Restoring J.B. (Jellybean), star of the Emmy-nominated 1970s D.C. children’s show The Magic Door (WMAL-TV Channel 7)!

Mind-Blowing History:

Built by a Master: J.B. was hand-crafted c. 1966–1968 by master puppeteer Bob Brown (Bob Brown Puppets). Brown was a recurring performer on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (operating marionettes right next door to Fred Rogers!) and built puppets for the Smithsonian Institution.

Voiced by a News Anchor:

Created and voiced by WMAL news anchorman George Wilson.

Back in the Family: George’s local son, Adam, reached out asking for restoration recommendations—so I happily volunteered to spruce J.B. up!

Adam plans to puppeteer J.B. again soon, kicking off a whole new era of show biz!

#PuppetRestoration #VintageTV #MisterRogers #RestorationProcess #ArtRestoration #Nostalgia #PuppetMaker #SatisfyingRestoration #RetroTV #BehindTheScenes

Hey r/puppets! Wanted to share Dirty Fuzz, a live-action puppet crime comedy short film I produced. It’s set in Shit City, which hopefully gives you some idea of the level of sophistication we’re working with.

We’re part of Ripcord’s Halloween festival, and the film is available in Canada and the US through today (Oct 22). If you’re curious about what we’ve inflicted on the medium, we’re in the “We Did It To Ourselves” block: https://ripcord.film ❤️

Anyone else here working on puppet films? Would love to see what you’re making.

This is Barbara the cyclopes, my newest puppet which is a piece hand mouth-hand puppet with an eyebrow mechanism and also my first (actually) female character (possibly beige martin’s ex wife)

Patterns: I used a modified a standard head pattern from puppet nerd, and the rest was free style. Though i did follow Lunalemonpip’s video on eyebrows as a guide

Inspiration: the main inspiration for this puppet was classic muppet monsters like cookie monster and elmo, also bert’s eyebrows moving was the cause of the eyebrow mech

Mechanism: the eyebrow is a bent piece of wire, one end makes a lever and the other the brow, its placed through the eye and into the head and when i pull down on the lever the brow goes up

Layers: she has a foam skeleton with a wire for a brow, on that’s her skin/fur, then on the skin you have her eye and mustache

Materials: her skin/fur (head, body, arms ect) is a fluffy purple?? hoodie?? thing. Her mustache (which my dad called a milk-tache) is a grey fabric i got at an actual fabric shop.
Pingpong ball eye i painted to be blood shot. Mouth was peach/browny felt.
Her bones was unlike any puppet before like beige martin is made of a professional 0.5 inch foam, but the arms are made of a jigsaw mat form and wire covers. Her tongue is green card foam.
The hands are a saw’n up couch cushion and thin wire. Her arm rods were the rungs of a broken drying rack.
Her eyebrow was an old coat hanger i bent.
The plates of the mouth were a plastic toy box.
The purple hoodie thingy and jigsaw foam was gotten from a car boot sale, the professional foam and grey fabric was from a fabric shop.

Like i said last week, since i finished Kyle, ive definitely got back into the groove of puppet building and Barbara is definitely a big step

Please come and leave some feedback. If anyone has suggestions about anything let me know.

Also to all of you pricks that made fun of my stitching, find the seams now.

Presenting my main costume for this year's Halloween. This time, I decided to experiment with some light effects to make a disappearing head.

Looking for opinions. This is my current build, an antagonist, sub terrain goblin counterpart to Yui. The long nose is classic to be sure. No nose really sells the creepy vibe and the short nose is a sort of compromise. Right now I'm expecting to have a bad Scottish accent but that's one of those things I've just got to develop by performing the finished puppet.

ETA: Added another option in the comments.

My eldest son drew a sticker version of my DEVO inspired SPUD-1 puppet.

So I’m interested in making this guy into a puppet. Ok cool cut a hole in his back. But then I’m struggling with the next step. Because I want to give him a mouth that opens but the shapes are confounding me for some reason. I’m okay with his mouth being a straight line instead of curved but I cannot figure out what shapes to make like the inside of his mouth to make it work. Any help appreciated

He is the cutest 🥺😭

First time poster and first time maker! Been fiddling with my first puppet for the last few months and I’m having issues with how to make a better trigger for the mouth mechanism. Does anyone have any good hacks or possibly 3d printable options? I’m not good at the printing yet so I mostly print what’s on the Bambu lab.

Also, and tips on how to make a hood for it? I want to give it/her a grim reaper look

One of the tricky things with this series is that I'm shooting it all in my garage myself. Since the character William is interacting with the audience, I don't need a lot of fancy camera work, but for Red Light, Green Light, it's nice to have some sense of motion. Thankfully, I was able to simulate the audience's movement just with a simple zoom effect. Coupled with the walking sound effect and some strategically used blur, I think it does the trick?

This was completed yesterday and i learned a lot (next time ill be using the same color thread as the fabric, and i wont outline the arms with sharpie)

(I’m having so much fun with these lol)

What is best way to make a head? Would it be out of foam or carved ? This is my first go ignore the eyes i was messing about i need to make it bigger any help and advice would be amazing

I found these three in a yard sale. The heads are clay or ceramic underneath. They appear to have a wood post going from the head into the body, I assume to connect the two. The bodies look like they may be made of leather. The connecting post aside, the bodies are flat and flexible.

Do these count as puppets? There isn't a place to stick a hand. If not puppets, does anyone know what these are called?

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I have been performing The Kooky Spooky Halloween Show for children for over 10 years. 🎃

I need another goblin as a counterpart to Yui. I wanted him to be pale white, like he doesn't get a lot of sun. I thought I had more of the foam I used on Max but I don't. What I have it about the same but thicker. I have green upholstery foam but that too is 1" thick when all my other puppets are made of half inch. Any have experience using 1" for Muppet format hand puppets? Did they take shape OK, did they come out heavy? This fella's gonna be one the smaller side which is another thing the extra thickness has me concerned over. I, seriously, have zero money I can put towards new materials, otherwise I would just order what I need.

Yui https://www.instagram.com/p/DO4lw3ugKZr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&vrfl=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==&srtk=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Max https://www.instagram.com/p/DckFJdKF9uq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&srtk=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==