File puptcrit/puptcrit.0510, message 6


Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 22:38:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gregory Ballora <gregballora-AT-sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Left-right controllers
To: puptcrit-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org




--- Jimsan777-AT-aol.com wrote:
 I think Greg used "my" 
> style for Team America marionettes.   It takes a
> good manipulator to 
> controllers work both ways.    I think many
> puppeteers are now preferring this style 
> of controller...and maybe even improving on it.  
> Jim Gamble

Jim, Just so you know, I was brought in initially to
design controls for the puppets. for the first tests,
Peter Baird used his familiar airplane control. I went
through Luman Coad's book to look for other controls.
I Had to guess at what the puppets were going to do,
and design one control to work for all of them. After
playing around with a few designs, I basically came
back to a modified Gamble control. There were a few
reasons for this:
1) The Gamble control is comfortable, and flexible if
you need to add special strings.
2) The arm extenders worked quite well for what we
were doing
3) It was certainly the control with which I am the
most familiar, but it was also familiar for Christine
Papalexis, Scott Land, and several of the other
puppeteers. Tony Urbano uses a very similar control,
so he and Tim Blaney didn't have much of a switch. 

One of the main differences was the design parameter
that the head of the puppet and its control needed to
be removable as one unit, so we ended up with a head
paddle that could be unclipped. This ended up being a
good thing as we often ended up only using the four
head strings to control the puppet; The director was
fanatical about not having strings get in front of the
puppet's face, or get too distracting. It is pretty
difficult to have the puppet walk across the screen
when the back string, knee strings, and sometimes hand
and shoulder strings have been removed. And you have
12' strings. And you are walking across a Genie lift
basket that bounces with every step. That's Movie
Makin' for you.

We also added some crazy stuff to help with the
constant changing of string length, but the basic
arrangement stayed the same. That was One decision I
was never sorry about.

Greg Ballora
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