Here's an update on a few puppet projects I've been apart of/had brewing since the beginning of the year:

I'm going to start with Los Titeres TV, the web channel launched by the extraordinary Felix Pire! Back in April I spent half a day with Mr. Pire shooting material for upcoming webisodes. One of those webisodes, a episode of "Amor de Conchita y Ronaldo" is live! It's episode 1, entitled "You Never Listen." Note: not safe for work, and not for the kiddies! Very funny stuff. Towards the end Felix starts riffing on that infamous video of Lily Tomlin cussing out Dustin Hoffman. Funny stuff!

Next up is something that is kid friendly, a certain marionette project I recently worked on. (I don't want to put the title here, because I don't want Google to bring up this page! The target audience is little kids. Imagine if "Joe Five-year-old" accidentally clicked on Conchita y Ronaldo!) In addition to video of our live performance at B.B. Kings, there is a music video that we shot a couple of weeks back. I performed a few of the marionettes in the video -- I'd have a hard time telling you which ones -- but I know for a fact that whenever you see the puppet pictured to the left, I'm pulling the strings!

One of the exciting things about these two projects is that together with Uncle Grizly and Disembodied Animal Head Theatre, I have the making of a pretty good puppetry reel! Boo-Yah! My pal Russ put up his reel recently, and it has truly inspired me.

Also in the news, I finished up the Pepper puppet I blogged about some time ago! Okay, he still needs arm rods. And in all honesty, I never could've made this without the patient help of my lovely wife. I chose this really soft, luscious furry fleece for Pepper. Honestly, it feels like chenille! Unfortunately, it's a bitch to machine sew. Pamela instructed me to buy some interfacing, and iron it to the "back" of the fabric. Good idea! Only, I bought some kind of crazy appliqué "new sew" adhesive backing. Oops!

Fortunately for me, Pamela just happened to have some lightweight white broadcloth laying around, and so I glued the doodly furry fabric to the white broadcloth. Whew! I tried to sew the pieces together, but I suck at machine sewing. So Pamela tagged me out, and did the heavy lifting. At it so happens, I'm a good hand-stitcher, so I finished the sucker off. The eyes are ping-pong ball halves, attached in the super-secret Russ Walko fashionm with adhesive-back felt eyes. The nose is Sculpey. The spots and ears are brown polar fleece whip-stitched into place.

Pepper is built from the Glorified Sock Puppet pattern from Project Puppet. Friends, I cannot praise the good people at Project Puppet enough. Their patterns are affordable, easy to follow, and infinitely customizable. If you want to build a puppet and don't know where to start, start with Project Puppet.

I had some new headshots taken, some of them with Pepper. (My new profile pic is one such.) Pamela had this idea, and I think it is quite sound, that it would be helpful to have a headshot as a puppeteer. Why? Because there are more and more projects casting puppeteers, and your average casting director works with headshots.

For instance, NowCasting.com lists puppet gigs with some frequency. Guess what? No headshot, no submission. Also, I am selling myself as a puppeteer, not just my right hand. Casting Directors work with Andrew Moore, not Andrew Moore's right hand. They need to know me, what I look like.

That's probably a good summation for now. I'm working on some other things, including an interesting variation on that "Mimey and Clownie Show" idea I mentioned back in January -- and of course more episodes of DAHTv-- but that will hold for another time!