movement and stillness, can give to a performance. It reminds me of Victor Navone’s post about Three Speeds.

I love watching these puppet performances so much. To be honest, I had intended these Here Come The Puppets posts to be merely a 3-part series, this being the third and final part. But I am tempted to revisit other performances from the old PBS special as well, so keep your eyes on this space. There is a very real chance that I will post even more before too long, and I am all too happy to be able to share my thoughts about them. I look forward to yours as well.

Cheers!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

This video is a real treat. Jim Henson, who is rarely seen without any Muppets, sits down for a talk with Albrecht Roser, one of the world’s finest marionettists. Most of us know Jim Henson because of his wide influence on all kinds of media that most of us have grown up with. That is the context we know him in. One of the things I love about this interview is that we see Jim Henson in the context he clearly casts himself: the history and craft of being a puppeteer.

As animators, we often hear about lessons we can learn from The Muppets. One of the major points discussed here is that of a limited character. How many of us have been frustrated by a rig that didn’t have a full range of motion? And how many of us have seen a talented animator give emotions and feelings to nothing more than a bouncing ball?

“Like you do if you direct a show. You call from someone, from an actor, not what he can not do: you try to find out what he can do best.”

There’s such power in that small statement.

For example, you can’t make a bouncing ball wave its arms frantically as if it’s agitated and upset. But you can look closely at your bouncing ball and think about how the ball would act if it were agitated ad upset.

Taking this idea a step further, philosophically: Find your own strengths and play to those. Some people can cook a hell of a meal, but can’t play a lick on the piano. Some people can organize a business plan, but are not very good drivers. Some people are great athletes but not very good actors. Even as an animator, there are some people who are amazing with soft and subtle scenes, while others can come up with a sight gag and timing that will knock you out of your chair with laughter. Find your strengths and play to those.

But back down in the world of rigs and characters, Roser and Henson talk about how to take a simple character and fool the audience into thinking that there’s much more complexity going on. This rings so very true for me as an animator. I often find myself overthinking my characters in a real three-dimensional space instead of being concerned with how the performance will come across to the viewer. In some ways, it’s the audience as much as the animator who brings the character to life. If you endow you character with emotion and intent, the audience will be able to project their own ideas of a living and breathing character onto your Rat Chef or your Green Ogre or your Downloaded Free Rig.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, it’s our responsibility to build a bridge between our characters and the audience, and if we’re successful the audience will feel invited to suspend their disbelief over that bridge. ‘Cuz it’s a suspension bridge. Get it?

Moving right along.

The last part of this clip blows me away. Roser demonstrates a marrionette made of five beads and two scarves. (I see only one scarf, but I’ll give Roser the benefit of the doubt here) This is, I’m guessing, analogous to the animator’s Flour Sack test. Watch this puppet dance–see how Roser subtly manipulates the five strings so that we see the puppet shift its weight and balance over each foot as it dances. Even before the dancing begins, while the two men talk, you can see that Roser holds the puppet so that it sits up on the ground, as if it is simply waiting to be told what to do. He could easily let all of the strings droop until he’s ready for the puppet to perform, but seeing this relaxed sitting pose creates (for me, at least) such an intimate relationship between the puppet and the puppeteer. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are animators who feel this same intimate connection with the characters they animate.

Albrecht Roser still performs and teaches in Germany. You can find out more about this incredibly talented man at www.albrecht-roser.de

Stay tuned for the final installment of Here Come The Puppets, coming up soon!

(note: this post is part of the Here Come The Puppets category here at the Midnight Diaries. Be sure to check out the full category for other selections from this spectacular program)

“Here Come The Puppets!” was the title of a one hour PBS special hosted by Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog. I had this program on VHS tape when I was a kid, and although the tape has been lost over the years, I recently found someone online who made me a digital copy of the program. There is so much craft and skill from all over the world in this one-hour overview of the festival! I want to share some of the eye-opening performances with you.

Okay–now, you animators out there, I know you want to see something awesome. So check this out:

(it’s about 30mb, but worth every second of the loading time, I promise you)

This is Shari Lewis, an extraordinary puppeteer and a mainstay of children’s entertainment for decades. The performance is from 1980 at the UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette) Festival–the puppetry festival’s 13th year, but the first time it was ever held in the United States.

Incidentally, I don’t know why it took 13 years to bring the festival stateside, but I would guess that it has something to do with how we view puppetry in our culture. We tend to think puppets existing solely in the realm of younger audiences; in other countries around the world, puppets entertain not only children, but also adult audiences with deep and complex stories with mature themes and subject matter. This alone is enough to make many American animators feel a kinship with puppetteers. But the similarities only begin there.

There is so much to be impressed by in this four minute clip. The most obvious thing, I think, is Lewis’s ventriloquism. It’s flawless, isn’t it? And while it takes a heaping amount of skill to pull off this kind of thing, there is much more going on here than there appears to be on the surface.

I recently heard an old interview with Frank Oz. He mentioned that most Muppet fans were excited to learn that he was the voice of Bert, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and so many other familiar characters. And he was always happy to accept the fans’ enthusiasm. However he also stressed that performing with a puppet is much more than doing a voice. Puppetry is acting. Puppetry is taking an inanimate object and making an audience believe that the puppet is a living, breathing soul with thoughts and emotions of its own. (once again, animators, does this sound familiar)

Assuming you haven’t already, watch the Shari Lewis clip again. Tell me, is there a moment when you don’t believe that Lambchop is a living and thinking creature? I can’t find even a second when there appears to be only one person in front of the microphone. There are always two distinct characters: Shari Lewis and Lambchop. It’s all in the details, and I want to take a close look at three particular details that blow my mind here.

“Ladies and Gentlemen…” Shari Lewis says, and then Lambchop parenthetically adds “I love this” before the introduction continues. I can just imagine how much attention was paid to the rehearsal and performance of this moment. Notice that Shari Lewis is looking the other direction when Lambchop speaks to the audience, and then how she acknowledges Lambchop with a quick glance as if she hadn’t expected the little lamb to speak in the middle of the introduction. Think about how much that contributes to the illusion of two people on stage! You can see little bits like this throughout the entire four-minute clip. And while it seems spontaneous, I’m almost certain that it takes years and years of observation and practice to incorporate this little throw-away moment into your performance. Think of the hours spent crafting and perfecting this tiny little gesture, just so that the performance would be all that more believable.

Here’s another:

Now clearly, Lambchop has not actually spit into Shari’s face. And Shari is not actually been surprised that Lambchop punctuated the word “supporting” so harshly. But every movement in Shari’s neck, head, and face says “Oh my, I didn’t expect you to nearly attack me with spittle.” The moment is even sweetened by the split-second glance she gives to the audience, as if to say “Can you believe she just did that?? How rude!” Once again, this tiny moment furthers the illusion that there are two separate personalities playing off each other up on stage, rather than just one person whose gestures and vocalizations have been tightly choreographed.

One more, similar to the first and just as subtle:

Here’s another:

She thanks her own hand! Do you see that?? Look at the way Lambchop picks up her head, then notices that the microphone has swung a little too far from Shari’s mouth and then adjusts it. This is, essentially, a technical problem–how do you adjust a microphone when you have no use of your hands? (and it wasn’t until this very moment that I recognized that Shari Lewis’s hands are completely hidden and useless the entire time–consider that!) Having Lambchop adjust the mic’s position and then thanking Lambchop is an eloquent and wonderfully transparent way of making sure the audience is never distracted from the illusion.

Now, if you’re so inclined, go back to the top of this post and watch the entire performance again. I haven’t even gotten in to the song, which is brilliant. Find all of those moments that are a testament to Shari Lewis’s talent at bringing Lambchop to life. If you want to be even more impressed, think about how limited Lambchop is as a puppet: the only parts the puppeteer can control are her mouth and, kinda, her eyes–her arms and legs just stick out there, moving only as a reaction to what the rest of her body is doing. Think about that the next time you feel that you can’t animate a good scene with a limited character rig.

There will be more discussion on limited puppetry in the next “Here Come The Puppets” post, so stay tuned!

Friends, I had such a big rant built up for this post. It was going to go something like this:

One of my biggest frustrations when posing a character is the lack of clothes to interact with. In particular, pockets. Any time I try to do some video reference for a scene, I usually end up putting at least one hand in a pocket, or hooking my thumbs into my pocket, or something like that. Then I review what I’ve recorded and I think “Dammit, I can’t do that! We don’t have the simple CG technology to put hands in pockets! This is a fundamental flaw in the characters we animate, especially given how often I put my hands in my pockets! It’s as if I’m being asked to animate a character with no clothes on!”

To demonstrate my angry point, I planned to post a ton of pictures showing examples of actors with their hands on their hips, or in their pockets; the types of things that we are unable to do as CG animators. Something like this:

But I was in for a surprise. You see, despite having a bunch of really great video clips from movies on my hard drive, those two pictures were just about the only poses I could find to prove my point.

Most of the pictures I grabbed demonstrated that there are many many natural poses that don’t require your hands to be interacting with anything at all. Have a look:

This is a very strong and defiant pose from All About Eve. Arms stiff and proud at the side, hands balled into fists, one of them clasping a purse.

This, of course, is from an episode of Seinfeld. The most obvious hand in this shot is George bipping Elaine’s nose. But notices George’s other hand, resting casually at his side. Not in his pocket, on his hip, or folded across his chest–it’s just hanging there.

The Dude, from The Big Lebowski, checks to make sure the path is clear before snooping around Jackie Treehorn’s house. Once again, hands pretty much relaxed at the sides, closely following the line of action of the rest of the body. In this case, I think that they add a sense of comedy to the pose.

Two poses to look at in this shot from Beverly Hills Cop. The white-shirted manager has his hands dangling limply at his side (with apparently a pretty severe case of bowler’s arm), while the security guard’s arms hang in front of him in a way that almost feels unnatural–if nothing else, the add to his lummox quality.

 
All of these examples show arms that hand at an actor’s sides, demonstrating that you can very well treat your character as if they were naked–you don’t need to slip your hand into a pocket in order to stand at rest.

Of course, they don’t need to just hang at your sides, either.

I recently finished reading Steve Martin’s new memoir, Born Standing Up. It was a pleasant read, especially if you are interested in a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make it as a stand-up comedian (and there are parallels you could draw to the career path of a professional animator). And I only mention it in this post because the hardcover book is bound in front and in back with a two-page spread of contact sheets from a Steve Martin arena performance in the 1970’s. It’s a great reminder of how varied and exaggerated you can go with your poses, and still not rely on having your character’s hands on their hips on in their pockets.

I hear that there’s a common refrain among beginning actors when they first get onto a stage or in front of a camera. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my hands!” They agonize over it, and I can definitely understand. For some reason, when you start thinking about performing you become hyper-aware of your hands. They feel heavy and gangly and in the way. You don’t want to over-gesture everything, but you also don’t want to lumber around with your hands shoved into your pockets all of the time.

Perhaps it just takes time before you start feeling more natural with your hands being out there in the open. I would love to hear from anyone who has gotten past the “I don’t know what to do with my hands” stage of things, and how you overcame it.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to be more observant about the different ways people use their hands when they’re not interacting with their clothing. I’m certain that it’s a major element in getting your characters to feel more natural and open.