Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Marionette Controllers

marionette controller or 'perch'
They are sometimes called 'Perches' or 'Crutches' and quite often are Heath Robinson affairs. Marionette controllers can be of any design and will vary enormously depending on what you want the puppet to do. However these controllers made to a traditional english/european? design will give all the normal movements required for a human puppet figure.

I am now offering these in 2 off the shelf sizes suitable for most puppets or I can adjust dimensions to your requirements for a small extra fee.

They are available here.

2 comments:

ruairi said...

Hi Tony, I was so pleased to find there are blogs about Marionette's and making them so firstly I thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I'm Researching a number of ways of creating performative Architectural Structures at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.

I write a blog about my own research and the wider area I'm working within called interactive architecture.
Heres my site if your interested www.interactivearchitecture.org

I personally work with a lot of sensors and actuators to create kinetic structures but I also have an interest in more traditional forms of animated performances.

I was wondering if you had any experience or knew of people who have made marionettes of arms for example as apposed to whole bodies? I know its a strange question but I've been looking at robotic arms recently as a way of makng kinetic scupltures and I find them really soul-less. I could go on with my intentions but I guess I should wait and see if you would be kind enough to share any ideas regarding non-standard marionettes and their controllers. There must be a history of people doing strange characters beyond human figures.

I get a lot of emails to my blog from students about interactive architecture and I often feel like Im just been mined by students too lazy to do their own research. I admit to not having done much more research than a couple of google searches as this is very early into the project but I have begun making some little basic marionettes of arms to see how it could be done. I would be happy to show you how im getting on a little further down the line and for now wold just appreciate any suggestions you have.

Many thanks

Tony said...

Sorry to be so slow to get back to you but things have been a bit hectic here. I'll send you an email shortly and see if I can be any help