[Excerpted From: Mastering Marionettes Part 2] So you can have him come down and...
[Excerpted From: Mastering Marionettes Part 2] with Scott Land
The hand...
Which in this case,
was just placed as a single arm,
but it gives you the premise
of what you can do if you had two.
And I would sit in front of a mirror,
trying to find what the puppet can do.
Not over moving it,
but the weight of the character,
and where the joints are placed,
as well as the string placement,
will tell you the attitude.
And you allow that to find the character.
Everything is about possibilities.
Now as I am moving him,
I can say to myself,
"I think he needs more weight in his heels",
so I would add weight in the heels for sure.
If you notice that the eyes close,
again, when I naturally lift the head up,
and then the mouth is right here.
That would be the mouth moving- that.
Whop, now see the hand went too far.
So what if I did it up here?
There you go.
I would also add some elbow strings.
Back here, to pull that back.
Let's try a bow.
And I also would add another ball in the neck,
so that the head isn't so close to the chest.
I would give it some length in there.
So these would be slight adjustments that I could do,
and then put the strings on him, as I see.
And I would fill all the holes with the Bondo,
and then I would finish the head.
I would countersink the other pivot points,
and of course, I would fix the jaw.
We'll do that, and we'll show him as a completed character.
The other part you have to consider,
is when cover him with the fabric.
It's going to change the movement.
So you want to make it as loose fitting as possible,
and get fabrics that slide easily with each other.
Okay, let me show you another character,
that's been finished.
But again, the controller,
basic, airplane controller.
Extension of the legs,
from a detachable leg bar.
Run through strings for the hands.
It's all pretty much there.
And if you put on some cool music,
you could find a new dance,
this character would pick up pretty quickly.
This is a combination of the two controllers that I was talking about,
if you'll notice it's at a 45 degree angle.
This is ergonomically more comfortable
and correct for my hand.
The trigger right here, is the mouth,
that we discussed before.
It's all right here.
And next to my trigger are the eyebrows.
So I have access to those right there.
Three strings on the head.
One, two, three.
Those control the head.
So again, the head looks up,
the lip sync's always there,
the eyebrows, and in this case,
there's a specialty string for the ears.
We have a detachable leg bar.
So he can do his walk.
And you want to sit and walk a marionette for hours.
Get used to that,
because when you walk them,
you make the main controller go up and down
at the same point.
Just like a human being,
your body moves up and down as you walk.
He has run through strings.
So I can control both hands,
with one string.
Again, the audience doesn't know that.
It looks very complex to them,
but I am doing it all with one string.
Now, because he has eyebrows,
the hand strings go through the eyebrow.
Sometimes they get caught behind, like that,
and then it becomes in his face.
I use that, in the act.
So if it does that, then he does that.
They think it's funny,
they don't realize that he's getting tangled, it's okay.
He does the one point where it's Beyonce,
and she's singing you know, "Put a ring on this",
and she says "Put your hands up"
and he goes like this.
And then the little dance
all starts from there.
And again, this is me practicing
in front of a mirror for years.
And the puppet will tell you what it can do.
Now, there's a special string on this leg bar.
That does the extender for the legs,
so I can have him go into splits.
And then, because they're always so acrobatic,
the puppet goes down and does...
chin to his toe.
And looks at the audience,
and does a take...
and stands up, and then goes into the ears.
This was all through discovery.
I didn't have a routine written,
I just made it up over years of doing it.
And again, while I was a kid,
at the age of 12,
I'm sitting in front of a mirror,
practicing with a marionette for hours on end,
while everybody else is out playing baseball or sports.
This was my thing.
I never knew it was going to be a profession,
but it started at the age of 10,
and by 12, I was doing shows.
It's fun, it really is.
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