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Puppet commission checklist
This week I was contacted by someone for a set of custom-made shadow puppets, and it got me thinking how useful it would be to have a checklist of all the things that I should ask/do when in such a discussion. If you’ve been around the various puppetry forums, you will have noticed Andrew Young from PuppetVision previously offered up a creative commons version of his ‘Puppet Pricing Calculator’, an Excel file which is designed to help you calculate how much to charge per puppet. Well, in that same vein, I’m offering up my
Puppet Commission Checklist as an Excel file or PDF
for free and under the same creative commons licence (attribution only). If there’s anything there that you think should be added, please let me know and I’ll update the file.
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Is it hard to make a puppet?
As with most topics on puppetry, the short answer is ‘it depends’. That’s not really all that helpful for a beginner though, so I’ll elaborate: certain puppet types are easier to make than others. But it’s still not as easy to describe as that…
START HERE
Why should you use puppets?
What’s the best type of puppetry?
Quick guide to making puppets
Making ‘professional’ puppets
How much does a puppet cost?
How to commission a puppet maker
Is it hard to make a puppet?
What’s the easiest puppet to make?
Making human characters and clothing for puppets.
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Making 'professional' puppets as a beginner
You could just start with the Beginners’ Guide to Puppetry. This really is more about professionalism than about giving you a "here’s how you build a puppet from A to Z" type article. For that, well, as I say, head here.
This is one of those topics that irks me, because it’s a lot of myth and a lot of misunderstandings amongst the general public about how to go about making ‘professional puppets’. In this article I hope to both shed some light on those myths, and show you how you can go about doing it yourself at the same time. So let’s start with the basics: what do we mean by ‘professional’?
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You Can Make Puppet Costumes: A Free Ebook
There is a free ebook on the web entitled You can make puppet costumes. I have used this book for everything from muppet-type puppet costumes, to designing and making clothes for rod puppets. But you can use it to make clothes for every type of puppet, including marionettes, sock puppets, glove puppets… the whole magila.
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How to commission a puppet maker
This is sort of a beginners’ guide to knowing the right things to ask in order to commission a puppet maker. For the sake of us puppeteers, learn about how the commission process should work: read before you do anything; finding the right person for the job; quotes and prices; timelines; policies and payments; replicas; giving specifics; galleries and showcases; following up; and WHERE TO FIND PUPPET MAKERS.
Thanks Siahanie, glad you like it. Hopefully I can find out more about the puppets and post it on the site; there's not much known about the water puppets.
... School of Puppetry on What is water puppetry?