Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Make: Believe // Images in Motion: Puppetry to 3D Printing”.
Exactly we met each other at a puppet festival, festival, 1986 or 87.. She was getting her master’s degree, master’s degree in business and marketing, and i was working on fraggle rock and they asked me to do a workshop on puppet movement and she was there. I couldn’t believe she made a living as a puppeteer and i was, through all my master degree work out the window and i became a puppeteer. It ruined my life. I did i ruined her life and we have been working ever since images in motion has been in business for about 26 years, and images in motion is lee armstrong and myself campbell, portuguese and primarily we’re tv film puppeteers, but a lot of the stuff we do In a lot of our productions, i deal with the sets and the designs, and you have to be very specific for building for puppets, taking into consideration these human flesh bags that hang down below the puppets, and then we both write, perform and well lee’s background was, With the muppets and mine was more film based, and so she worked on fly too and things like that, and then i worked in video production. I thought jim henson was just so inspiring in that he knew lighting, shooting camera, how it all goes together. So i worked for viacom for three years doing video production well and you kind of as a puppeteer, you kind of have to know how to do everything um, just because true true words of wisdom, so puppet things that we’ve built um, uh being john malkovich marionettes Paper bag puppets for genentech, oh beautiful, 16-string, marionette, radio control yeah – that was pretty cool. We’Ve done puppets for um hawaiian credit union, where we built puppets and sets we’ve done, walk around costumes for um. We just did for a hidden valley, ranch, oh hidden valley. Ranch was fun, they were all beating each other up, celebrity dolls, for you know: britney spears, rita, hayworth, justin, bieber, uh yeah. These are hairspray, hairspray dolls, there’s all the music music and then a lot of music videos which are always fun. Um people just find us, and and because we’ve got a shooting studio, they can come here. They can shoot other things.
We just build puppets and the puppets go out of out of the studio. You never see them again, never see them again. The best uh project is where the client just comes with the idea.
We help them, develop it right or help them with whatever they need. Scripting sets um building the characters, helping them design the characters, post, production, editing, yes and now we’re doing 3d printing, which is a whole new world for us that ties in really well, we do a lot of molding and casting because you would starve. If you just did puppets yes, so the molding and casting division of images of motion um keeps us keeps us really busy right.
We do a lot of them and then also um, sculpting and prototyping, and then with our the 3d printers, which print full color. We just did a project, we just got them in january and i was able to in maya, create the characters for a client print them out in full color, send them off to a toy fair. It was amazing. You know amazing in the first month that we had the printers, we did toy fair, a paleontology conference uh some potential, and this is all in the last month there’s a gentleman by the name of greg dykstra, who was actually one of the head sculptors at pixar, Who is a dinosaur aficionado and a paleontologist as well, and he has a company called paleo mill and they go out and they hand scan at dig sites, dinosaurs and so they’re, now able to completely scan full-scale dinosaurs and we can reduce that down and then print Them and you don’t have to make big molds – you don’t have to transport them someplace, so we’ll be printing those very soon. It’S very exciting. We actually really like them, because they’re really cool, there’s a whole different thing, but i’m working on a character right now.
I created the character in maya, i’m still actually working on him, but what’s cool is i’ve done a test? I haven’t actually printed the character out, but what i want to do with that character is to puppet with the 3d printing, so it kind of does tie together, i’m exploring what i can do for puppets and then also just mechanisms and various things for like eye. Blinks and things like that and we’re going to use it for sets like like set set pieces, props, um yeah, so it’s kind of opened up a whole new avenue. How wonderful is that to find that kind of love and passion for an art form and and then making a living silly art, it’s not a very sophisticated. No, no, it’s a silly. It’S a silly art form. No, but it’s not it’s not.
There is so much it includes, so many of the arts you’ve got absolutely you’ve got the artistic part. You’Ve got the writing part. You’Ve got the video production part and we love doing it all, and it’s a universal language too. I mean puppetry around the world is incorporated into every. Every culture has some form of puppetry that that historically is very relevant, whether it’s and it’s incredibly symbolic. Yes, so we feel very fortunate, very fortunate i mean i mean it is. It is an art form in the united states that i think, is very difficult to make a living at, and it’s to be able to to have your foot in it. For this long period of time is really wonderful. Good! You .