Got Wood?

LIESJE: "You know what would be REALLY cool, Dave? What if we did this whole video with puppets? Actual puppets! No animation."

DAVE: "Great idea! Maybe socks? Like they're really amateur, handmade sock puppets?"

LIESJE: "Perfect! And maybe a few of 'em could even be made out of wood."

DAVE: "Great."

Okay, so maybe that wasn't our actual conversation, word for word, but you get the idea.

A while back, Dave Cowles and I embarked on a new music video for They Might Be Giants. A decision was made to not only build all the characters as hand-puppets, but also to construct several of them out of carved wood.


Neat? Hopefully. Time-consuming? Definitely.


Here they are, after a month and half of filling my apartment's living room with copious amounts of saw-dust and probably permanently damaging my lungs. From left to right, we've got Mole, Fox, Porcupine and, of course, Cat.


And here, following the same line, Rat, Raccoon, Bear and (O)Possum. Each will get his very own sock shirt with accompanying fabric/spring/felt arms, as well as button eyes and assorted other goodies.


The Bear is the tough one. He needs to have a month we can (roughly) operate.


Hopefully my plans of rigging his jaw up with fishing line and dowel rods will do the trick.

And yes, I know. The Raccoon needs a tail. And the Cat.