Transcription
Hey, puppet-obsessed viewers, welcome to my cave! Adam Savage, alongside Stacy Gordon. You are an actual puppeteer, Stacy.
I am so—we met at Dragon Con. Stacy came through my autograph line and gave—you gave me a paper puppet. You had just—a puppet workshop—and you said, “Hey, I—a puppet workshop—and here’s one of the puppets.” And Kristen and I were both like, “Stop right there; we’re going to have a conversation now.” And then we hung out all night. It was so awesome.
Yeah, it was so awesome. The plans for today were hatched on that day. Uh, I’m so glad you have finally made it to the cave, and we’ve got a plethora of some beautiful puppets to talk about, and you’re going to give me a lesson.
Yes! Oh my God, I’m so excited! Yes. So, uh, one of my favorite things to do is taking people where they are and like helping them elevate a little bit, uh, to make them feel more comfortable, more confident, and have your puppetry look better.
I love this. I will tell you I have always been sort of mediocre—bad at puppetry. Um, I think at—during one interview—Frank Oz told me not to quit my day job. But when—when Brian Henson was working to humiliate me on stage, which was so much fun—Johnny T told me that my eyelines were actually really good, so I felt very, very happy about that one.
Yeah, no, I—I could see Brian like struggling to make you—make you struggle. It was great.
No, it was great. It was a perfect challenge for each other.
Yeah. Uh, yeah, awesome. So we’ve got a bunch of puppets here by a lot of people that I know, and our—our friend Kristen let us borrow them. And um, this little sloth guy, uh, is great. Made by James Voal, who’s also a builder at the Henson shop. I’ve got a few of his puppets in my collection.
Yeah, no, he’s such a great builder. And I think James made this one too. Um, this one was made by a buddy of mine, Gordon Smooter, out of Minneapolis. He does Puppet Forge, uh, which is just a fun idea of forging—forging a puppet. Um, and then this guy’s from Blank Puppet—today, the first day that I’ve been able to work with a Blank Puppet—but like super easy to use, really great mouth grip inside, hands are weighted really well. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to have so—
God, you’re using all these terms I didn’t realize were important terms.
Oh, like what?
Well, like—like the mouth movement and the hand weight. I—those were—
Yeah, I hadn’t considered that those were all really like—mouth—mouth plate. The mouth plate is the part of the puppet that, uh, that your hand goes on. It’s essentially—when you open it up, kind of looks like a plate.
Yeah, if you fold a paper plate in half—
Your mouth plate.
Fair. Um, so you can do all kinds of grips. There’s no one mouth plate that’s right versus wrong. The only time you get a mouth plate that’s wrong is if it doesn’t move or if it hurts you. So, so each puppeteer might have a different kind of grip they prefer. A little bit of stuff in here, a little bit of grips in there, that kind of thing.
Yep. And like we’re constantly changing the grips and tweaking them until they get just right. And when you get them just right, then the foam breaks down, right? Since you’re using natural materials, they also deteriorate over time.
Yeah, I’ve seen people use wood. I’ve seen people use, uh, binder materials. What is the weirdest material you’ve ever come across inside a puppet?
Oh, weirdest—just like the—like the most spectacularly off the beaten path that you would have ever considered?
I think—and I—I think it was not so much the what it was, but the order that it was in—was it was a—a wooden mouth plate that had foam on top of it. You had to squish the foam before you could get to the wood, so it made your hand work a little bit harder.
Interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. I—my hand—that sounds bad. Working harder is always sounds bad, right? But—but maybe it could also lend something to the character that you don’t realize.
Sure. Sure. Sure. But like, to get the mouth to close, you really had to squish, and you could feel the squish between—it was—oh—and after a whole day of doing that—
Yeah. Yeah. It gets tiring.
It gets tiring doing this. Is—yeah. So all the mods that we’re talking about are about actually being able to continue doing it over long periods of time because it’s hard on your body and hard on your hand, and especially if you’re doing live shows, you’re not doing like two, three-minute-long takes; you’re doing a 45-minute puppet show. I will say when I was on stage for five minutes doing this, I sat down and my arm was just like on fire for about 10 minutes.
Yeah. All that lactic acid just building up and being like, “Hey, you’re doing something new.”
Yeah. No, it—it can be tiring. It can be tiring. But I want to start you with, um, some basic—super basic puppetry.
Super basic. Okay. Oh, wait a second. Can I show you my favorite puppet, please?
By all—I’m not going to say no to that question.
It’s my favorite puppet.
That’s your favorite puppet.
It’s my favorite puppet because I almost always have one.
Okay. Uh, okay. Wait, come with me on this journey. You—wow! Amazing! Anything could be a puppet, right? I immediately saw a face. Given what you are prioritizing and how—removing it—yeah, I understood that it was looking at me, that it was looking away, that it was thinking about stuff. It had focus; it had intention; and it had feelings.
Focus, attention, and feelings. That’s really cool. So people are like, “How do you start as a puppeteer?” Yeah, and I say, “You start—you just start puppeteering.” It doesn’t matter what you have. You have a spoon? You have a spoon; water bottle—anything can be a character. Anything can be a character. Focus, purpose, intent, and feelings—emotions—and those are the most important to me. Yeah, everybody’s got their own philosophy, but to me, those are it, cuz we’re—what we’re doing is we’re taking these inanimate objects—that look like a water bottle—looks like a dog, uh, looks like a pair of eyeballs on your hand—um, and we are storytelling. They are tools for storytelling, right? We’re taking people on an emotional journey with us through whatever it is—what—whether it’s funny, whether it’s sad, uh, whether it’s healing—whatever—we’re—we’re storytelling, and it’s those—those emotions have to be real.
Yeah, and you’ve got to find a way to take the reality of that emotion and—and reveal it using these inanimate objects.
Yes. And what acting! Amazing! Yeah, because at its core, acting is storytelling, right? Puppeteering and storytelling—we’re just actors. We just act from here up. All this gets all the abuse. Yeah. Um, when I go to like a library or something, a kid will find out I’m on Sesame Street—“You’re famous!” And I’m like—h—usually just from here—only recognize this—um, which is—which is nice. So anyway, I want to see where you are. Great. Uh, see what you can do. We’ll—we’ll start not on the camera. You can just watch your own arm. Sometimes they start in a—in a mirror, but um, you can just watch your hand, and I’m going to—just because this is what I have—green, brown, or blue? What’s your preference?
Blue.
All right. Uh, hold out your hand that you use. Okay. With this ring—I—the puppet—these are Peepers, uh, made—designed by Hobie Ford out of North Carolina. It’s—puppeteer made them decades ago. Uh, a couple friends of mine bought the company; they’re based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Amazing!
Yeah. I have played with these before with our mutual friend Mary Robinette.
Yes.
Uh, she was the first one to introduce me to these. I just love these. It’s such a simple—such a beautiful, perfect, uh, thing.
Yeah, no, they’re so—they’re so easy, and they’re based on practice size, which is two ping pong balls and a—and a—and a piece of elastic that you can put together with—put a couple black dots on them if you want to make yours your own at home. So, um, I’m just going to have you—let’s look up and let’s look down. Uh, try and go straight when you look down, so you’re kind of—if you can see your arm—can—may I—may I touch your hand, please?
Go ahead.
So you’re kind of going out like that. See if you can go like that.
Okay.
Yeah. Perfect! Awesome. So you just wanted like—paint—like wax on, wax off. I was doing something like—
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really easy to do because, you know, our wrists go everywhere. Yeah. Um, but you want it to be a real linear movement.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we kind of equate the—um—parts of your arm with the parts of your human body, right? So—so this right here is your upper jaw up here, and if you put your fingers here and say, “Hello,”—helloo—what—does this move?
No. No.
Hello. So hello—we don’t want this to move, so you don’t do this; you do this, otherwise it’d be like, “Hi! Hey! What’s up?”
Um, yeah. So this is your jaw.
Uh-huh. Yep. Yep.
Uh, and then, uh, your neck is here.
Yeah.
Uh, your—um—what do you think this is? Your elbow—like your waist.
Yeah.
Pivot on your waist. Yeah. And then what’s the next one over? Is your shoulder—your feet—and—yeah, your feet. This—where the ground is, right? So you want to make sure that if you’re on a trampoline, you know, you—yeah—the physics of that, uh, or if you’re—if you’re, you know, walking on cement, you want to make sure that you’re hitting the same spot—I see—at the same time, so that you’re not like—“Oh, wow!”
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So—and then—and then walking is as simple as moving your shoulder if you’re standing in place, um, or if you need to travel a long distance, you can—you can bring it out and travel your feet as well.
Amazing! Um, I like to have people walk around a room just without—with their own—with their own bodies and then see what they lead with. It’s an improv, uh, thing that, uh, Joe Bill used to do with his students. He probably still does, um, just to get a character—to see what they lead with—with their hands or with their body—their bodies. So like, if you walk around and you lead with your forehead, it gives a certain personality, right? Right. So versus if you lead with your hips or your feet or your shoulders, it’s—it’s all—it all lends itself to a different character, right? These are all choices that lead to different ideas of a person—a character.
Exactly. Exactly. And you can put that into your—into your walk with your puppet. And—are you bouncy? Uh, how long are your puppet’s legs? Wow! All these things—you—you need to know for a consistent performance.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just a—matter of imagining them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So just try walking. Try a really neutral walk—that’s just—step, step, step. So less bounce in the head—super neutral—really into the bounce.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it feels good!
Awesome! Awesome! Okay. Yeah. Um, and then—let’s see—we were talking—okay, now let’s count to 10.
Okay.
Okay. You ready?
Yeah.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Awesome! In puppetry, we like to open our mouth once for every syllable, so seven would be—seven.
Seven. Yeah. Yeah. Seven. Seven. Yeah. Eight. So let’s do it again. Okay? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Awesome! Awesome! Um, and when I—very first met Day of Goals—yeah, uh, he was doing a tour of a Muppet exhibit in Mesa, Arizona. He was—he was out there doing library programming where you’d get to go watch the Muppet movie with him, and then he did this tour at the Smithson—the traveling Smithsonian exhibit—the best—for—for young puppeteers. Only imagine getting to ask questions. It was perfect. So I asked him—or somebody else asked him—about eye focus, and he said to treat this as—treat the eyes as a laser that comes out—that you don’t want broken—with your subject or with whatever it’s looking at, right? So—so you can—you can tilt your head this way and that way, but just think of that laser coming—you’re not breaking that line—you’re not breaking that line of focus.
Wow! String or whatever it is. Yeah, that helps you—imagining a structure to follow. This is good. Um, instead of moving here with your elbow, right, try just moving your wrist.
Oh my God! And that’s so much harder.
Yeah. That’s one reason when we stretch at the beginning, we’re doing this—to get your body used to this—back and forth. And one way to really figure it out is—grab the Sharpie. Okay? Put it in your—yeah—and then just tilt it. You can kind of tilt the mouth plate. Do we have an index card somewhere—like a—like a 3x5 card?
Yes, I do.
Sweet. So with the paper in your hand, do you see what I’m doing with my—yeah—fingers and my thumb? So that’s another way you can achieve that without—without—without quirking your wrist, right?
Right. Yeah. Wow! I can see how far I am from—you are so far ahead though. This is something—it—it’s like—it’s like learning a new instrument, right? Like, I like to tell people—nobody was born knowing how to puppeteer.
Fair. Wow! I love seeing your mouth trying to do the same thing.
Yeah. I’m answering—
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s okay though—whatever gets you there. Wow! I mean—yeah, it’s like—there’s this whole extra set of coordination of these. And here’s another thing—we’ve got our hands out in front of us right now, and that makes—look to your—look to your left—sorry, your puppet look to your left.
Yeah.
Pretty easy. Now have it look to the right.
More difficult. A lot more difficult. So what we do in puppeteering for like cameras and stuff, even stage, uh, if you want the movement, is you put your puppet behind you.
Oh! So you have—and now—yep—you can get it—gotcha. You can get it all the way around.
I see. Yeah. It’s so much more effective, and there’s a bonus with that—it gets your head closer to the camera, cuz lenses are conical. Yeah. If your head is—oh, so you’re actually—right—you’re—you’re less likely to be seen. There’s a few—few benefits to—to being backwards like this.
You want to put on a puppet?
Yes, I want to put on a puppet. Which one do you want to do?
Oh, um—they’re all going to have different grips. Maybe you should try them and see which one you like best.
Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s walk through them.
Great. Okay. Cool. So, uh, I tried this one. This one’s got a really good—uh—this—that like—bask—deflated basketball. Okay. So—oh, I—he made—he’s made to hug. Oh my gosh! Oh, yeah. I love you. Oh, thank you. And he’s such a cute puppet. He’s a very cute puppet. Um, the—the only thing is that—yeah, his focus is a little bit higher—mh—so yeah, so he’s got to work harder. You’ve got to crank your hand down a little bit more to have a look at me. I think this is not the one I should start with.
Okay. Yeah. Probably not. Probably not. But—but he’s so—so cute. Okay. This is—I love this guy. He’s so great. So this is a live hand puppet, and that means we’re really, really—oh, I see. I’m a—oh—oh—oh! I was not in the tube; now I’m in the tube. Oh, yeah. A whole tube. So, um, he’s also called a bag puppet, cuz it’s kind of like—you could fill him with apples. Wait a second. We—two hands or one? So now you get this hand—left hand’s going to go in there, right? And then this right hand—I’m going to do—and as a right-hander, I’m going to try and keep my elbow as close to your elbow as possible.
Oh, is that the goal?
That’s the goal. Wow! And then you’ll lead on the—you’ll lead on the, uh, the hand motions, and I’ll try and match without—so if I want a big hand motion—I forgot to move the—[Laughter]—mouth. Uh, for every new thing you learn, I think—feel like there’s three that you dump out the window, right? Well, I—what I’ve—we’ve spent enough time around puppeteers to see these hand puppets get picked up, and there’s always a puppeteer somewhere who will show up and stick their arm in the other hand.
Yes. I love this ethos because we all want to play.
Is why—oh, I want to play too.
Me too! Amazing! Um, so hold them way up high. Okay? There you go. All right. There you go. Oh—oh—and—and the big temptation for everybody is to keep the—the hands as high as humanly possible, right? Um, but really what we want to do is we want to keep them kind of at the bottom of the frame. You could probably—tilt—bring—hold him up a little bit more. All right. There you go. And—yeah—and then he’s just—so this is an example of live hand—oh—so—and this is what you guys are actually seeing. This is not a mirrored image; this is the actual—this is the actual camera.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s backwards. So puppeteers see—uh—the image same as the audience sees, um, which—it’s like drawing, right? So if you flip it backwards, uh, you kind of see something different, uh, with a—with a drawing—if you flip a sketch, right? Um, so the same—same thing—we want to kind of see what the audience is seeing so that we see exactly what the composition of the shot is like. And he’s in quicksand.
Yeah, he is in quicksand.
Oh, wow! He’s got a lovely neck. Yeah, James builds so well. He’s also a wrangler on Sesame Street, so I get to see him every now and again.
Oh, lovely! Yeah. Um, all right, my arm is already killing me. Great! Let’s shake it out. Let’s move it on to another guy. Let’s shake it out. And if—makes you feel better—we have to shake it out too. We have—like—you know—I’m going to set him down. Okay, this is the Gordon puppet. I’m going to put my hand inside the Gordon puppet because I—Gordon is one of my best friends. Okay? My hands always swim inside. Okay, I’m going to stand on an apple box because in video puppetry, we want to be on the same height—want to be on the same playing field. Look at his eye focus. Gordon Smooter—good job! Job! And those little teeth! What a good surprise! Okay, my hand is kind of swimming in here, which might—might be good. My hands got to be in there like this to brace myself. I think it’s going to fit you pretty well.
Oh, it fits me pretty great.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you’ll take the left, and I can take the right. All right. And so this—okay, that’s mine.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. The one you’re wiggling—it’s—it’s—it’s—it’s adding—it’s turning the head on a flat plane is really hard.
It is really hard. It’s like—I can see that there’s a real learning curve. So like, just obtaining that movement—and so like what we like to do is we like to start with Peepers so that you can see what your hands doing.
Ah, right. So you can see that you’re tilting when you do the one direction versus the other, and also getting your—getting your, uh, arm behind you will help that too. Oh, when you’re here—here, it is a little bit harder. Here, you should be up and down. You can kind of lean forward, and the camera doesn’t really know, and you can keep looking up into the world. Oh, I love his—he’s got great focus though. Okay, let’s try this one. Okay, Pinky. Right? It’s Pinky.
Oh, I shouldn’t have called a Blank Puppet—Blank Puppet is the—uh—company.
Oh, okay. I see. It’s not a term of art; it’s actually a—
Yeah. Yeah. It’s the company. It’s Blank Puppets. Uh, I think it’s Big Cartel, maybe, is where he has his store. Oh, he’s got all sorts of grip stuff going on. Got a bigger—yeah, I think that it’s probably EVA foam under there, um, so it’s not going to go anywhere; it’s not going to deteriorate as fast over time. He’s harder to move—just the jaw.
Yeah. A little bit. A little bit. And it—and it’s all just a matter of like, you know, you’ve got—um—you’ve got less—less space between—right? Or is there more space down here? It’s—um—it’s just that—well, it’s—it’s—it’s that same feeling I have when I was doing that of like—just moving the thumb is kind of difficult.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to try Bunny Brown?
Bunny—I love this—is Brown Bunny.
Thank you. It’s kind of tight cuz I—you know—
Oh, yes. Have small hands.
I have small hands. You know what they say about small hands? Nobody—not even the bra has such small hands.
Oh, I was going to say—small puppets. He is beautiful. I love—what a magnificent, um, sprite he is.
Thank you. Thank you. I need to go in and put some—put some, uh—put some boning in his ears so they stay up a little bit better. I’ve got a bin—fill it up upstairs if you want some.
Great. Great. I’ll do it on a break. So what one do you want to use? I feel like the—the—the beautiful dog here—Gordon dog—and also—I’m a dog person.
Smooter dog.
Smooter—and I am a bunny person, so that’s great. All right. I—I also love how much—it’s impressive to handle different puppets one after the other and feel how much—light differences in the internal structure have massive changes in how he moves—how he moves. The weight of the puppet—my puppets are all very light.
Um, are there puppeteers that prefer super heavy puppets?
Probably not. But I mean—different weights. Yeah, like—I mean, like there’s—I prefer different weights of arms, you know? I want—I want my arm to hang—to hang nicely, right?
Right. Okay. How’s that easier now? What I want you to do is I want you to tilt your head forward—my head—your human head—sorry, I should—I should specify this time—you’re human head. Okay. Uh, and then now we can’t see your—your hair.
Oh, yeah. I see. You could see it now. You can. Yeah. And if you lean toward—you lean it toward the camera—
Mhm.
Yeah. All right. So—okay. So I’m—I’m standing—
Yeah. Yeah.
And then bring your arm behind you a little bit more—between you—
Yep.
I always say—put your head between you and the camera or between the puppet and the camera.
Awesome! Okay. So now see if you can find focus. And it’s so hard. Okay. So you’re going to bring your—you’re going to bring your nose down—like—draw—so another way I like to think of the screen is—you remember when—like on Sesame Street or like Electric Company—they would draw—or they’d paint on the—they paint on the glass?
Yes.
Okay. So think of yourself as painting on this plane that is the screen and paint a straight line down with your nose because backwards—it is so hard.
So hard. I’m here to validate you. It’s so hard. Oh my god! Oh. Okay. Now think of it—maybe think of it in real space. Yeah. There you go. There—it’s just—I just have to burn this into my physical memory cuz I’m literally—I’m actually doing like a bunch of turning and twisting to keep it straight. Are you—you’re going to try lefty?
I am somewhat ambidextrous. I’m a juggler.
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. And I do swap out hands for tool operations. We’ll see if there—there any trans—but it’s going to be the same thing. Instead of facing straight on, you’re still going to be doing this kind of thing.
Yeah.
This is way easier, is it?
Yeah. Well, there you go. Wow! Okay. Now—now paint that—paint that up and down, but when you look up, try not to lose those pupils, right?
Right. Right. That’s the—oh my God! Here—may I?
Yes, please.
St—there—I’m just going to help you—you’re going to help me learn—understand the movement—just as this is—
We're going to straighten out there. There's his Focus, yeah, and then he's going to go. And then don't move, don't move this. Okay, right. Wow, all right, get him. So yeah, just practice looking up and down, and then not too, not farther than that. Right, you don't lose the, yeah, you don't want to lose the eyeball, the pupils.
And then here's another trick. Yeah, let's try looking left and right. So my, my human left is going to be right on the camera. Uh-huh. Yeah, and again, that's I also don't want to lose two pupil looking. Here's the trick with that. Yeah, what we do is we cheat the top of our hand towards the camera. Oh, see that? Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh my God. And you do it both ways, you do it both ways. And then so you're kind of, you're not, this really is like juggling, this is very much like juggling. Well, in terms of there's, there's a subtlety to the movement across its whole Arc that you have to maintain. Wow. Oh my God, I'm so much resp—I had respect for what you do. I have twice as much respect now after 10 minutes of this. Know, and like when you love it, it's playing, right? Yes. Oh my God, I just want to sit and practice this move, the up and down. Yeah, do you want to practice it with peepers? Yes, practice it with peepers. Oh, I think these are the ones I stretched. Oh, great. They're, they're dishwasher safe, so I threw them in the dishwasher. CU, these are the ones I use in all my workshops, and they get, they get Dy, hi, hi, hi. See, top of my fingers, top of my fingers. Well, when, when I'm looking to the side, right, right. So, oh my God, put that in your mouth, it'll help. I don't know why it helps, but it helps. Oh, it does. Yeah, 'cause you're showing me, right, right, right. You're showing me. I always, I tell my students when I teach online, I say, show me that ring finger, show me that ring on your finger. Oh my God, show me. Oh yeah, shake it out. Wow, you guys are all athletes here. Hang on, hang on. Oh, that feels so good. Oh my God, thank you. Incredible. Uh, up, so up, and you don't want to lose, you don't want to lose them, right? And then down. W—wow. And so like, and the thing with the peepers is if I get good at this, when I put a pbit on my hand, it'll feel a lot more natural. Yeah, so all the practice can be done without that weight. Exactly, to learn. Ah, amazing, amazing. You don't have to get sweaty. There's no, I mean, you'll get sweaty in other ways, but well, and also I understand the gription too, because if your hand is in a weird position to close the mouth, that also changes the amount of flexibility you have. So what I do is I take in a lot of my puppets that are bigger, because this one's real small, made to be small. Yeah, um, on my puppet that are bigger, I'll, I'll use one of my 45 mm eyeballs, I'll slice it in half or into a third, and I'll set that down, I'll glue it to the mouth plate, so I've got that as a grip. Oh, so it, 'cause it, I feel like this shape is much more natural than this shape. Wait, like this, this is much more natural than this, right? This versus this? Yes, this is much more comfortable, right? Yeah, right, as a neutral, right, right. And so, so when I'm, when I have to push down on something, pushing like this, uh, puts more pressure here on, on this tendon for me, right. Um, yeah, that is cool. I, there's so much subtlety to this. I, I, it's not like I didn't even understand that, but getting it into the physical body is really, right. And it's like something, something as simple as, and you don't even realize it, something as simple as this versus this, like one of them's focused, like, like I'm looking at the camera now, and now I'm not, now I'm looking off camera, right? And but now, and like in real life, that's, that's what it is, a tiny, tiny difference. It's like 5 millimeters. It's like we can tell when someone's looking at the camera of their iPhone versus the screen. Yes, right. And that is a yes. And how far does your actual P pupil move? Yeah, not barely noticeable, but we can tell, because eye focus is so important to us. Exactly, so, oh my God, I'm just going to practice left and right turns for weeks. Yeah, and so left and right turns, and then to get, to get the language of the monitor into your head, yeah, what we'll do is we'll, I'll tap the monitor. I'm just going to use brown bunnies. Okay, look here. Good, you did it. Look at that. Up, up a little more. There you go. Hi, and see if you can Center yourself up. And this is a Marty, Marty Robinson trick. Yeah, uh, every, or almost every monitor will tell you what the center point is by giving you a little logo. Oh, nice. Right. And let me move this back. Okay, okay. Center up a little more. Oh, like there. We go. Wow, there's so much motion I have here behind me, so like, so like there's like level one with like a mirror, or maybe level one is with nothing, level two is a mirror like camera. I feel like you've been plopped into like level 47, right? So you're, you're still learning all of the other things while you're learning this. This feels like I'm doing better. Yeah, yeah. Wow. And the nice thing about this is you eventually you go, okay, opposite of where I was. Right, right, right. And then you get used to that, that swing. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing, uh, the other thing we do is you just look, you know, look away, and then pop right to try and practice popping right to camera. Oh, wow. Jeez. Wh—and you can overshoot, you know, there's all kinds of stuff. And then not even like, then we do this thing, this is the, this is after, after you do all that, we're going to practice walking in. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to check my, check my Edge, and I want to make sure that I'm out, I want you to see on my feet how far I'm moving. Okay, not a lot, not a lot. I just move one swing, one. Yep. Okay. Um, in Taekwondo, this would be, right, right back stance. Ah, right, right, right. Like ballet first position. Yeah, and you, you pivot on your front foot, on your foot that's uh, closer to the camera, foot that's closer to the camera. Ah, yeah, keep, this is your pivot point. Yeah, you just basically step out of it, you just step out of the shot, right? And then boom, boom, boom, and turn, and hopefully, oh, there we go. I got to practice that again. B, B, B. There we go. Wow, the speed with which you acquire that Focus, joing. Oh, I won't lie, I think B eyes are a tiny bit easier. Fair, like everybody, you know, puppets are made to move, yeah, but they're made to be still. Yeah, that was what was really remarkable. And do you see how I'm, I'm just changing that mouth plate? Yeah, yeah. I'm changing the mouth plate, and those eyes move. Wow. So I think of, uh, feelings, there's different feelings that you want to go through, and because we want our puppets to OTE, that's how we know how they feel about something. Um, and we want them to emote visually in a way that if you turn off the sound, you know how your puppet feels. So it's show, don't tell, right. Um, so, uh, I like to think of emotions as, where's that Sharpie? I like to think of there's emotions that are that are wavy, and then there's emotions that are jagged, right? Oh, so, and that's, and I kind of equate that, if you want to say it, um, I, uh, I equate that to our movement, how the movement happens with the feeling, right? So you've got sadness is a wavy emotion, but anger is sharp, right? Excitement is sharp, and that means the gestures follow suit. Yes. Okay. Yes. Wow. So if I'm angry, I'm, I'm going to look down, I'm going to look below the midline, and if you drew out what my nose was doing, it would make a jagged motion. Oh, wow. But if I were, if I were looking down and I were sad, oh, oh my God, nothing worse than a sad [Music] puppet. Oh, I'm, it's starting to happen, starting to feel a little bit of consistency in my, you're doing it, I'm doing it. Oh, oh, I'm moving the top of my head. Oh my God, I'm doing it. Wow. Oh, here's a trick. Yeah, here's a trick. Okay, trick, trick, trick. Okay, somebody's gonna be mad about it, but that's okay. Okay, um, I'm turning my hand to the side so that you can see what I'm doing. Yeah, um, I'm kind of rocking my wrist for, I see, because your body, you're not going to see that inside the puppet. What this allows is I can only, I can only drop my thumb so much, yeah, but if I rock my f wrist forward, I can get such bigger, right, right, such bigger. And as long as you're keeping your eyes in the same spot roughly, then I think it's okay. All right, well, I mean, I feel like what you've helped me understand is simply the envelope of movement that you have to work within to then layer in an actual performance. Yes, like it all starts with the eyes are going to look where you mean them to look, and that the character can move within the world as the prum—it's learning the violin. Wow, a piano, a p—a pianist or a violinist, they're, if they play an instrument exactly as it's written, okay, but then you get the emotion behind it, and the inflections and things, and it's, you, you get goosebumps with it. It's, I can't thank you enough. Thank you. So, can I give you a hug? Oh, amazing. Thank you. Thank you guys for joining me. I want to see your puppetry videos, put them in the comments. Um, we're puppet obsessed here, and we will remain so. Thank you guys. Um, we'll see you next time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is this what it's like being so tall? Apparently, great. Thank you so much for watching that video. Your support allows us to make more of this great content. If you'd like to help us on a deeper level even, head over to tested.dstore. Docomo doesn't love stickers. Our anime-inspired tested logo in Japanese. Follow the process, not the plan. It's not a process, it's not a problem to solve, it's a process to manage. Other aphorisms that have come from my mouth, um, and we have just made a full set of our dearit badges in sticker form, so you can cover your toolbox with all of your screw-ups and celebrate it with other makers. Thank you guys so much. See you next time.