Curly Nose

Here are some new Bugsy puppet designs. These drawings were done in pencil and scanned into the computer. I used the Wacom tablet to color them in. I discovered a new Photoshop brush that is quickly becoming my favorite. When applied at low opacity, it has a wonderful watercolor look.

Goat Eyes

Here is another mongoose drawing. Mongooses have very interesting eyes -- their pupils are shaped like horizontal ovals, much like a goat’s. One design challenge is to maintain this key characteristic without making the puppets look creepy.

Mongooses or Mongeese?

Here are some preliminary puppet designs I drew for our new puppet show The Case of the Elephant Trunk. The show takes place in India and features a gullible mongoose and his clever son, who has a pet cobra.

Puppet Up!

Two of the Puppet Up! sketches I performed in at the Hollywood Improv are online at TBS.com. Check out “Roller Skating Hot Dogs” and “Death Monopoly Game,” and be sure to watch for new segments every Wednesday!

Sandman

Here is my entry for this week’s Drawer Geeks challenge, “Sandman.” To see the full illustration along with all the other submissions, click here.

Pie Eyes

In order to evoke a different era, I thought it might be interesting if some of the Bugsy Brown characters had pie eyes, like in the old Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop cartoons.

Noir Look

While we’re developing the story and characters for our new show Bugsy Brown, Private Fly we’re also developing the look of the show. We want this year’s summer shows to look a little different than our past shows. This will be reflected in the puppet designs, backgrounds and color palette. I thought it would be cool if the Bugsy Brown show, being a film noir parody, was black and white.

Flickr

Flickr, Yahoo’s free photo-sharing site, is a wonderful resource for puppet designers, sculptors, artists and illustrators. I used to use Google’s image search when looking for reference photos and inspirational images, but now I almost exclusively use Flickr.

Because it acts as a repository of people’s personal photographs, Flickr has an almost limitless selection and a mind-boggling variety of subjects. If you can think of it, someone’s probably taken a picture of it.

There are several different photo-search options, including most relevant, most recent or most interesting. Each option will yield different results. Fickr’s images are uploaded by members and are generally larger than most Google images, plus the resolution is better and it’s easy to download various photo sizes. Many of the Flickr photos are of professional quality, so it’s like having a library of free stock images at your fingertips.

To Catch a Tooth

I designed this postcard for my friend Dylan Campbell's play To Catch a Tooth. The postcard was based on the movie poster for the Hitchcock classicTo Catch a Thief. I sampled the colors from the original poster and imitated some of the visual elements, such as the silhouetted figures in the foreground and the backlit figure entering through a lighted passageway in the background. Unlike Hitchcock’s thriller, the play is a comedy.

To Catch a Tooth opens April 21 at the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood. Click here for more information.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bugsy 2

Here is another design for Bugsy Brown, Private Fly. The puppets in this show will have a very simple look. The sharp pointed nosed gives this rough Bugsy design a slightly shifty look.

Slugger

Slugger is another member of the Mollusk Gang. He doesn’t move very quickly or say very much, but he’s got a killer head-butt.

Wendy

Most of the character names for Bugsy Brown, Private Fly aren’t final yet. As I write the script, I just plug in the first name that comes to me. This is a rough design for Wendy Widow, a black widow who solicits Bugsy’s help when her father, Count Tarantula, goes missing.

Wormy

Wormy is a member of the Mollusk Gang. He’s a slippery night crawler who can burrow almost anywhere undetected. While night crawlers aren't technically mollusks, Wormy’s spying skills have made him an indispensable member of the gang.

Mollusk Gang

Bugsy Brown: Private Fly is a film noir parody that will incorporate many of the noir archetypes in the story and cast. Here is a rough puppet design for one of the members of the Mollusk Gang, a group of slow-moving thugs who leave behind a path of destruction and a trail of slime.

Robot Elephant

Here is my submission for this week’s Drawer Geeks theme, “Robots.” To see the full image and all the other members’ submissions, visit www.drawergeeks.com.eks.com.

Bugsy Brown

Swazzle is currently developing two new puppet shows for the 2007 summer season, Bugsy Brown: Private Fly and The Case of the Elephant Trunk. Both shows are based on the library reading program theme “Get a Clue.” Here is a rough character design for Bugsy Brown, a film noir-style private eye who lives in a window box garden over downtown Los Angeles.

I drew Bugsy in Photoshop with the Wacom tablet (my new favorite drawing implement).

Muppet Mobile Lab

The brilliant inventors at Muppet Labs have collaborated with the creative team at Walt Disney Imagineering to develop what is in my opinion the coolest Muppet project in years. The Muppet Mobile Lab is a roving vehicle seemingly driven by puppet characters Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker.



The Muppet Mobile Lab recently premiered at Disney's California Adventure in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot, near the Muppet 3-D movie. During the testing phase, the animatronic characters are performed and voiced live via remote control. Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is puppeteered and voiced by veteran Muppet performer Dave Goelz; Beaker’s dialogue was prerecorded by Muppeteer Steve Whitmire.

The remote control vehicle looks like a stout rocket welded to a Segway scooter and is equipped with flashing lights, rotating signs, bubble sprayers, misters, and — diehard Muppet fans take note — a gorilla detector. Perched on a bicycle seat at the back, Beaker appears to propel the unit by peddling forward or backward. Bunsen uses joysticks to steer the vehicle. Eight cameras are hidden on the Mobile Lab, including one on the bridge of Bunsen’s glasses, allowing the performer to make eye contact with the person he’s talking to. Both characters display a wide range of motion.



Bunsen and Beaker gathered a substantial crowd as they rolled around the backlot area conducting silly experiments. The first was a time-travel demonstration in which everyone surrounding the lab was encouraged to close their eyes and count to 10. When they opened their eyes, they were 10 seconds in the future. Bunsen also demonstrated his mobile laundromat, which incorporated bubble, water and smoke effects (when the machine overheated) to clean his pants while he was wearing them. (For extra startch, Bunsen suggested placing churros in the pockets.)

The script of the show is still being developed, but the gags were funny, current and definitely Muppet. Bunsen made Disneyland-related jokes about things like FastPass and It’s a Small World, and he made specific comments about people’s clothing. There was something for children and for adults. When asked his age, Bunsen replied, “That’s a very interesting question, but vanity prevents me from answering it.”



I hope Muppet Mobile Labs becomes a permanent attraction at Disney’s California Adventure.