High cost of puppet-making revealed

Mary Robinette Kowal sez,

I've been a professional puppeteer for close nineteen years and almost every time I work with a new theater company, I have to explain why puppets are expensive. It's not the materials; it's the labor.
I just did a post breaking down the time and material cost to build a simple papier-mache head for the show "There Will Come Soft Rains" and I thought your readers might be interested.
Total material cost? About a dollar.
Total time? Seven to ten hours.

Dog head for “There Will Come Soft Rains” (Thanks, Mary!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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LYNDON

I’ve just been having a (second, more successful) go at making a mask out of leather and I’ve been thinking something similar.

Cast the face, model model model the mask, make a cast of that, mould mould mould the leather onto that (fortunately I’ve managed without having to carve wood).

In my spare time it’s taken weeks, but much of that was waiting while I tried to source materials.
BHSFX

We’ve made puppets in the past – a great experience. We have the only high school special effects class of its kind in the country, and yes it does cost a great deal to keep it running. Thank goodness for grants.

BHSFX

check us out: http://www.bhsfx.com
TheMostHorrible

Wow, Mary Robinette Kowal, I was in Alice in Wonderland with you (the play, not the location.)I was Tweedle Dee.
I enjoyed watching your Cheshire Cat’s head float around and I’ll always remember your line “We’re all mad here!”
Congratulations on the Campbell Award!
Jamie Sue

How does one get into a career like Puppet making?
BBNinja

BB blows up yet another website.

The website link?

“This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota”
drabheathen

Hey, I saw that play. It was amazing…
missmonster

Thank you for writing this. Iam a freelance artist and people like to question why things I make cost what they do. It is frustrating being asked to make a full body handbuilt costume for $100 and then having the client flip out when you explain what the actual cost will me. Ugh…
Mary Robinette Kowal

Darn it. Sorry about that.
moneyries

I interned for a Puppet Company in Syracuse, NY for a semester in college, and its no joke, we spent months building the puppets used in an elementary school play. Months! For paper, plastic, and glue!
Lydia9

Former puppet builder here. Yup, if you want something that looks like it’s supposed to, weighs what it’s supposed to, fits or handles the way it’s supposed to, and can either take a beating/ be easily repaired or produced in multiples, you’re looking at time. I used to do puppets for tv and film, and even something like a muppet, for example, which looks simple enough involves a huge investment of time… you’re talking about taking something from design to prototype to finished object; you’ve got people dying fabric, sculpting or patterning foam, building armatures and mechanisms, working up costumes, fitting things to performers’ hands, etc, etc, etc. And if you’re a puppet builder you basically have to be able to work in any media that comes your way; carpentry, sewing, sculpting, painting, etc.

All in all, a FABULOUS way to spend your time, but painstaking, challenging work to say the least.
Robbo

Worked for the Muppets for 12 years and ran my own company, Radical Sheep, for another 12 after that – puppets cost money – and take time. Try explaining that to funders and broadcasters. You have to build your cast and then you have to hire someone to animate them. Still cheaper and faster than animation but oh, how they’d roll on the ground in protest! A constant, relentless and never-ending effort to educate – and all for naught. Puppets are cute and sweet and – cheap – right? Wrong.

Cheers.
Hel

Site’s down
Mary Robinette Kowal

@#16 Wow! You have to drop me a line and let me who you are under that pseudonym.

@#18 Holy crap. I didn’t even notice the “Kids” category. The show I built this for is not even remotely for children.
Anaxaforminges

I was just reminded of that brilliant scene in “Being John Malkovich”:

“So, what do you do?” Hot woman asks.

“I’m a puppeteer.” says John Cusack.

“Goodbye.” Woman gets up and walks away.
snackcake

these stories seem to parallel web design… and I am not surprised.

When Matt Stone and Trey Parker made “Team America: World Police” they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on puppets… many of which they blew up.

Puppets are awesome.
Puppetboy

I noticed that BoingBoing categorized this story under “Kids”. Why are puppets automatically assumed for kids. I have built and performed puppets for the Muppets, yes, but also for Chappelle’s Show and Howard Stern. Let’s not pigeon hole and art form BoingBoing.
dougrogers

“Pay for web design? I’ve got a computer!”
“Pay for puppets? I’ve got socks!”
Rob Cockerham

I always pad my materials invoice with pricy ingredients, e.g.:

3/4ths of a cup of whole grain organic rice flour – $7.

four out-of-print copies of the March 10 issue of the Hollywood Reporter – $55.

Gyroscopically balance-corrected googlie eyes – $110.
dainel

So I can make puppet dog heads for $1? The whole dog for maybe $2 or $3? I’m going to get on this right away …
anthony

That’s so funny. The high school visual arts class I’m teaching is making puppets-carving the pieces from balsa and bass wood. Teenaged youth with knives-the gore levels are insane.
pork musket

This is true of just about every skilled profession, much like the anecdote about the engineeer (“One chalk mark – $1; Knowing where to put it: $49,999″). As a programmer I use a free text editor to do most of my work, but not everyone could do the same thing with the same tools.
Chris Schmidt

That looks like a wonderful way to spend a weekend…
Xenu teh WunderKat

Man, Atreyu’s Luck Dragon has really fallen on hard times, from the look of this pic.
Mary Robinette Kowal

Cautiously I say, I think I’ve fixed the CPU issues that took my site down earlier.

@#12. I hadn’t heard that anecdote and I’m going to use it as an analogy from now on.

@#14 The problem with making a David Elsewhere puppet is that the reason his moves are spectacular is because they look physically impossible. A lot of them are things that I’ve specifically trained puppeteers to not do because it would break the audience’s belief. I mean, he looks like he has no bones and isn’t bound by the normal rules of gravity. Puppets aren’t bound by gravity either, but breaking those rules won’t look as interesting as when he does it.