Dwayne the REINDEER Puppet!

Dwayne is a brand new professional half-body puppet hand made in England by Hellyer's Puppet Workshop. He measures approximately 21inches (53.5cm) tall from the top of his antlers to his waist. He also has an excellent arm span of approximately 40inches (102cm) allowing real scope for expressive arm gestures. Dwayne is a 'live hand' (or Human Arm) puppet - so you can put your hands inside his to enable him to pick up objects and use props during your show without the need for elaborate sets ups. He's a great fun character who will really engage audiences of any age... his character is of a juvenile, oddball reindeer!

Like all the puppets made in Hellyer's Puppet Workshop Dwayne has been made out of great quality materials. Dwayne's body is made out of durable and lightweight mini-cell foam and his head is made out of durable and flexible reticulated foam. His body is covered completely in two colours of 1" pile natural coloured deluxe faux fur fabric. He is lined in dark brown polar fleece for added comfort and his neck is separated from his shoulders to allow greater flexibility of movement.   

Check out more photos of him on eBay!

European Puppet Ministry Festival 2011

I can't quite believe I went to my first puppet festival 15 years ago - and have been to one every year of my life ever since!

This year One Way UK's EPMF was held in Derby and Reading and I was fortunate enough to be invited to teach at both festivals. I was running workshops on a variety of subjects including puppetry for YouTube and a range of basic and advanced puppetry techniques.

I love visiting or working at puppet festivals as there is always so much creativity around the place which always help to accelerate my own creative process for my own projects. These festival was no different, but they were tiring too! It's tough teaching classes all day, I think across the two events 500 puppeteers attended, which is cool. After the second festival a bunch of us went out for a post-festival feast and hilarity ensued!

Sesame Street Live: Review

So yesterday I took my boy to see Sesame Street Live: "Elmo Makes Music"and I thought I'd write a quick blog about it.

Firstly I should mention my son is 21mnths old... so he doesn't have the longest attention span in the word, but he loves Elmo and Sesame Street. My wife and I thought we'd take a bit of a gamble and see if he would sit the a show. My son watches clips of Sesame Street on YouTube all the time (he has his own 'favourites' playlist of them!) so whilst Sesame Street isn't on normal TV in the UK he knows the characters (We occasionally get to see the Northern Irish 'Sesame Tree" which is good... but it's not the same).

As soon as we walked into The Capitol Theatre in Horsham I knew we were in for a good show, the stage set (even with curtains closed) was impressive and clean. The show was only on for one day at The Capitol... but it looked like a full house, there were certainly no spare seats anywhere near us. Just seeing the Sesame Street Live logo above the stage at the start made my son feel the need to randomly shout "Elmo"and point, which was encouraging, at least he knew why we were there!

Once the characters came out on stage I was completely relieved... the characters were brilliantly made and very clean - in fact I am tempted to say that these suits were brand new they were so clean. Back in 2008 I was invited to help out with a short stint on Rainbow Live (initially as Zippy, then George). Whilst it was great fun to work on, and obviously I am thankful for the experience I have to say that the characters and costumes were all showing their age... at points embarrassingly so. Anyway the Sesame Street costumes were fantastic!

There were a couple of little slip ups, but otherwise the show went very well, certainly my son thought it was fantastic. During a group dance in the opening half Zoe got a little over-excited and slipped over right at the front of the stage, but recovered well. Big Bird also lost a piece of foam halfway through the first half. The foam fell out of the costume and Bird Bird walked off, not to return until the second half. Having not seen the show before I don't know if this is related or merely coincidence.

I'm not sure how many costume changes happened during the show, but Cookie Monster played a bigger role in the first half than the second... and having selected his cookie-jar shaker to be included in the band... it was a shame he didn't appear to play it! The only other slightly negative comment would be that Zoe and Abby Cadabby's voices were a little hard to understand because of the speed, pitch and accent.

However this is all nit-picking. The show was great and it held my son's attention all the way through. The crowd were getting involved with all the songs, clapping and singing along. I would love to see the show again, and will certainly keep my eye out for more Sesame Street Live's in the future!

Take Care - Dave

Turtle Puppet

Recently I made a Turtle puppet for Surrey County Council. It was for an annual Childminders' Network meeting they host. They didn't request a turtle specifically - they told me to make whatever I wanted to. It was great to get the opportunity to make something totally new and without any limits on what I could do.
Why did you choose a turtle if you were allowed to make anything Dave? 
My son is 18months old and last week he started saying 'tuh-tull' whilst sitting on his "finding Nemo"baby-changing mat. Simple really.
So here are a couple of photos of the Turtle under construction and a video of the completed character. I hope you like him.

 This is is the turtle with the basic head built and the shell still under construction

Here I'm finishing off the lining of the shell - you can see the fins already stitched in place

Wonnacott Wolf's Antique Valuation Challenge - Episode 1

It's a bit of fun - I hope you like it :)

Pierre's new show

It's 2011 and Pierre the great is back on the Tube of You... enjoy :)

take care - Dave

'Terry' the Urban Fox - full body puppet

If you'd love a fun fox puppet, then you're going to want to meet: 

Terry the Urban Fox

Terry is a brand new professional full-body puppet hand made in England by Hellyer's Puppet Workshop. He measures approximately 34inches (86.5cm) tall from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He also has an excellent arm span of approximately 40inches (102cm) allowing real scope for expressive arm gestures (two arm rods with elastic bands are included!). He has a bushy tail which follows him everywhere he goes... it has a wire inside it to help give it shape and also to allow you to pose it just the way you want it. He's a great fun character who will really engage audiences of any age... he's a friendly urban fox!

Terry is an unusual character and as such he has an unusual mouth action. He is designed so that his upper jaw does all the moving when he talks rather than the much smaller lower jaw. This is the opposite to many other hand puppets you will see but it enables him to 'sniff out' what's going on in town with a much more believable action. 

Like all the puppets made in Hellyer's Puppet Workshop Terry has been made out of great quality materials. Terry's body is made out of durable and lightweight mini-cell foam and his head is made out of durable and flexible reticulated foam. His body is covered completely in 1" pile chestnut brown faux fur fabric with his head and tail being covered in 1" pile chestnut brown deluxe faux fur. Details on his ears and hands are in 1" white fun fur, Terry also has a keychain on the waistband of his trousers and a dog-tag round his neck. He is lined in polar fleece for added comfort. 

Note: This professional quality puppet has been hand made by Hellyer's Puppet Workshop for adults, it is not a toy. Hellyer's Puppets are used in many countries in shows and films to enthral and entertain. If you'd like to find out more about our puppets and how they're made search online for: "Hellyers Puppet Workshop"

We hope you love this character as much as we do - Happy Bidding :)