Celebrity Appeal
Posted on April 30, 2009 by freshwater
As all good casting agents know, it takes more than acting talent to make a star. It takes a great face.
The prettiest face isn't always the most memorable. The unique face, the expressive face, the face that commands an audience's attention &mdash that is a star quality face.
The same is true in puppetry. A puppet's face must be instantly recognizable and expressive. Most puppets have immobile, or minimally mobile, facial features. Emotion is built into the puppet through deliberate shaping and placement of eyes, brow, and mouth. Clarity of expression is best conveyed through clarity of facial features, so most puppet faces are caricatures. The eyes, in particular, must be large and noticeable. A skillful puppetmaker can, with a few simple shapes and lines, create a face that seems to project thoughts and feelings all the way to the back row of the audience.
Creating puppets for the Ugly Guppy is challenging. I need to achieve humanlike, emotive expressions in fish characters made of flat acetate. Thus far, I'm satisfied with my puppet designs. But not all of my Ugly Guppy actors are puppets. Some are living breathing fish! When I "audition" live fish, I'm looking for that same expressiveness and clarity of facial features.
To complicate matters even more, every new actor has to at least superficially resemble the cast members who have met an untimely end! Mango Smoothie was my first "Ilsa." When she died, I got Kisho and Andi, both of whom could play the Ilsa role. Now that they're gone, I will look at dozens of fish before I find one with the right look, a calm demeanor, strong swimming, and absolutely no signs of impending illness. It's an exhausting task.
But I'm commited to The Ugly Guppy, and to goldfish. My perfect leading lady is out there; I just have to find her. So line up, Hollywood wannabes of the gill persuasion, and show me what you've got!
The prettiest face isn't always the most memorable. The unique face, the expressive face, the face that commands an audience's attention &mdash that is a star quality face.
The same is true in puppetry. A puppet's face must be instantly recognizable and expressive. Most puppets have immobile, or minimally mobile, facial features. Emotion is built into the puppet through deliberate shaping and placement of eyes, brow, and mouth. Clarity of expression is best conveyed through clarity of facial features, so most puppet faces are caricatures. The eyes, in particular, must be large and noticeable. A skillful puppetmaker can, with a few simple shapes and lines, create a face that seems to project thoughts and feelings all the way to the back row of the audience.
Creating puppets for the Ugly Guppy is challenging. I need to achieve humanlike, emotive expressions in fish characters made of flat acetate. Thus far, I'm satisfied with my puppet designs. But not all of my Ugly Guppy actors are puppets. Some are living breathing fish! When I "audition" live fish, I'm looking for that same expressiveness and clarity of facial features.
To complicate matters even more, every new actor has to at least superficially resemble the cast members who have met an untimely end! Mango Smoothie was my first "Ilsa." When she died, I got Kisho and Andi, both of whom could play the Ilsa role. Now that they're gone, I will look at dozens of fish before I find one with the right look, a calm demeanor, strong swimming, and absolutely no signs of impending illness. It's an exhausting task.
But I'm commited to The Ugly Guppy, and to goldfish. My perfect leading lady is out there; I just have to find her. So line up, Hollywood wannabes of the gill persuasion, and show me what you've got!
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