ANIMATION TIPS

ANIMATION TIPS AND GAMES

When animating a puppet there are five basic things to remember:

WPTS Animation Tip and Games

BASIC PUPPET ‘PLAYING’ GAMES

  • Play “Simon Says” with the puppets
  • Invent alternate plots for common stories i.e.: Goldilocks redecorates the bear’s house.
  • Invent a story from a newspaper headline.
  • Write your puppet’s biography.
  • Videotape the puppets in action, and have students review for improvements.
  • Create invent a 30 second puppet show that has a beginning, middle and end.
  • Do a puppet parade – so everyone can practice taking turns, entering exiting, explore different ways to do this i.e.: creeping, popping, coming in backwards, and falling.
  • Dance to music – do the different kinds of music suggest different ways to move the puppet?

Tips on creating puppet voices

Voice warm-ups

  • Breath in and out slowly – do this 10 times, feel your ribcage expand and contract
  • Count aloud – starting softly and becoming louder.
  • Pretend your face is made of rubber and stretch it in all directions—out in a fish mouth, wizened like an old face, blown up like a balloon or chewing a huge wad of gum.
  • Say the vowel sounds– keep the jaw loose and relaxed. Put consonants in front i.e.: – faah, feeh, fiih etc. Put consonant blends behind i.e.: ahrt, eehrt, ohrt,
  • Say tongue twister six times without error:

Selfish shellfish

Black bugs blood

Rubber baby buggy bumpers

Good blood, bad blood

Fresh fried fish

Creating different voices

Make a different voice for the puppet – it’s not you so it doesn’t talk in your voice! Remember you can also ‘talk’ in sounds. Make sure you make the voice or sound LOUD enough for the audience to hear it. You can vary your voice in these different ways:

Pitch   
High or Low

Placement
Try a nasal, throaty, front of the mouth, or airy voice

Rhythm
Talk slowly with a drawl, or excitedly, talk in a robotic voice, or talk saying only 3 words at a time.

Accent
Try an accented voice but be respectful of the culture that it comes from.

Simple circle games to test out voice

  • Counting “1 potato, 2 potatoe…”
  • Say the alphabet “A is for aardvark…”
  • Repeat after me …
  • “I’m going on a trip and I’ll take with me…” (Anyone who has an ‘d’, for example, [kept secret] in their answer is invited to come, those who don’t have to try again)
  • First letter, last letter. Elephant…tiger…red…dictionary …yak…kookoo!
  • Have the puppet introduce their puppeteer.
  • Now can the puppet introduce him/herself.

TIPS FOR SHADOW PUPPETS

  • See if you can create a fade-in effect: begin with your puppet close to the light, then move closer to the screen. Then try fading-out.
  • Being closer or further from the light source also changes the shadow puppet’s size, but also makes their outlines clearer or fuzzier. How can you use this effect in a story?
  • Check out how your puppet’s shadows can overlap without touching each other.
  • Project a background. Does this change how your puppet moves? For example, if the background is red, is your puppet more excited? If you are in a sci-fi space city, how does it move?