Handspring Puppet Company's Joey the Horse

I'm just going to leave this here without much further comment simply because it is amazing. I mean, if you just showed me just silhouette of the horse puppet, I would never guess it wasn't real. Just... the ears! The ears are so cool.

I find it particularly interesting how they do the emoting, because, well, through circumstances that I would never have seen coming in a million years, knowing how horses emote has become information that is highly useful to the fulfilment of one of my hobbies.

Comments

[Skywriter]

Saw this puppet in action when I had the good fortune to score a ticket to War Horse when I was in London. The execution does not disappoint in action.

[PoweredByTea]

1784730
I've not actually seen the play, I just got linked to the video. According to Nettle the horse is the best bit but the human is sometimes a bit horse obsessed to be sympathetic. Is it worth seeing?

[Bradel]

1784754
You're sure that's not Equus?

This is actually my first exposure to any of "War Horse", aside from hearing the name, but I have to say it looks pretty amazing. Then again, I've always been a bunraku fan (and got to see some of that at the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka when I was living out that way), so this sort of puppetry is particularly appealing to me. Thanks for sharing!

[Skywriter]

1784754
The puppetry is amazing. The rest is... eh. Largely forgettable. The story gives feels but gives feels by shooting at big targets that require little skill to hit, and the acting is nothing to write home about. I found one principal (the German) to be actively distracting. Basically your investment of money and time will be for the puppet performers and the puppets, so base your decision on that. I love good puppet work so for me it was money well spent.

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

...wow. That's... what's quite an improvement on the traditional panto horse, isn't it? I mean, I'm looking at it, I can see the people doing the puppeteering, and yet a very large percentage of my brain just goes "No, no, that's a horse."

I wonder if you could adapt the thing they are doing into animating a model?

Also, regarding knowing about horse emoting, it's odd, isn't it, the weird stuff this hobby makes you learn. From minutiae about how various bits of a horse are called and/or work[1], through details of the civil service of several different countries, to the art and science of horse puns.

[1] Some weeks back I launched into a bit of a lecture on horse movement (someone didn't know the difference between a canter and a gallop, if memory serves) and had to explain my seeming expertise to a friend without using the words 'my little pony' and 'fanfiction.' Fun stuff.

[Skywriter]

1784797
In person, it's mesmerizing. At one point Joey spooks a little at something that flies past and I was sitting in the audience literally thinking "Ha! I wonder if that was natural or if they trained him to do that?" and then three seconds later I was all like "Wait. Puppet."

[Bradel]

1784797

hose movement

You mean like this?

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

1785401
I have absolutely no idea what on Earth you are going on about. Who mentioned hoses?
static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130324025631/wordgirl/images/9/92/Liarjack.png

One has to wonder at the video, though: What's the point of the exercise? Is it to train them how to catch a hose? Is that a frequently required skill when you are a firefighter? Or is it an object lesson on why you don't drop one? If it is the latter I suspect it fails miserably—that looked like tremendous fun.

1785385

That's brilliant!

Puppets really fascinate me—if you get the motion of something right and if you make the effort to make it appear alive, our brains seem very happy to accept that, even if the puppeteer is utterly visible not a foot away doing all the work. It's like seeing a magic trick, having the magician tell you how they did it, twice, and walking away with an inexplicable feeling that what you saw was still magic[1].

Uncanny might be the word.

[1] Random aside: I have, in long-vanished notes somewhere, a sketch of a character who's an actual no-joke wizard but passes off his stuff as stage magic and mostly gets away with it using bullying tactics (catchphrase: What, you don't believe in magic, do you?). The joke was, I seem to recall, that as the story (which I never actually wrote) progressed his justifications got more and more perfunctory as a lot of other things were going on. *blows up room with numinous fire* "Oh, that? Yeah. Well, I just, um, palmed a hand-grenade, and mirrors, um, and guide-wires obviously, and, uh, then, well the rest is easy. Right."

[Bradel]

1785642

Random aside: I have, in long-vanished notes somewhere, a sketch of a character who's an actual no-joke wizard but passes off his stuff as stage magic and mostly gets away with it using bullying tactics (catchphrase: What, you don't believe in magic, do you?). The joke was, I seem to recall, that as the story (which I never actually wrote) progressed his justifications got more and more perfunctory as a lot of other things were going on. *blows up room with numinous fire* "Oh, that? Yeah. Well, I just, um, palmed a hand-grenade, and mirrors, um, and guide-wires obviously, and, uh, then, well the rest is easy. Right."

Incidentally, I would pay to see this written and published in Bad Horse's anthology project.

No, I'm serious. This sounds epic, and I think he's largely abandoned the idea of a central motif. I think. Seriously, Ghost, I think you should write this. It sounds like it could be amazing.

[Lurks-no-More]

Wow, that puppet is incredibly lifelike. The ears, especially, make it look so real!

1785642
Everything I've read about human perception convinces me that in a very real sense, we see with our brains, not with our eyes. If a thing moves like a living being, the brain classifies it as one; if there's two dots and a curved line, our brain sees a smile in it; and so forth.