On behalf of tvlesson.com, my name is Paul Louis. I’m a professional puppeteer and puppet
builder. So let’s talk a little bit about gloved arm puppets and exactly what they are. This
character here is a gloved arm puppet. Now why is she a gloved arm puppet? First of all, this is a
she, this is grandma gator, again from Jellybean Jungle TV series that was created back in the
90’s by yours truly. But she’s a great character and when I created her I wanted her to be able to
very figidy with her hands so we decided that this character was going to be a gloved arm
puppet. The puppet is operated by you, putting your hand inside the puppets head and operating
the mouth and then your other hand goes into a glove, so that you get some ability out of her
hands. And we have a second puppeteer operate the other hand, so these puppets come in quite
handy. When you have scenes that require the character to pick up an object or you know,
scratch their head or think or fix their eye glasses.
So you know, these puppets you know, really, really are required for people who know how to
do two things at the same time. Basically operating the head and operating the hand. I can’t tell
you how many times I’ve done puppet shows where the director wanted a hand and rod puppet to
pick up an object. A hand and rod puppet is not a gloved arm puppet. So hand and rod puppet
like this guy over here and the puppets behind me, they can’t pick up objects. You have to
literally stop the filming and you have to rig the object to the puppets hand and then pick up
where you left of. With the gloved arm puppet, you don’t have to do that, a gloved arm puppet
could just reached down and pick up the telephone, hello, and talk on the telephone.
So we love gloved arm puppets. Gloved arm puppets though, you know, are the types of puppets
that not everybody can feel comfortable operating. It takes a special skill, it takes a special
amount of patience to be able to get one arm moving and your hand moving and not doing this.
So you want to kind of be able to do this but have the puppets other hand actually doing
something separate with what you’re doing with the other hand. So it’s kind of like rubbing your
stomach and patting your head, or patting your head rubbing your stomach, I’ve said that before
but that’s kind of what it’s like. So there’s a certain amount of discipline and practice that it takes
in operating gloved arm puppet. As with all puppets, practice, practice, practice. On behalf of
tvlesson.com, this has been Paul Louis. Thank you for watching.