Geoff the Parrot's view of The Great Adventure

Here's a quick back stage tour of The Great Adventure... This video isn't going to change the world, but you won't understand my next video unless I upload this one :)



Take care - Dave

Geoff the Parrot puppet!

Regular readers will know that I have been working on a project called The Great Adventure... you will have seen already that I helped to design the cooker for the show, which I was responsible for animating. However the cooker was not my main reason for working on the show - no no... the main reason for me working on the show was Geoff the Parrot!

You can see here that Geoff is a friendly looking parrot who has movable wings. My challenge with Geoff was to build a parrot puppet whose wings could flap, but without any visible rods.

What I ended up doing was creating L shaped wire skeletons for the wings which pivoted at the edge of the foam body of the puppet. The short end of each L shape has a to rod attached to it which hangs down the inside of the puppet's body. This enables both wings to flap either together or individually depending on how you pull them down.

This is all made possible because the body is is quite simply huge! You can see from the photo of the cast below the size of the completed puppet. The puppet wasn't simply large to fit in all the mechanics, practically speaking it needed to be large as The Great Adventure was performed in a 600 seater auditorium stuck right at the back of the stage... Geoff needed to be large just to be seen!

I am pleased to say Geoff was a huge hit with the live audience - I hope you like him too!

Take care - Dave

The Great Adventure - cooker update

So last time I told you how my good friend Steve had built a cooker for our Christmas production called The Great Adventure. Here's a short video of the cooker at work. It worked a treat in the show... it looked really smart and got some good laughs!

take care - Dave

The Great Adventure

So i've been building the Parrot for The Great Adventure lately... and I also have to build a stove that is animated. Well I use the term "I" in the loosest possible sense here: Steve have actually built the thing, as I have been on Paternity leave for almost t

he entire construction process. I have however graced him with my presence to offer some friendly advice and cut the odd piece of wood here and there.

So here's the artists impression of what we had to build. A kind of "beauty and the beast - esque" cooker which we needed to bring to life with bubbling pots and pans etc. Steve has built the whole body of it and finished it off brilliantly - I am just tinkering with the finished product and giving it some visual interest by animating parts of it.

Here you can see our progress so far:

The window in the middle that you can see is the "wood burning" section of the cooker. This will have a false fire in it which I can show you when completed. The pots and pans on the top of the cooker will bubble and jostle on the top of the stove to indicate a real live cooker is on stage. The small rectangular shapes you see resting on the top on the cooker are the door fronts for the cooker... these will be loosely fixed so we can "leak" smoke out of the doors o show that it is working hard.

This photo shows you how much work we still have to do... we open next Thursday! However we are confident that this will be an excellent asset to the show ans we're looking forward to seeing it completed!

Take care - Dave

I-Fest 2010 is ON!!!

OK, so regular readers of my blog will know that I love I-Fest and have been quite a few times before. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that I-Fest is held in Bourbonnais, Illinois and according to daftlogic.com's distance calculator... I live over 4,000 miles away!

Anyway - the good news is that after taking a break in 2009, I-Fest is back on the calendar for 2010! They have already announced some of their guest speakers and I can tell already that it's going to be good. Check the One Way Street Events fan page on Facebook for all the latest updates.

I can tell what some of you are thinking "that's a Christian puppet festival - why would I want to go to that?"... I would say that you would be in for a pleasant surprise! I find that the standard of teaching and performance by the pros at I-Fest is as good (and in many cases better) than that I have seen at other puppet festivals. Many of the teachers are experts in their own fields and can offer brilliant insights into how you can improve your puppet performance/construction skills. I have written before on here about how much I have enjoyed the festivals, i always associate I-Fest with inspiration and an opportunity to be stretched as a performer.

If you've never been - or never considered going... do it!

Take care - Dave

Puppet Blog Recommendations

As my paternity leave looms large on the horizon I have taken a moment to skip around a few of the puppet sites that I try and check in on regularly. There are two that stand out for me as good ones to recommend... so if you're looking for good puppetry blogs - pay attention!
Puppeteers Unite was on of the first puppet blogs that ever really interested me enough to check back regularly. I have always found that there is a good variety to what is written on their and Tom seems to be one of the most interested people in all forms of puppetry. He is constantly linking to other sites and flagging up things for attention that I would definitely miss otherwise!
So if you have a moment - head on over to puppeteersunite.com

Another blog which I check often is that of Thistledown Puppets. Philip Hatter is definitely one of the best puppet builders I know! Take a minute to check out the range of styles and characters on his site and you'll see what I mean. Some of my favourite characters that he has made come from a musical he wrote called "Bull a puppet musical": check out the video of these characters on this local news website.

So while I'm off learning how to be a dad... take a moment to read these blogs! You'll not regret it.

Take care - Dave

Hellyer's Puppet Workshop is a NURSERY??!?1

OK so those of you who watched the short video series I made over the summer will be aware that in August we had to relocate the Workshop because my wife and I are expecting a baby at the end of October!

It's an exciting time for us as it's our first... hence why puppet related posts have been few and far between recently. I will return to puppet related posts once the impact of this life changing event has settled :)



Take care - Dave

Hellyer's Puppet Workshop - Relocation Project

Some of you who follow me on twitter and youtube will know that over the summer I relocated my Puppet Building Workshop. It was a massive move - but great fun to do! Below is the full playlist from the whole week... enjoy:



Hope you're all well. Take care - Dave

Hellyer's Puppet Workshop Etsy Store now open!

I've been experimenting with Etsy recently with the project I'm leading called Spraid (the spray paint urban art for good causes)... and I've really enjoyed it. So much so I've launched today the HellyersPuppets Etsy store!

The store only has one item so far as it is brand new and I am still trying to work out how best to use it... but that one item is a HPW favourite: Moe.

Moe is a live-hand (or human arm) puppet who is 21" high and has a total arm span of 44". If you want to check him out in his legendary status of first ever item in our Etsy store please click this link :)

Take care - Dave

Monster Puppet: the handover!

So today is the day of the handover! After a week of frantic building the Green Monster (as yet un-named) he is ready to be handed over to the J247 team! Dave (not me.. another Dave) is going to be performing him. It's Dave's first time performing a real puppet character so he is obviously a man ready for a challenge... it's not an easy task for sure!


So what is special about the Green Monster? It can swallow small objects - unlike the majority of hand puppets the back of its mouth is open rather than closed. This alteration enables the character to swallow objects rather than just chew them up and spit them out.

Initially this was not an easy build to get my head around... but once I realized how I should go about it it all fell into place reasonably quickly. I decided to build the body of the puppet first so I could get into the build rather than continually sketching out ideas. I worked backwards in some ways, I completed the whole body and head before I even built the mouth... If I had waited until I had it all figured out before starting I would probably still be here tapping my pencil on a blank sheet of paper!

The J247 team is going to use the Green Monster as a part of their summer program, and if they find he works well they will roll him out as part of a more regular performance. It was a fun challenge to build and I learnt a lot whilst building him. I look forward to making another character that swallows items now I've figured out how it all works :)

Take care - Dave