Pierre's new show

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

take care - Dave

crex81: a simple explanation

OK so many of the regular readers of my blog (well done to both of you!) will know I run a couple of YouTube channels.

hellyersonline is my own vlogging channel… it is anything and everything that I see and do in everyday life. Some of this will be puppet building videos and some of it will be silly comedy ideas and other bits will be holiday and family days etc. This channel aims to please 1 person only – me . I know the quality is mixed and I really don’t mind, I do it for my own amusement… and it amuses me that other people watch.

crex81 is a collection of puppetry videos that I have uploaded. There are no people (real humans) featured on the channel as regulars. I have had human guests and puppet characters interacting with humans… but the star has always remained the puppet. I have never intentionally shown my dace on this channel (it has sneaked into shot once or twice… but that’s another story). One question I do get asked from time to time is - what is crex81 – what does it mean? As you will have picked up from my Spraid blog I wrote a short while ago, I am really into spraycan art. I used to travel a lot and take photos of graffiti all the time. When I first started designing my own tags etc I came up with a name: “Creative Explosion”. Very simply crex was already taken as a username… and I couldn't be bothered to write out CreativeExplosion as a username all the time so I shortened it to crex81.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the latest video offering – Pierre playing Tennis on Wii Sports… it was filmed live and I was genuinely playing it with him. I hope some of the fun of the game translates to the screen it was a real laugh.

Take care - Dave

Happy Valentine's Day folks :)

Ever since the Muppets stormed onto the scene puppetry has been a romantic affair... Miss Piggy constantly chasing the affections of Kermit, and Gonzo with his chickens. It certainly is a far cry from the wife beating antics of Punch and Judy.

So today for all the "lovers and dreamers" out there... here is the crex81 channel's valentines day offering:

I Hear With My Little Ear!

Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to introduce Spam! (Shelley chose the name) Spam has been made entirely out of off-cuts and fabric samples. This was more out of necessity than any big eco-friendly drive on my part.... but it did make me think a lot about how easy it is to throw something away which you can actually still use. Spam was an adventure from start to finish. Because of the confines of only using scraps (hence his working name of scrappy) Spam's shape and size was very much dictated by what odd bits of foam i had left. This was a nightmare at first, but as soon as i got into it i really enjoyed the challenge, in fact i am glad to say there is at least one more puppets worth of off-cuts laying around - watch this space!

This photo shows Spam's skull before it was covered in fabric. It was a great fun shape to cover, but not one i would choose again :)

You can see from the picture that the pieces of foam are not very large, one of the things i did to make this interesting for myself was try and cut the foam as little as possible. This pushed the design in a direction i would never have gone normally. All i did to trim them foam was to make the pattern symmetrical. As you can see here Spam gets his name from the vast expanse of forehead he has!

Despite the unusual head shape the mouth is very easy to use and is not restricted at all by the over sized forehead. Although at first this looks like a really unnatural shape... think for a minute about male Orangutan and they often have large folds of skin on their cheeks. I'm not sure if they get bigger with age... i'm not a zoologist (but i did want to be as a kid).

So this is what Spam looked at when i initially covered him with fabric. His face was a puzzle for me, it took me a long time to find eyes i was happy with... in this pic i have some half cut ping pong balls which i am using to experiment with eye placement. I basically finished Spam in 3 sittings. I made the skull and mouth in one sitting. The came back and worked out how to cover the head in a way which would give him a really nice unique look. Then finally this morning i completed his body and human hand.

I am very pleased with the outcome, i have experimented with some new techniques during the construction process. The most radical change to the construction process with this character would be the fact Spam is the first puppet i have ever made completely using a sewing machine! For most people this would not even be worth mentioning, but i have hand sewn everything in my puppet building career to date so it was a great relief to see the total build time decimated by the introduction of the Singer!

Let me know what you think of Spam, don't forget to check him out on the crex81 channel where he will be hosting a competition called "I Hear With My Little Ear".

all the best - Dave

The last day at 99?

For those of you that watch my YouTube videos on the crex81 channel you may have spotted a award on my page advertising the fact that i am on the most subscribed comedians list there. I have been for a while... a long while. I remember that i entered the list at number 21 (way back when it all first started). Inside a week i climbed to the heady heights of 19th most subscribed comedian of all time. Then gradually i began to slip. I haven't overall lost any subscribers, obviously some people decide to unsubscribe from time to time... but as they leave others find you, overall i have still been gaining subscribers. I have obviously been doing this at a slower rate than those around me. I also think there have been a lot of people who used to have directors accounts realise that there are more honours to be won if they switch to a less popular account style (comedian, guru, musician etc). Anyway i noticed at the beginning of this week i finally reached position 99! I thought i would celebrate my leaving of the most subscribed list rather than bemoan it. Thanks for everyone who has subscribed... it's been emotional :)

Yesterday i mentioned in my vlog that i am creating a puppet character for my the "I Hear With My Little Ear" feature on the crex81 channel. Well as soon i stopped the video i made 2 ears straight away and here they are! I've never started a character with the ears before but it just seemed to make sense with this one. Stay tuned to find out how the rest of him ends up. I am already calling him Scrappy due to the fact that i am using up lots of odds, ends and offcuts to make him from. He should be finished fairly soon, i'll post pics when i have them.

All the best - Dave