About Dungeons and Puppets
Hey everyone, and thank you for coming to my little corner of the internet where Dungeons and Puppets exists. I’m happy and excited for you to be here and join us on this absolutely magical and insane journey.
Buuuuuut you clicked here on that “About” page looking for some information and details on how this came to be, who created it, etc. I’m here to deliver that to you personally.
Let’s start off with, “Hi, I’m Steve. Creator of Dungeons and Puppets.” <hand extended to shake>
I have been doing puppetry for the past 15+ years (mostly hand and rod, some mascot work) and art my entire life. I love expressing myself visually.
It began with some foam, fleece, and hot glue...
My journey into puppetry was unexpected. It was one of those late-night moments on the internet browsing and WHAM. Something just hit me. To this day I can’t tell you what or why, what page I was on, etc. I just felt a switch flip in my head telling me to create my own puppets.
I bought a few pre-made ones online to see how they work and purchased “The Foam Book” by Grey Seal Puppets. To many, myself included, it was like the holy bible of puppetry and got me started. That book taught me the most important things like eye focus, making a puppet believable, and basic construction techniques.
I made dozen of puppets, mascots, had a website and YouTube channel (that for 2005ish times did pretty well) and enjoyed the hell out of it at the time.
2 major issues though.
- It was by all descriptions a “working blue” aka dirty puppet site. Vulgar by nature.
- In 2012 I had a kid, and making filthy puppet movies just lost its appeal to me.
I packed up my supplies and puppets and took a break.
Like the Godfather.. the puppets pulled me back in!
As my kid got older, she started to wonder what was in the bins in the basement and soon the cat was out of the bag. She knew and she was interested.
It took me a year or two trying to figure out how to include her. First, I did a demo for her kindergarten class where we made Pete The Cat and it was a lot of fun. Then (with my help) she made her first hand and rod puppet Flower. This time we spent together was awesome and so much fun, it motivated me to produce something we could work on together. The itch for me to come back was huge, but I wanted it to all be different.
No filthy puppets.
Something “different” to challenge myself and my art when thinking about the medium (no hand and rod, no mascots)
Involve the kid.
A topic I’m interested in.
In the end I don’t think that criteria was going to be that hard to figure out. Wanting my kid to do this with me surely helped narrow things down into a smaller pile and then….
Wrap that all up and Dungeons and Puppets is born
The kid and I play D&D together and she loves the Young Adventurers Series. We craft cars for the TTRPG Gaslands together, chopping up Hot Wheels into post-apocalyptic creations.
We like to dream up crazy ideas together.
Making our own D&D inspired puppet universe just makes sense. It’s something we love and have passion for, it’s visually freaking AMAZING with heroes and monsters doing battle at incredible locations, and we can come up with out own art style.
2D puppets
Taking a typically 3 Dimensional medium and flattening it out. We use a Cricut, occasionally a 3D printer, craft foam, felt, fabric, fake fur and leather, you name it, but it’s FLAT. Kind of… 🙂 Nothing is perfect yeah, but the goal is a 2D styled show.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us!
ONE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE AWAITS!!!
