Polaroid Photo

Thu
28
Aug '08

Beautiful Chinese video puppetry

We’re so used to American style hand and rod video puppetry, like the Muppets, that it’s easy to forget that there are whole other traditions out there. Check this out and brace yourself for awesome.

Kevin Kao pointed this out. He’s got a nice breakdown on his blog about what must have gone into making a video like this.

8 Comments »

  • Julia

    Love it! I feel that if I attached rods to my ball-jointed dolls and played around that I could achieve much the same effect…I do wonder why the wrist joints were never articulated on the Chinese puppets, though.

    My friends and I are playing around (once the hurricanes go away and I have actual free time again) with a couple of my smaller dolls and some stop-motion animation plot ideas. Ought to be fun!

    …but this DOES make me want to install some temp rods and see what I can make them do. Thanks for sharing!

    • http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com Mary Robinette Kowal

      Sure thing! Let me know how it goes if you try it.

  • http://dlynnsmith.com Debbie Smith

    Oh my god! How did they get those sharp, quick movements? This vide is really amazing!

    I used to direct a puppet group back in antoher lifetime. Not the kind in the video, but the Miss Piggy kind. Nothing professional, but it was really fun. I also wrote plays for the group.

    • http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com Mary Robinette Kowal

      Working in video, there’s the chance that they were not working in real time. But mostly, I think what you are looking at is practice. Even granting that a lot of this is the result of heavy editing, there are still darn good puppeteers behind this.

  • http://neutronjockey.livejournal.com Jeff

    The drunken boxing stances and movements about halfway through were spectacular. Not that the whole thing wasn’t spectacular…
    …it’s like Crouching Tiger Hidden Puppet. Very , very cool.

    • http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com Mary Robinette Kowal

      I think you mean Hidden Puppeteer.

      • http://neutronjockey.livejournal.com Jeff

        …at least I didn’t say Crotching Dragon. :P It was still very awesome.

  • http://puppetkaos.com Kelvin Kao

    I understand if Andrew spelled my name wrong, but not you too! :-P

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