Swazzle, a San Francisco puppetry company doing live theatre, has started up a great online presence over the last six months or so. Their puppeteers and builders are blogging individually, but also as a team:
- Sean Johnson: Puppet101: puppet building
- Anita Coulter: Puppet U: manipulation techniques and puppetry performance techniques
- Patrick Johnson: Puppet Design: character design for puppetry
- Swazzle News: up-to-date information on the company news, show dates and tours
- Sid and Ed’s travel blog: puppets on tour
They also have an interesting behind the scenes section, where you can follow the whole process of making some of their puppets. At the moment on his blog, Sean is showing how to make some pea puppets. They are pretty cute: look here and here at Puppet Greetings. Sean also has a valuable puppet building tutorial outlining how he made Ratchet,a cat in Swazzle’s show B.A.R.K. the Robot Dog.
Updated links 2015. Swazzle has a new website now.