Happy New Year from Hellyer's Puppet Workshop

So we've successfully reached the end of 2010... a year packed full of great memories!

This year in the summer I was fortunate enough to visit the United States again to teach puppetry at I-Fest (you can buy DVDs of the workshops I taught from OneWayStreet.com). Despite the festival being fantastic as usual (and being looked after so well by the One Way Street team - Thanks to Todd and Susan!) the highlight of the trip this year had to be the visit to see the Blue Man Group in Chicago! Dave and June Privett from Playsoup took us along and we had a fantastic time!

Also in the summer I was able to visit my friend Phil Fletcher again who is a fantastic puppeteer and puppet builder. We've known each other since the good old days when MySpace ruled the earth and Facebook hadn't even been invented :) Phil is now working at the BBC in London and he (and Warrick - also a puppeteer at the BBC) were kind enough to show us round TV Centre and their studio.

Later on in the year I also taught at the One Way UK annual puppet festival in Reading, I have been teaching at that particular festival for the last 13 or so years so it was great to be asked back again (must be doing something right). 

And all this activity has been squeezed in between puppet builds and some fairly major planning sessions for the future of Hellyer's Puppet Workshop (the fruits of which will be seen in 2011).  I'll leave you with two videos... the first is Pierre's big end of year 2010 quiz:

The second is a wrap up from me and a possible New Year resolution.

All the best for 2011!
Take care - Dave

I-Fest 2010 - Friday

So yesterday was my favourite day of I-Fest so far! last night we had two fantastic feature performances, one by Maegan Bruce and another by Ferrel Marr. Both of these performances were very different from the rest of the feature performances of the week - not least in terms of the number of performers, but also in terms of style of delivery. Every time I come to I-Fest there is one night when I watch a performance and say to myself "that is what I came to I-Fest for"... last night was that night for me.


Maegan Bruce is a ventriloquist, puppeteer and artist. Her ventriloquism and puppetry were technically excellent, but that wasn't really what caught my eye... she finished her performance with a brilliant piece of painting. It was fantastic. What stuck out to me was not the technical or artistic ability with which she painted but the fact that you could see that she was doing it with a raw, honest passion. I love the fact that sometimes the simplest things can make the biggest impact.


Ferrel Marr's performance similarly blew me away. You know when you have a family get together there is always that relative who has the rest of the family eating out of their hand when they tell a story, seemingly without making any effort? Well last night Ferrel did that to I-Fest! A beautiful mix of marionettes, puppets, blacklight painting and song made up his beautiful patchwork performance.


Both performers last night did not have any real glitz or glamour about what they did, they didn't have a massive show stopping routine with hundreds of performers involved... but they were true to themselves and they did what they wanted to do, excellently! If there was an object lesson hiding in the feature presentations last night it would have been: don't ever try and be who you're not, be yourself - you have a unique gift.


Each one of us has a unique gift and we should all be different when we perform, after all variety is the spice of life :) Don't ever feel under pressure to emulate someone else because their style is more popular than yours. Both Maegan and Ferrel performed brilliantly engaging pieces last night with techniques others people wouldn't think twice about using... it was great to see!


This is my last blog about I-Fest "on location"... I hope you've enjoyed them.
Take care - Dave

I-Fest 2010 - Thursday

OK so Wednesday was hard for me as the jet lag caught up with me... but Thursday was great fun!


The day started with a LAB workshop working through a song routine, it was all pretty simple stuff but the group responded really well and they are going to perform what they came up with on main stage Friday morning. After lunch I got to teach my favourite workshop "Getting to grips with arm rods". It was very well attended and I felt it went well... I am pleased to report I keep on getting stopped in the corridors here being told how much people found it helpful which is always very encouraging!


Thursday afternoon was special for a whole other reason though... we took a trip to Walmart! It's sad I know but Walmart is super cheap in comparison to the UK. I bought my son a few cute little outfits and even got a couple of surprise gifts for my wife which she might like (I hope she does). The highlight for me was I picked up the new Sony Bloggie HD camera for cheap. The exchange rate worked in my favour and I got a good deal.


When I got back to I-Fest Dave Privett had launched his new Puppet Building DVD... another purchase was made! His series is fantastic - if you haven't bought them yet I would advise you to, go to www.playsoup.com for details.


Thursday evening was the blacklight competition which is always a highlight of the week too - so all in all it was a great day!


Take care - Dave

I-Fest 2010 - Wednesday

So Wednesday was a hard day for me. As you can tell I'm doing this update a lot later in the day than I would normally... it's because jet lag kicked in! Yesterday afternoon I felt like all of a sudden my body switched back to UK time and just couldn't make it through the rest of the day - not good!


So Wednesday was internationally day at I-Fest, the evening performance was dominated by all the international guests. We saw performances from teams hailing from Puerto Rito, Canada, Australia and the UK. The     international guests also had a reception in the President's dining hall after their presentation whilst the Improv invitational went on... sadly I had to miss out on both these fun things as I was utterly shattered and did the very rock-n-roll thing of going to bed early!


Anyway looking forward to writing up Thursday already... I have made some exciting new purchases!


Take care - Dave

I-Fest 2010 - Wednesday

It's 7:50 and I'm sat at the PC again next to Mr Barrett as we both check emails and try and work out what the time is in England.

Yesterday Gene Cordova and the Bonilla family performed on the main stage in the evening... It was cool. Gene had a nice style of storytelling where he started a couple of threads and kept switching between the two stories. The Bonilla's did some great work too, my particular favourite was the part when Jason explained how to do some silk magic with the assistance of his lightening quick son - he tried to convince us that the reason the silk disappeared was because his son shot across the stage faster than light and stole it from his hand (they even did a slow motion action replay to show how it all worked).

I did my first workshop yesterday morning which was "learning great lip sync", 68 people attended and as far as I'm aware it went pretty well. Everyone that I spoke to had a good time. Today I am on a Q&A panel with Dave Privett and David Pannebecker. That should be fun, but these are the two people who inspired me to start building in the first place.

Yesterday I watched the Lip Sync Challenge in Kresge auditorium, and sat with the Smile Puppet team (from England) who had two puppeteers who had entered... both made it through to the final! We'll find out in chapel this morning how well they got on but they are at least guaranteed 2nd and 3rd place which is excellent!

Today is international day at I-Fest so there's the reception tonight... I'm not sure I can make it yet - but I'll try.

Take care folks speak to you soon
Dave

I-Fest 2010 - Tuesday

It's 7:58am, I've just had breakfast and now it's time for a cheeky check on the computer before the day kicks off in ernest. Paul Morley is checking his emails next to me (and probably the football transfer gossip too if he's honest).


Doug Nearpass and Lenny Corliss were spreading the good news of MacBooks at breakfast today... and following both my brothers making the big switch from PC to Mac the strength of the case in becoming overwhelming (now I just need a spare $2,000!).


It's funny the things that stick out at you when you go someplace new (sorry I'm already adopting my American English vocabulary which I slip into all too easily these days), but my parents have joined me this year for their first ever I-Fest. This is their first visit to America since 1999... so day 1 of I-Fest, what stuck out to them most? Fireflies! I was taking them over to the competition in the Kresge Auditorium from the Ludwig Centre. Just as we were leaving Ludwig I said "of course when you go out at night here the thing you want to keep your eyes open for is fireflies"... as if I had planned it 8 or more fireflies began to dance away in the bush right in front of us. My parents love gardening and wildlife etc so they nearly feinted!


FYI Paul just left and was replaced by Harry Barrett checking his emails... Harry is definitely not checking up on football gossip! I don't know why I feel it's necessary to share these facts with you - I just am :)


On a more puppet related note S.T.A.G.E.D. Puppet team from Omaha, NE performed on the main stage last night with some really great blacklight routines. Also Joe Bruce from Weatherford, TX did a great ventriloquist routine with a really neat quick draw in the middle of it. This is my 7th visit to I-Fest and the performances in the evenings have always been a highlight for me. I am quite a visual learner so I love to see new things and new ideas. 


Well today I have my first workshop that I am teaching this year. It's "learning great lip sync", it should be fun. I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow.


Take care folks - Dave

I-Fest 2010: Monday

So here we are again at ONU waiting for the start of I-Fest. It's great to be here again and I'm really looking forward to spending a week with some really creative puppeteers and performers.

I'm excited that a puppet festival in the USA has attracted so many puppeteers from the UK - there's loads of us over here! There are 11 from Smile Puppet Ministry, 10 from St Peters Puppets, 2 from Upbeat Puppets and 1 from The Puppet Factory (and me of course). This is probably the biggest English contingent that I can ever remember being over here in all the times I have been to I-Fest (this is my 7th visit).

This is going to be my busiest I-Fest to date too... I have lots to do in terms of workshops and the occasional performance, but the thing I looking forward to most has to be the performances. I love being at a creative one-stop-shop! There are so many talented performers here, it's a great place to pick up ideas and get inspired.

Hopefully I'll be able to sneak onto a computer often enough to update this blog throughout the week to keep you up to date with what's going on. I'm sorry to say the YouTube videos will probably not be flowing this week as my Kodak camera has died on me again! If I can I'll borrow a camera I will.

Anyway - see you soon, take care!
Dave

Wolf puppet building video diary

So over the last couple of weeks I've been making a video diary of one of my puppet building projects. The character is Wolfgang the Wolfhound. You can check out the series of videos below to watch him being made:



So he is all finished up now and this is what he looks like. As you can see he has large and almost bulbous yellow/cream round eyes. I was slightly concerned whilst building that these would make the character look mean or evil but I think you will agree he has kept a very open and happy face despite the eye colouration. 

You can't quite see them in this picture but Wolfgang has two moulded teeth that sit right below his whiskers on his top jaw... he has quite a large overbite on the top so that they can sit there happily without fear of them being knocked off by the lower jaw.

This character is one that I have build specifically for I-Fest which I am going to in 6 weeks... it's always great to build new characters to show when you go and visit fellow puppeteers. If you're going to I-Fest I look forward to seeing you there... be sure to come and say hi to Wolfgang!

Take care - Dave

Summer of fun

I am pleased to say that just in time for the weather improving the orders are winging their way into the workshop. It already looks like it is going to be a busy summer of building. I am really excited to be trying out a couple of new techniques… I have a bunch of mental sketches in my mind’s eye which hopefully will become puppets before too long.

Also coming up is I-Fest, I received my conference schedule this morning… it’s going to be great! It’s a brilliant opportunity to meet other puppeteers and puppet builders to share tips and techniques. I have been 6 times already and I can easily say it’s the best puppet festival that I have been to. I’m really looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new ones.

If you’re going… see you there!
Take care - Dave

I-Fest workshop leading confirmed

I have confirmed with the events team at One Way Street the workshops that I am teaching at I-Fest this year... it's really exciting!

I was delighted to spot that the brand new One Way Street blog that they have written a post about Hellyer's Puppet Workshop [and me :)]. It's great to get support from an organisation who have helped me so much over the years - so thanks guys it's much appreciated!

If you're going to I-Fest I'll see you there!
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

I-Fest roundup 4 (only one more to go)

The thing that really makes experiences like I-Fest special is the people you meet and the friendships you make. As always it was great to meet up with friends from all over the USA who we would never normally get to meet up with. Dave and June Privett, Todd and Amy Liebenow, Paul and Christine Morley to name but a few. This year however we travelled all the way to Chicago and spent the majority of our time with a Puppet team from Essex! Essex is just an hours drive from home… so we certainly took the scenic route to meet up with Smile Puppet Ministry. John and Ella Havell lead Smile Puppet Ministry. There are a really active puppet team who perform all over the world. I am really looking forward to meeting up with John and Ella now we’re all back in the UK. It is one of those strange situations… I knew John and Ella before I-Fest, I think I first met them about 6 years ago, but I had never really worked with them on anything. John and I were both conference assistants over the week and really hit it off. John has an automatic head start in life – he is a Spurs fan!

Here you can see being very long-suffering enduring one more of my many stories. Hopefully within the next couple of months I will be able to bring you more about Smile, as we are hoping to meet up towards the end of the summer.

All the best – Dave

Puppet Gladiators... I-Fest roundup 3

One Way Street staff Ryan Spittler and Branden Treu created a brand new event competition for I-Fest 2008: Puppet Gladiators!

The contest brought about some great drama and was really a great addition to the festival feel of the week. The two gladiator rod style puppets are equipped with a sword in one hand and shield in the other. As far as my memory serves me the joints of the hands, elbows, shoulders and necks are held together by magnets. The point of the game being once combat starts you aim to “disarm” or behead your opponent, whilst keeping your own gladiator in tact. Sadly I was leading workshops during the preliminary rounds of competition so I couldn't join in the contest, but it certainly looked like great fun!



I have tried to search the Internet for clips… I know someone who was watching the event would have put it on YouTube. Above you can see the best clip I could find.

All the best – Dave

I-Fest report 2

OK - yes I realise that there has been a long wait for this... what can I say? I've been kinda busy.

Right where were we?

So at the beginning of July I posted a blog from I-Fest, I can't honestly say if this was me writing up my workshop notes or me blogging... but this is certainly me on the computer at I-Fest! During the week I was working as a Conference Assistant and a workshop leader. I have lead lots of workshops in the UK and quite a few around Europe as well but I had never taught in the USA before and for some reason I found myself to be very nervous. I think this was because I-Fest has played a huge part in my puppetry career and many of the "defining moments" I can think of in my puppetry experience all happened there.

I am pleased to report that the workshops went a lot better than I had expected them to go. By the end of the week the "Getting to grips with Arm Rods" class I lead went so well I would rank it alongside some of my best ever workshops... which was nice. This pic shows me mid flow in the workshop ...it was really fun. I had prepared this workshop just for I-Fest and actually turned out so well it will be a workshop that I will teach more often.

For some reason when I first said I went to I-Fest some people emailed me saying "but aren't you English?" ...Well yes I am, but my wife and I travelled out to Chicago specially for it. BUT if you are in the UK or Europe and you would like to be part of something similar to I-Fest with great puppetry teaching and lots of resources available I recommend you make an effort to get to the European Puppet Ministry Festivals in either Reading or Derby this year! I will be teaching at both and we are expecting to have a great time. Check One Way UK's website for details.

Take care - Dave

I-Fest report number 1

I'm gonna have to do a couple of these to try and explain how the week went. It was a great time and I want to try and share different aspects of the week with you.

Firstly it was great to take Pierre and the gang outside and see them in different surroundings. Here you can see Pierre hanging around on campus. I also managed to get some photos of the other puppets we took out and about (see bottom of post)

My wife and I were invited to take part in the performance on the international evening, this was a fantastic opportunity to share our style of puppetry with the whole festival crowd. There were about 35 people at I-Fest who were international guests so it was nice to have been one of the three teams chosen to perform. You can see a picture of Pierre on stage on Puppetgirl's blog. After the International evening there was a reception for all the international guests... this was a great chance to meet other puppeteers from all over the globe. Possibly the most bizarre thing was meeting another couple from the UK who are full time puppeteers who I had never met before! Funny how these things happen.

More to follow, but that's all for now.
Take care - Dave

Checking in from I-Fest

I'm sitting here in a computer room in the College where I-Fest is being held... and i've just found Internet access so I thought I would post a quick blog on here.
It's been a great week so far with loads of great feature performers and lots of workshops and competitions to join in. It's great to meet so many other performers and share ideas and experiences (there are about 750 people here). I really look forward to getting home and down loading my photos so I can share some of the experience with you a bit better.
Last night was the blacklight (UV puppetry) competition and there were 10 entries! all in the competition took about 2 hours to get through... that's a lot of blacklight! I didn't even try to get any photos as using flash photography spoils the effect and sadly they all get camera-shake unless the puppet is standing perfectly still (which isn't going to happen).
We leave on Sunday so we will probably not be posting anything up until about Tuesday when we have recovered, but photos will follow that's for sure.
Take care - David

I-Fest here we come!

I have mentioned before that I will be going to I-Fest this year with my wife Shelley. It's going to be a great time and we are really looking forward to it. I have just got home from visiting the local post office to pick up some US dollars in anticipation of picking up a bargain in the exhibits hall. As I was picking up the money I had a bit of a think back to all the visits to I-Fest I had made before when I was younger. I went 5 times between the ages of 16 and 21... it was great, it was a really good place to watch and learn from very experienced puppeteers who were happy to help and encourage you on. I will try and take lots of photos over the next week so I can share some of the moments with you all... and i'm sure there will be time for a quick video at some point.

If you're going to I-Fest, i'll see you there!
All the best - Dave

ps Happy Independence Day to all across the pond!

Is it just me?

Is it just me or is this year flying past? I keep on meaning to write updates on here and whenever i get the chance i check the date of my last post and i am shocked it was so long ago.

I mentioned before that I have been in talks with the Museum in Peru about building some characters for them... that's all still in progress. I am building prototypes for approval at the moment. It's nice to be involved in a project which is challenging because it is completely different from the norm. Normally people want cartoon style characters with lots of stand out features etc, but this job is different. The museum quite rightly has a very clear goal of what the want to see made, and it's a great challenge to work towards this. Apart from anything else it's a great discipline!

This summer I will be attending I-Fest for the first time in 6 or 7 years! It's really exciting and I hope to learn a lot. I am excited to be teaching my first ever workshops out there this year, which is a great honour for me because I am someone who has learnt so much at I-Fest workshops down the years. I have been fortunate enough to be on tow puppetry Dream Teams at I-Fest in the past so I have some very fond memories of that particular puppet festival and I am really looking forward to meeting some old friends while I'm out there. I am planning to travel with Harry Barrett from One Way UK, so it looks like it's shaping up to be an old school reunion!

Have a great Easter - Dave