Interview with Author of Paper Puppet Palooza, Norma V. Toraya and a free fighting girl movable card project

Paper Puppet Palooza:
Techniques for Making Moveable Art Figures and Paper Dolls
By

Norma V. Toraya

There is nothing more enchanting than the simple, funny movement created by a flat, two-dimensional paper puppet. Puppets are automatically, and inherently, amusing. Paper Puppet Palooza will show you how to make a wide variety of moveable paper puppets, marionettes, shadow puppets, charming toys, and novel, artful gifts.

In addition to each of the basic puppet construction styles, exciting variations include instructions for making a puppet theatre, moveable greeting cards, rod puppets, and more. An enjoyable cast of puppet characters the famous Paul Palooza, a dashing Zebra known as The Great Zesby, and the lovely dancer, Ananushka Pupehklova, and many others will guide you through your puppet-making adventure.

Norma Toraya, aka Crankbunny, is an animation director for Curious Pictures in NYC where she works on commercials, music videos, TV intros, documentaries, and projections for different clients. Her animation work and charming puppet work can be found online at www.crankbunny.com. (Great name by the way!)

1. What does your workspace/ design space look like?

 

 

I work from home. My space is very computery and office like because
this is where I also animate everything for work (that's my full time
job). I keep everything neat and tidy because there's usually so much
going on. My dog hangs out with me all day/night while I work too.
(photos included)

2. Do you save your mistakes/ or designs you don't love right away -or
ditch them?

I start many ideas as drawings in my sketchbook, so it all gets saved
that way. I don't usually save the models though, or any of the art
really. Someone always comes over or a birthday comes up and I
suddenly go 'Here! Have this!'. All my work is completed digitally, so
there isn't really a need to have all this stuff to store.

3. What's on your "next to try" list?

I want to work on different types of vovelles.. specifically making a
really nice perpetual calendar that's actually functional and fairly
large. It would also be cool to make one of the moon too.

5. Do you ever work with recycled materials?

Alot of the parts of the puppets come from recycled materials I
collect - plastic straws, chopsticks, wire, string, cardboard, foam,
old nuts and bolts for weights, etc. I hate buying that stuff. I keep
all my paper scraps in a bin and build my models from that too. I feel
its important to use as much as everything that your life touches.

6. What music do you listen to when designing?

I listen to alot of rocknroll. I need music that has energy to it to
keep me going. Things like jazz or anything somber pretty much will
distract me into napping or daydream snacking.

7. How long does a design take you to create?

Hmm, usually 3 to 5 full days of work. Making a puppet or popup paper
mechanical thing takes three steps. Coming up with the idea and
researching it; building a rough model that works; breaking down that
model and doing the illustration/coloring for it. I generally have to
break projects up between animating and my other todos.

8. How do you organize your supplies?

My alter-go Neurotic Norma keeps everything in a box or a little
container. Everything is labeled and stacked. Making paper puppets
luckily doesn't require alot of space or weirdly large sized tools -
so its fairly simple to keep everything together. I got a degree in
sculpture millions of eons ago and got the messy out of my system
then. 

9. What books/magazines do you read?

I read alot of comicbooks and books on toys, automata and historical
doodads. I don't consistently have one magazine I like to read - the
internet has so much to offer in information that it's become my main
source for reading material.

10. How would you describe your personal style?

I think I'm hysterical... but I know I'm not. I know for the most part
my funny puns and imaginary tangents are lost on most people -
therefore I will refer to what other people describe my work as:

Dark, illustrated, whimsical, strange, other worldly, magical,
painterly and subtle.

11. How do you determine what a design is going to be made with?

I stick to paper always. I've tried to branch off a few times making
the paper puppets more 3D, but it was such a mess and took too long to
dry so I can't be bothered with that malarkey.

12. Do you have a collection of anything?

Yes. I love my Robocon toy collection (Robocon is an old Japanese show
from the 70s). I have a huge collection of popup books and vintage
paper novelty items. My newest obsession is vintage tea towels.

13. And the all important question (from Ravelry) what is your
favorite swear word?

I pretty much swear like a sailor all the time so this is a hard
question to answer. It's one of those things that catches everyone off
guard (strangers, business calls, coworkers). I'm a huge fan of George
Carlin's 7 dirty words - so I'll just take the first one off his list.
Shit. But really I'm a huge fan of all of them.

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All I have to say is, "wow"!

That just go me all inspired and you are lucky because I am now going to share with you what I made! I bet you are going to be inspired too and want to grab a copy of Paper Puppet Palooza and start making movable projects.

I started with this cool new rubber stamp I got at The Carson rubber stamp show from Lost Coast Designs it is of two girls fighting. I stamped it twice and embossed it in black.

I cut out one girl from each set, I had to do this because one girl's legs overlap the other and so for the second girl I had to free-form cut out where I thought her legs would be. I then cut slits in the back ground paper where the pull tabs would be. I attached the pull tabs with tiny grommets. I then attached the girls to the backing paper with another set of grommets at their pivot points.

Then I glued the backing paper to the card only along the sides (so the girls and tabs could move.)

And finally I glued another piece of paper to then ends of the two pull tabs and stamped it "PULL"

Here they are in each position.

This is a Card Album, it holds cards with an elastic binding system, you can slide the cards in and out with out damaging them.

 

What I did was fill it with various colors of blank 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock that I simply folded in half forming blank cards. My plan is to fill it up by holiday time! Ya think I can do it? It holds 24. It is about 24 weeks till Christmas.....hmmmm.

Today's question:

Do you make movable elements on your projects? And if so what is your favorite way to do it?

As a thanks for answering and sharing you will be entered to win a free book!

Comments

[rush]

i absolutely love a part that is interactive in my paper art. i made a star book with a child play theme. on one page, i placed a small paper kite, and the tail was a long string of beads. i could move the kite out and it would fly. then, to bring in back into the page, pull the beaded string. fun!

[Suella]

I use photos of family as models and add brad hinged extremities ( 1 or more) where appropriate. Waving? Drowning? Running/ Dancing?

Whatever. It is great fun.

[MonkeyGurrl]

I've never made anything like that, but I *love* your fighting girls!! I also love the quote: "my funny puns and imaginary tangents are lost on most people". BOY, can I relate!!

[Eileen]

I love to make pop-up cards. Does that count? They don't really move other than pop up and stand there. My nieces and nephews love to get cards from Aunt Eileen.

You did an amazing job with the fighting girls stamp. What fun!

[wendy]

Love this idea - I bought this book awhile back, and it's in my (ever growing) stack of "to be read" books. It'll be moving up toward the top now! As for using movable elements in my cards - I love to make pop-up cards, sliders, etc. I find them to be fun and challenging.