I spent most of Saturday running around gathering some supplies and props. Sunday was a fairly productive day too. I'm very excited because Big Bear - Bear Town's main villain - is finally starting to take shape.

So far all that's really been done is a foam build-up (the eyes and nose seen here are temporary) but it's already a huge improvement over the old puppet. Actually, that puppet wasn't really so bad, except that when he turned sideways he was completely flat! Needless to say, this new improved Big Bear is designed to be quite a bit bulkier and intimdating than his predecessor.

I also managed to make a new pair of foam puppet heads for two Asian women I'll need. I had made some heads for them out of Styrofoam balls months ago, but I decided they were too small so I made larger ones this weekend. The most time-consuming part of the whole process was wrapping the finished Styrofoam heads carefully in cloth tape so I can spray glue antron fleece on them (most forms of contact cement will corrode styrofoam so I've found a protective layer of tape works wonders).

Speaking of Asian puppets, I read this article Saturday in the Taipei Times (don't ask me how that ended up happening) about puppetry in Taiwan. I was first exposed to Taiwanese puppetry when I worked on a show that was doing a national tour of Taiwan a few years ago and I've tried to follow the work that's going on there as best I could ever since.

One of the coolest companies in Taiwan is Pili Puppet Theatre. It's run by Chris Huang, a member of Taiwan's Huang family puppet dynasty. Chris is all but unknown here, but he produces incredibly popular TV shows in Asia that use traditional Chinese glove puppets. They have even produced a feature length film using glove puppets and some pretty good CGI called Legend of the Sacred Stone. It's hard to find this on video & DVD outside of Asia, but it is out there - usually in Chinese language video shops or stores that specialize in genre or cult movies. If you like martial arts and puppets, you'll love this!

Posted by Andrew at 2:34 AM | Permalink

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