Puppet Experiment Evaluation

Audience Interaction/Movement

Audience interaction is at a maximum when using finger or hand puppets as movement is created directly through the gestures of the audience's hands. This amount of interaction gets the audience fully involved with the telling of the story as they are bringing the characters to life, as well as carrying the story through their movements. However, the puppets that were incorporated into the actual pages felt awkward to use because of their set poses and positions. I think the enjoyment factor of this particular method would wear thin (especially for a young child) because of the limitation and awkwardness when handling the pages.

Material

Using a soft material like felt is appealing to both children and adults. The soft, touchable quality felt has, provides extra interaction with young children as they might like the feel of it - like they are petting a real animal.


Composition/Viewpoint

The stand alone finger puppets can be viewed from every angle as they have no limitations, and can be easily slotted into any composition - like being used alongside a book or in a puppet theatre.
On the other hand, the puppets that were incorporated into the pages had a limited viewpoint because of being stuck to the page.


Conclusion

In my opinion, by creating puppet characters for my book, I have been able to answer the questions posed in my proposal in both a positive and a negative way - I have created a better understanding of how a more tactile approach to storytelling (through the use of puppets) can aid the interest and entertainment value for its audience, as well as weighing out the pros and cons to working in this particular medium to see how it functions when considering the objective of interaction.

My Puppet Experiments!

Here are a few examples of my own puppet experiments...

Finger Puppets

I've kept the puppets simple, making them out of felt that I stiched together. Using felt creates a softness that is appealing to the younger viewer, as well as adults. To incorporate the finger puppets into my story so they can be used for interaction and enjoyment, I would either: use them as an aid to go along side my orginial book, or use them in a staged theatre in which a participant can tell the story themselves.

All the characters of my book presented as finger puppets

Part of a stage/theatre that I made

Part of a stage/theatre that I made

My second experiment using finger sized puppets was to sew the puppets into book pages to incorporate them directly into the story - in a similar mannor to that of the 'Baby Lamb' book that I posted about earlier.

Hedgehog character that will be the consistant throughout the book

The underneath of the Hedgehog character - how it's attached to the page

Below is the Squirrel finger puppet attached to a page. The hole at the bottom of the page is for the Hedgehog character to fit through.

Below is the Badger finger puppet attached to a page.

Below is the Hare finger puppet attached to a page.

By creating these dummy pages of the puppets incorporated into a book page, I can gage that by using this method the audience participation feels limited and akward by the set poses of the puppets and how they can only move backwards and forwards. I think the enjoyment factor of this method would wear thin (especially for a young child) because of this limitation and akwardness when handling the pages.


 Below is a larger and more malleable version of of the Hedgehog puppet. This time I'm going to use just the one Hedgehog puppet, and put him into illustrations from the original book

The Hedgehog peeping out the log

The Hedgehog finding a pile of leaves to hibernate in


Using the just the Hedgehog puppet felt like I was limiting the variety, and therefore the enjoyment of an audience interaction - just having one puppet can get quite boring for a child to concentrate on.