Morning Coffee

We did it! We’re well into another year and everything is great! Provided you don’t look at the news or work in tech or are a journalist or…

Um. Anyway. Puppets.

There actually is some good news on the O:P front! You may have noticed that things on my socials have been quieter than usual. That usually means I’m super busy with something, and this is still the case. As we talked about in the most recent (at time of writing) episode of Pixels and Puppets, February has been largely filled with dentistry, occasionally interrupted by puppets. However as we’re closing out the month that’s getting a little easier, and it’s all good stuff.

First good thing: The Operation: Puppet Hall of Fame! As suggested on the Discord (join the Discord) I’m going to be adding a new section to this website, and it will feature… YOU!

I’ll be posting a full video about this soon but bascially if you’ve ever got a puppet from me and use it in any public-facing production (YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, anything), I want to know about it and link to it. Quite often I have no idea how folks are using the critters they get from O:P, and more than once I’ve had someone ask “is this one of yours?” and link to something I’ve never seen before.

Part of what I want O:P to do is bring folks together, so this would be a good way of amplifying both my work, and the work of other puppet folk.

So get in touch! I’ll be reaching out to everyone I can think of but I’m sure to miss a lot. If you use an O:P build in your thing, big or small, I want to know about it. Send me your link, even a screenshot/logo/promo art, and a 1 sentence summary. I don’t yet know how it’ll be organized as that will depend on the response, but I want to give everyone a chance in the spotlight.

Second good thing: Kevin’ busy. With puppets this time! I can’t give details yet and it’s still early days, but it looks like I’ll be making some puppets for a popular and noteworthy YouTube channel. It’s an exciting project that I’m very happy to be a part of, and means that throughout March my head will be deep in the Puppet Mines. As the project is under wraps for now this does unfortunately mean the build streams are still on pause, but they will return once I get done all this work.

As usual I’ll post anything and everything I can on socials, so keep watching, keep in touch, and we’ll forge ahead through whatever this year can throw at us.

As a follow on from the last blog, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I should be focusing my efforts with O:P. Foremost as always is building for the shop. That’s my job, and the engine that drives everything else. But beyond that, I’ve taken a step back and looked over what, in the past 4 years since I’ve been doing this, has garnered the most response. For online creators there really is only one metric, and that’s the numbers. So what do the numbers say?

By a wide margin, simply posting photos on socials gets by far the biggest response. It makes sense, there’s very little effort required to click a “like” icon. Of these, Instagram is the leader by a long way.

Then the build streams are second on the list, hand-in-hand with puppet building instruction videos. Again, makes sense, people find something of value there that they can use.

After that, The Oracle show gets modest views relative to subscriber count, and this can be lumped in with the Short videos.

The podcast has hard capped and has had a downward trend for the past couple of months. I can estimate we have about 30-40 regular listeners at most, and that number is getting smaller. Growth stopped a couple of months ago.

At the very bottom of the list are the Frankie Play streams and this blog. The number of people who engage with those rarely rises into double digits.

The YouTube channel has (currently) 766 subscribers. Compare this with, say, Adam Kreutinger’s Puppet Nerd channel, which has 148 thousand. Or Ragmop and Goose which have 5.9 thousand despite their channel being a year younger than mine.

The only conclusion is the “content” is the problem. Adam of course is the venerable public face of puppet building online, and Ragmop and Goose do quick, punchy viral videos. This is what the internet wants. On the whole, it doesn’t want longer form, heavily produced work, i.e., most of what I do.

Don’t get me wrong, I always knew this was going to be the case. My style is outdated and doesn’t gel with today’s audiences. I don’t think it’s bad, by any means. I love what I do and strongly believe in it, and for me to try and pivot to doing what I think The Internet wants would feel false and like the “hello fellow kids” meme. Can’t do that.

As I move forward, it only makes sense to focus on those things that people actually want. I know there are folks who enjoy both, but the hard truth is they are work, and there isn’t much point in doing them if there’s no knock-on effect. I have a limited amount of time and energy, and I need to spend those things in places where it will have an impact.

As much as I hate to say it, the number has to go up.

I’m not making any big decisions or grand gestures yet. Still mulling things over and figuring out a good balance. But I am going to focus more on the things people clearly want. As an artist it can be a bitter pill to put something out into the world that doesn’t get the response you’d like, but I’d like to think I have the maturity to be realistic.

A professional knows that not everything will work. You can do your best and still fail. The ones who succeed are the ones who can adapt and be inventive, rather than trying the same things over again and expecting different results.

Numbers suck sometimes. You know what doesn’t suck?

Coffee.

What? Another blog post? What year is this, etc.

Been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple of months, specifically about the aforementioned “Phase II” stuff. Time to reassess.

As we near the end of 2023, it’s good to look back and see where I’m at. I always knew this was going to be a lean year for sales, and that’s played out as expected. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a concern – I can only keep the business afloat at a loss for so long, but for the moment the ship is holding. But yes, I’m feeling the pinch.

That’s what “Phase II” was supposed to be about – if I won’t be generating sales, I can at least grow the footprint of O:P and bring more people in. So there was a big push back into mainstream social media, the reactivation of the TikTok channel, and me trying to post something on Socials every day. While not a failure – the numbers did go up – it certainly wasn’t what I’d hoped. More importantly, I found that it generated far more stress than it was worth.

Time. Time is always the enemy. Time I spend making videos and other media is time I have to take away from building. Building is the only thing that brings income, so time away from that is a tangible cost. And it becomes a vicious circle, where I’m so worried about building enough that the stress mounts and it becomes harder to think of ideas for new funny videos, etc.

Then came the run-up to Halloween, always a special time ‘round here. This year I did something different – instead of worrying about quotas and build times, I wanted to take one build and just spend as much time on it as I liked. The result, a delightful Nosferatu that I’m very proud of, became the first O:P “Premium” puppet at a higher cost than anything I’ve sold before. It also sold about a week after it was listed.

Hmm.

The important lesson here is, at the end of the day, for me and O:P, doing the Capitalist treadmill is a pointless exercise. It saps the joy out of it, and without joy, puppet building is meaningless. I can’t ignore time altogether, but I can give myself a little more breathing room every now and then.

I’ve decided for at least the remainder of this year, I’m not even going to plan build queues or track time. I’m going to make what I want to make, however I want to make it. Same for Socials, no more feeling the need to post something every day. If I have something to post or an idea for a video, I’ll make that. If I don’t, I won’t. Keep it organic and free flowing.

I keep saying, the rules of The Puppetsphere are different. There’s no algorithm that will help me. Perhaps others have found a way to work the system and rise, but I’ve given it my all and made no tangible progress. The Internet as a mass doesn’t want what I do, and me trying to do anything other than what I feel in my heart makes me miserable. Word-of-mouth is the only way for me, and if it stays small, it stays small.

As always, quality matters to me far more than quantity. Don’t get me wrong, quantity does matter, on a practical level if nothing else, but if I’m honest with myself and the work, quality matters to me far more.

Onward. At our own pace.

After coffee.

Yep, still here! In fact, more here than ever.

As I talked about on Ep 11 of the Pixels and Puppets podcast, thanks to many shenanigans and shady dealings from the ever-increasingly awful Etsy, it’s come time to enter a new phase for Operation: Puppet. After several meetings with Gus the Marketing Yeti, we have decided* to call it Phase II. Because we’re bad at names.

As I said on the podcast, I’ve always been content to be a small player in this space. All I want is a bit of an audience to enjoy my work, and to keep the shop running so I can keep making entertaining media. That’s still true, and once upon a time that would be a completely achievable goal even in as small a genre as puppetry. Once upon a time social media and other socially-driven sites like Etsy would have encouraged that. That’s increasingly not the case, so it’s up to individuals to take control of their own media presence. That’s basically what Phase II is. I can’t rely on whatever nebulous and vague algorithm might send my way. I must push.

While the “puppetsphere” (as I call it) is small, it’s not as small as you might think. I’m still relatively new to the field. The O:P YouTube channel certainly isn’t unknown at 714 (currently) subscribers, venerable puppet building guru Adam K currently has 143 thousand. Adam’s been doing this a long time and has put in the work to build that audience, so I’m looking at that as a ceiling.

What it means is I need to just put out more, for lack of a better word, “content”. But as I’ve learned already, if I’m not enjoying it, I won’t keep at it. Sustainability is the key. I’m still thinking about what that ultimately will look like, and as always things will adapt over time. But the practical upshot is you’ll be seeing a lot more of me, Frankie, The Oracle, Jellyroll and yes even Gus, in the future and going forward.

As I’m just one person with a limited amount of time & energy it won’t happen overnight of course, but I’m determined to build momentum and grow. Building a community doesn’t happen passively and doesn’t happen without you. I strongly believe in what O:P does. Puppets may be silly and frivolous, but the goodwill and kindness that a community built around such things generates is a force for good.

Welcome to Phase II. After coffee.

*Gus decided. I just sat there and tried to get a word in edgewise.

Believe it or not, it’s another blog entry! Told you I didn’t abandon it.

Quite a bit has happened since the last entry back in those halcyon days of… 3 weeks ago. Principally the build streams got put on hold because the shop needed a massive overhaul. My actual usable workspace was being encroached on by the advancing drifts of cruft, so it was time to clear-cut back to the bone and rebuild. 

Thankfully as reported in episode 9 of Pixels and Puppets, the clean-up has gone well and the build stream will be returning much sooner than anticipated.

I’ve been taking a lot of mental stock lately, as cleanups always give me space to re-evaluate. In terms of growth, O:P has stagnated a bit. Things are quieter than usual, but that’s largely on me. The build streams always generate activity and without them, it’s noticeable. The podcast is still getting solid numbers but they’re just holding steady, not growing, and it’s been a long time since I did any Frankie Play or episode of The Oracle.

A lot of this is just circumstantial, owing to my limited time. I’d love to do it *all*, all the time, but there are only a certain number of hours in a day, and as always running the shops must take top priority. Lately that’s meant the studio clean, which means that there hasn’t even been all that much building happening, so part of my “content creator” (still a horrible term) brain is panicking.

Now it’s time for me to take a breath and remember that part of my whole model with O:P is not to play the Capitalist fantasy game of “infinite growth at any cost”. Sometimes things will be slow, and that’s ok. What matters is how I and everyone in the community is feeling. O:P should be a Happiness Generating Machine, and that is the final metric.

I realized the other day that I really miss the Frankie Play streams, but I de-prioritized them because they are among the least-viewed content O:P does. However, I really enjoy them, and they don’t interfere with build time, so why aren’t I doing them? I may not be gaining eyeballs, but is that even important?

And that’s when I realized that things like the Frankie Play streams shouldn’t be viewed as “events” like the build streams. It’s never guaranteed an audience, but if we’re lucky, a few folks might stumble across it and enjoy it, and maybe even follow some breadcrumbs. 

It’s busking. Digital busking, but instead of coins in a hat, maybe we’ll get some new people. Buskers have no idea if they’ll have an audience or not. It’s a totally random roll of the dice. They do it for the love of it. It’s organic.

I need some of that in O:P. There always needs to be practical considerations, but it’s healthy and uplifting to just do things for the joy of it. I got it so firmly lodged in my head that this year is the Year of More Eyeballs that I lost sight of the fact that part of what makes this whole thing special is just creating fun stuff for the love of the stuff. 

Here’s to all the digital buskers out there. I think Frankie will be joining you again soon.

Over 3 years ago (thanks for the super accurate date system, Google), Jamie, Andrew and version 1 of The Oracle did our very first live stream. The occasion? To celebrate the YouTube channel hitting 100 subscribers.

Yesterday Scarlet pointed out (shoutout Scarlet) that during the build stream (Wednesdays 11am ET on Twitch and YouTube) we hit 700 subscribers. Wow.

I do keep my eye on our numbers, probably more than is strictly healthy. With a limited amount of time I need to make sure that whatever O:P does is reaching the most number of people, so if a particular project isn’t performing well (looking at you, Frankie Play), it needs to be moved down the priority list or dropped completely.

However, I also realized early on that O:P was never going to be “big”. It’s a niche of a niche, and in some cases (again, Frankie Play), another niche inside that. Every niche recursion loses a significant percentage of the audience, so instead of just “make the numbers go up”, I decided it would be best to just make O:P the highest quality I could and build a core dedicated audience who would stick around. Nothing is worse for creator burnout than the fear that not churning out regular “content” means that your fickle following will suddenly disperse like a shoal of frightened minnows. I’d rather have a smaller number of true community members who feel valued and invested rather than a large collection of hungry baby birds who need feeding.

That’s what makes the 700 YouTube sub number special. It’s still a tiny percentage of what even other puppet folk have, but I’m still extremely proud of it. As anyone on the Discord knows (join the Discord), we are very much a Muppet-like family. I may be the designated Kermit, but it’s all in service of keeping something larger than myself running. It’s a comfortable respite in a chaotic world, and it’s my intention to keep that going as long as I can.

So thank you everyone. I raise my glass to you. Or rather, this attractive mug of, yes, coffee.  

Back from a lovely four days in New York City. Still not quite ready to shift into work mode, so taking a day to recalibrate the brain cells.

Just before the trip, Leia on the Discord server (shoutout Leia, also join the Discord) asked if I was bringing any puppets to NYC. There is a rudimentary plan to bring The Oracle and/or Frankie to The Museum of the Moving Image Jim Henson Exhibit at some point, likely next year, in a “full karmic circle” trip since that’s where the seed for O:P was really planted, however this trip wasn’t that. This was just a little getaway for my partner and me since we hadn’t had one since the beginning of the pandemic.

However, it did get me thinking.

There is a section in the South end of Central Park called The Mall, and within that a stretch called The Literary Walk, so named for a number of statues of literary and culturally impactful figures. The benches that line the Walk all have plaques on them, dedicated to people or events. The plaques are part of an ongoing campaign by the Central Park Conservatory called “adopt a bench” and can be purchased for a not inconsiderable sum of $10,000. One such plaque (purchased, apparently, by Jimmy Dean) is dedicated to Jim Henson.

While bundling The Oracle or Frankie off wasn’t on the agenda, what if, I thought, I brought my Kermit, and we made a little pilgrimage? It was an attractive thought, and after determining that yes, there would be enough room in the suitcase, we set off to do exactly that.

There is a decent enough description of the location of the bench on The Fandom Muppet Wiki, but it did take a moment of hunting to find. However, on a lovely sunny Spring day, myself, my partner and my very own hand-made Kermit, did a pilgrimage that many puppet folk before us have done. And I took care not to reveal the plan to the Discord until the moment we were there, which was delightful.

It was very special, and worth the moment of confusion (and then delight) at airport security when the inspecting agent asked to open the suitcase. But now I’m back, NYC working it’s always-reliable magic on me, and gearing up to descend once more into The Puppet Mines. Do join us for this Wednesday’s build stream (Wednesdays 11am ET on Twitch and YouTube) as I try to remember how to make puppets.

But now, coffee.

Operation: Puppet started formally in 2018, an evolution of the previous Operation: P.U.G. (for the deep history, listen to Episode Zero of the Podcast), and the shop launched in February of 2019. In November of that year my wife and I took a short holiday in our beloved New Orleans and since then there hasn’t been any vacation, largely owing to this pesky global pandemic that lingers.

In November of last year, we attempted to have a long weekend in New York City but sadly our plans were waylaid by cancelled flights owning to a freakish amount of fog. This week we try again. After a couple of days of prep, I’m going to attempt an actual vacation for the first time since The Before Times.

This of course means a couple of things. There won’t be a build stream this week (normally Wednesdays 11am ET on Twitch and YouTube) and of course no build pics on social media, and any orders placed on the shops will be sent out when I get back. However, I’m still hovering around the Discord (join the Discord) and will likely post some NYC pics as the trip goes on, assuming there won’t be another freak fog. And of course there’s a sparkling new episode of Pixels and Puppets to listen to.

At some point next year there are rudimentary plans to make a puppet-based return to The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, were O:P really began. I’m hoping we can get a couple of O:P community members and myself together, but this trip isn’t that. I’ll largely be sticking to Manhattan and Harlem, visiting museums, and just basking in one of my favourite places in the world. I loathe the stress of airports and flying but it’s all worth it.

Every time I go to NYC, I come back changed. The place inspires me and sparks new ideas, just by the sheer volume of the culture it contains.

Time to recharge the batteries, and that begins now. With coffee.

Going to be a busy week around the puppet mines this week. Next week is extra short as I’m off on my first actual vacation since 2019, so I’m trying to do as much building this week as possible.

There’s a famous saying in production: “Good, Fast and Cheap. Pick two”. For me it’s more like one of those triangle sliders in video game character customization when you’re blending between three different points. I have a certain baseline for quality – that’s always top priority, but it also needs to come in under a certain price point. When I started the shop (at the time of this writing) three years ago I determined what I wanted to do was bring good quality pro-style puppets to more people. The sort of puppets you see on TV and such are often quite expensive, and for good reason, and that of course is cost prohibitive to many people who may be interested in the field, but not ready to invest the big bucks just yet.

I realized that’s where I could, theoretically, fill a gap. Could I make puppets using pro techniques, that look and feel good, but also bring them in at a price more people could afford? The answer is: yeah. Usually. Given some parameters.

The biggest cost in any puppet build is, of course, time. To design, prototype, test, fabricate, sew, and finish any individual puppet often takes days if not weeks, depending on the build. And some things that appear simple on the surface are complex once you break them down. My solution to this was to prototype standard “models” that would be flexible enough design-wise to create a variety of different characters, but simple enough in construction that they wouldn’t take a week each to build.

So far, it’s largely working out. Overall, I can do, say, two Smols in three days, same with Greeblees or Nurnees, while live hands monsters, goblins, and other things needing a lot of hand sewing often take three or even four. It’s not a bad turnaround all things considered, but even then, my “profit margins” are incredibly thin (and sometimes nonexistent). Plus material costs are skyrocketing, but that’s a whole other subject.

My baseline is: I want to make quality puppets at a price point that people can afford, and that also lets me keep the lights on to, that’s right, build more puppets that people can afford. It’s been three (nearing four) years now, and while there are of course rough spots, it’s been successful enough that I don’t see it going away any time soon.

I’m in this for the long haul, with all the weirdness and wonder that comes with it. All the media production, The Oracle, the podcast, the build streams, Frankie Play, all rest on the foundation of the shops.

So to work, Puppet Orc. The mines are calling. After coffee.

Really fun stream yesterday. We started on the Smally, a free pattern now available from The Creature Works Studio. Tom Stewart, the principal behind Creature Works, is a long -established pro builder and has dropped by the streams from time to time. Also a very nice chap.

It’s a good thing Tom was there cuz there was a hilarious part where I failed to read the pattern correctly and almost cut some the wrong shape. Thankfully Tom caught it and course corrected me before the damage was done, and we all had a good laugh.

I’m glad that happened as it’s illustrative of a point I keep making: the difference between a beginner and a pro isn’t that the pro doesn’t make mistakes, it’s that when they do, they either have the experience to know how to handle it or the experience to be able to improvise a solution. Experience is the common denominator.

This was one of my big takeaways when I did BJ Guyer’s wonderful courses for the Stan Winston School of Character Arts. By the time I did the courses I had already been building for a while and knew quite a lot of the basics. BJ positions the courses as beginner courses and that’s largely true, but watching BJ work really taught me valuable lessons and upped my own skills and confidence to a whole other level.

BJ’s courses are all archives of live streams that some lucky students got to participate in (I believe Tom Stewart was one of them) and as a result, not everything is perfect and polished. Stuff occasionally goes sideways or isn’t easy to demonstrate, and watching BJ, who is a well-established professional and among the best of the best, deal with it and talk through it taught me more about not just puppet building, but the best headspace to be in in order to cope with mistakes.

Which is why when I messed up yesterday, we had a laugh and moved on. When I was just starting I remember a sense of nervousness, of being afraid of making mistakes or failing, of having no confidence in my abilities, and I’m betting other beginners do to.

That feeling goes away the more you build. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. You always will. Only by making the mistakes can you learn why they are mistakes in the first place and how to move past them.

And now for some completely intentional coffee.