Hobey

Steven Widerman shows Hobey Ford shadow puppets of Bil Baird's which were inspired by Richard Bradshaw.

I have been experimenting with a tiny eye mechanism for an insanely small puppet. The photos show the progression from rod operation to string operated mechs. In the end the attachment of the foam carved head could not be achieved in a way that would allow disassembly for repair and modification. I did manage to figure out how to hammer out spherical eye lids from brass and came up with a nice harness idea for the lids. The side to side eye movement was more difficult which is usually not the case.

Here is my modification on a universal head control for a rod puppet. The control allows for up and down, side-to-side and diagonal twisting of the head or cocking the head. The control can be clicked into a holder which then transfers the side to side and up and down movement to a foot pedal. This was necessary to keep multiple characters alive in a scene. Click on drawing to enlarge then click on the multi arrow icon in that window to get the photo to enlarge a lot further where you can scroll around the photo to see details.

The original Peepers Puppet.

El Coqui the frog is a legendary Puerto Rican folk character. Here is the El Coqui story set in shadow puppetry. The idea was given to me in the form of a shadow puppet after a workshop I gave in San Juan Puerto Rico several year ago. A teacher gave me the puppet he had made and told me about El Coqui and suggested that I tell the story. I got musical help from Ronnie Delerme who performedl soundtrack in several tracks. My hope is to put a Spanish version soon.

A video illustration of a mouth mechanism on a profesional shadow puppet

Around three years ago I was visiting my buddy, steel sculptor John Payne's studio when I noticed his oil can collection. In a flash I imagined a video about "Tin Man". That year The Firecracker Jazz Band was looking for a theme for their Asheville Christmas Parade float and I suggested "Wizard of Oz goes to Mardi Gras". I built the Tin Man costume for Asheville tapper, Joe Mohar and Firecracker's entourage started building costumes and a float for the parade.

The Sub Atomic Lean 2 is a tent created by Hobey Ford and Jeff Ashton. It is the result of two avid camping enthusiasts who are both claustrophobics. We resorted to a tarp lean-to until one day we decided to design and build a new tent/ lean-to. We began with the dimesions of our tarp lean-to and from there created paper models. We then created full scale templates and began sewing our creation. A year and a half later we completed our tent which Jeff (Buck) and his daughter Laurel are currently camping in all over the southwest US. The tent features water collection/diversion gutters.

My newest show "The Rainbow Brigdge and Other Tales" features shadow puppets that I've created uoing some cool new technology. The material that I'm using is high density poly-ethylene sheeting with black matte finish. It is a plastic sheeting cut-able with scissors and paper punches. The thickness is similar to poster board. I am using heavy music wire for rods with dowell handles and a trigger for the mouth of the puppet.

Here is a quick demo on using Peepers Puppet. If you have a short video clip with your own Peeper creature idea, put it on youtube and send me a link. Winners will be posted here!