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 _______________________________________________ List address: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org Admin interface: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/puptcrit-driftline.org Archives: http://www.driftline.org
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