Sam Hale Interview Part 7
Sam Koji Hale is an illustrator, sculptor, puppet designer and builder. He has a master of fine arts in illustration from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and has designed and built puppets for a variety of film, video and theatre productions. His credits include Elf and Playhouse Disney's “Clay,” as well as Ahoy Captain Sid, which earned him two regional Emmy nominations. He received The Kennedy Center Award for his puppet design and construction on The Inland Emperor's New Clothes. Hale recently designed and built puppets for a Triumvirate Pi Theatre presentation of The Fox's Lantern (Kitsune No Chochin), a project he co-created and will puppeteer in.
Hale is Adjunct Professor of Theatre Arts at California State University San Bernardino. I asked him to share his thoughts on puppet design.
PJ: Talk about the difference between designing a character for a two-dimensional format and one that will be built in three dimensions.
SH: Most of my designs start as two-dimensional drawings, so there isn’t that big a difference in designing for two dimensions than three. One serves as the foundation for the other. Drawing flat art is the starting point for creating more sophisticated art -- my teachers at art school always said that if you are a strong draftsman, you should be able to paint or sculpt well too. A good drawing becomes a good painting or good sculpture.
That being said, moving to three dimensions adds another level of complexity. You need to be aware of shapes from multiple perspectives and how a character reads from different angles. In general, the more variety you get in a form as it turns, the more interesting it is to look at. A character with a long snout will be more interesting to look at than a character with flat features. Turn the character around and look at it from multiple perspectives -- in the mirror, upside down, etc. -- to get a sense whether the shapes are interesting and exciting to look at from every perspective.
You can get an interesting variety of expressions in a 3-D character. Depending on how you design the shapes in the face, the same character can look satisfied from one angle and upset from another. It can be fun to play with asymmetry too.
If you have a character with a raised eyebrow on one side and a half-closed eye on the other, it will look angry from one angle and sleepy from the other (puppeteer Rob D’Arc, a brilliant puppet designer, has experimented with kinds of ideas). If you work with asymmetry, one thing to keep in mind is how the shapes contrast and balance against one another. Yet another thing to keep in mind is the flow of shapes around and into each other as seen from different angles, and it gets tricky finding a really strong balance of movement and form with asymmetrical characters.
Hale is Adjunct Professor of Theatre Arts at California State University San Bernardino. I asked him to share his thoughts on puppet design.
PJ: Talk about the difference between designing a character for a two-dimensional format and one that will be built in three dimensions.
SH: Most of my designs start as two-dimensional drawings, so there isn’t that big a difference in designing for two dimensions than three. One serves as the foundation for the other. Drawing flat art is the starting point for creating more sophisticated art -- my teachers at art school always said that if you are a strong draftsman, you should be able to paint or sculpt well too. A good drawing becomes a good painting or good sculpture.
That being said, moving to three dimensions adds another level of complexity. You need to be aware of shapes from multiple perspectives and how a character reads from different angles. In general, the more variety you get in a form as it turns, the more interesting it is to look at. A character with a long snout will be more interesting to look at than a character with flat features. Turn the character around and look at it from multiple perspectives -- in the mirror, upside down, etc. -- to get a sense whether the shapes are interesting and exciting to look at from every perspective.
You can get an interesting variety of expressions in a 3-D character. Depending on how you design the shapes in the face, the same character can look satisfied from one angle and upset from another. It can be fun to play with asymmetry too.
If you have a character with a raised eyebrow on one side and a half-closed eye on the other, it will look angry from one angle and sleepy from the other (puppeteer Rob D’Arc, a brilliant puppet designer, has experimented with kinds of ideas). If you work with asymmetry, one thing to keep in mind is how the shapes contrast and balance against one another. Yet another thing to keep in mind is the flow of shapes around and into each other as seen from different angles, and it gets tricky finding a really strong balance of movement and form with asymmetrical characters.
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