The DumbAscii Files Puppets

When I heard about IL Governor Rod Blagojevich being arrested (and after wondering just what took so long anyway!) I knew what I had to do. I MUST MAKE A BLAGO PUPPET! I also had to somehow use the word “gubernatorial” because it’s one of my favorite words to say. Try it… it’s fun!

Ok, technically I didn’t make him. He’s just Manley wearing a wig. In fact I didn’t even make that. I had an artist friend Patty Pulliam of Rustic Studio step outside her usual media to dabble in puppet wig-making. (For the record, I made the part in from that goes across the forehead, and that’s where I got stuck. As you can see from my previous post she did an amazing job on it!

For this video I recorded the audio first at a friend’s studio because I felt it would have been way too difficult to do the voice and puppetry at the same time, and have it consistent enough. Heather and Eric Bouton of Heather’s Drum Studio in Elgin, IL helped me out a lot!


Heather provided the voice and obscenities of Patty Blagojevich. It’s almost a shame to have them bleeped out, but its funnier that way! I could not stop laughing when she was recording her part either!

Eric did all the audio engineering and even chipped in to handle the voice of the cops. Thankfully, he didn’t want to kill me even after the 20th take of some of the parts. (Delicate Genius at work here!) I took the rough mix and did some editing for timing, added a few reverb effects, then mixed in music.

As for the filming, this was the first time I’ve used a green screen. It worked pretty well, even though there are a few little glitches here and there. One problem is that the puppet’s eyes are green, so that was almost impossible to not have it bleed into the background.

This was the first time I tried using an upgrade of my light setup too. The last videos were just done with whatever lights or floor lamps I had in the house. I went to Lowes and picked up some 1000W work lights and some other assorted lights, and had most of them rigged up to mic and drum stands. Guess you have to work with what you’ve got sometimes!

Working with the chroma key effects was interesting and challenging. Next time I’ll need to try a few more lighting combinations to see what worked best. I may also try filming in the basement and backlighting the green screen itself. I’ll have to get my puppets some blue contact lenses as well!

There’s going to be a few more Blago videos too. I can’t let the wig go to waste!

So take a look and help the poor guy out…

Crazy Roddy’s Gubernatorial Emporium

Ok, here's a sneak peek at my next video. I wanted to wait but this is just too good! I had my friend Patty of Rustic Studio help me make a "Blago" wig.

I'm not spilling the beans just yet on what the video will be though, but obviously it'll feature our much-loved governer Rod Blagojevich.

I'll be recording the audio this weekend, and hopefully I'll have everything filmed and edited by the following weekend. (It's written here now, so I better get it done!)

There was a pretty cute video of a cat that was sneaking across the room and stopped every time the guy moved the camera until it was right up on him.



I just replaced the cat with a puppet and added some creepy ninja music and there you go! Ninja Puppet! This was one of those videos I could make pretty quickly. It isn’t meant to be a masterpiece, just something to make you laugh a little.

I made this one by myself as well, and moved the puppet for each take, then edited them together to look like it was a single shot. (Oh no! My secret is out!) If you watch carefully, you’ll see a break in continuity. The door to my garage is open in the very first shot, then none of the rest.

I edited each the shots of him moving down the hallway, then added the music. I think it lined up just right, which was a bit of luck! I did remove one shot though to make the ending line up with the end of the music.

So look out behind you! Here comes the Ninja Puppet!

As if having my Drunk Hasselhoff parody being shown on TV once wasn’t enough, I was viewing the comments one day when I read one about it being on TMZ. For the record, TMZ is one of my guilty pleasures. It is everything that is wrong with the world today, but I can’t get enough of it! Maybe I can get famous enough with my puppet videos that I’ll be on there myself someday too!

Luckily for me, they show TMZ about twelve times a day, and I was able to catch it on TiVo. It was part of their Valentines special (I caught it Feb 17th, 2007). There was my puppet, my carpet, my carbon monoxide detector. All being shown on TV AGAIN!

Thank you TMZ! And here’s the clip if you missed it.

I got a call from one of my friends who said that someone she had shown my videos to called her to say that she thought she saw it on TV. TV?! All I knew was that there was a “puppet Hasselhoff” that was going to be on E! Daily Ten. (May 17th, 2007)

Knowing there can’t be THAT many drunk Hasselhoff puppet videos out there, I made sure to set my TiVo and sure enough, there it was! I was able to catch the whole thing when they replayed it later that night.

I couldn’t believe it! There was my puppet… my carpet… MY CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR being shown on TV! Not to mention Debbie Matenopolous knows I exist. Well, sort of. Even if it is just some minuscule way, and probably only for the time it took her to read that line.

Here is the clip…

This one was a given! When I saw the footage of a drunken David Hasselhoff mangling a cheeseburger while being filmed and scolded by his daughter there was no way I could pass it up!

I took the audio of the full-length version and edited it down to just over three minutes. Just like the Angry German Puppet, this was shot as a single continuous take. I made a few attempts before this one that I had to stop for one reason or another. This one was actually the first take I made all the way through. I did two or more takes after this one, but I felt this one was the best out of all of them. The only thing that bugs me is that I didn’t notice his other arm was twisted under him until after I had filmed it.

To be honest, a small (a very, very small) part of me felt a little bad about poking fun at someone with some serious problems, but then again, this is “The Hoff” we’re talking about. I simply needed to watch “Hooked on a Feeling” or anything else that had Hasselhoff singing, and then I don’t feel so bad. Besides, this is just a goof anyway!

So enjoy it in all its cringeworthy goodness…

Drunk David Hasselhoff Puppet!

The second video I made was a remake of SNL’s “Dick in a Box” with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg. Every time I saw the original it cracked me up.

Just like the Angry German Puppet video, I reused the original audio, and did my best at a shot-for-shot remake. I made this entirely by myself, and it was pretty ambitious to try to make this as my second video. During editing I realized I missed a few shots, and I had to make do with some parts I had already filmed.

One thing that gets pointed out a lot is that I didn’t put the end part of the song. The “Christmas… Hanukah… Kwanzaa…” part. To be honest, by the time I had gotten what I have here I was spent. It took me until February to get this done even though the original came out in December.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the result, especially considering this was my second video, and I did it all myself.

So check it out for yourself if you haven’t seen it yet…

Puppet Dick in a Box!

The first video I made was a parody of the “Angry German Kid”. I use Sony Vegas for editing, and I was able to get the look and effect I wanted pretty easily. It took me quite a while to edit because I was learning Vegas, and the subtitles were the hard part for me.

I filmed this at my PC, with my laptop (and me) under my desk playing the original. I Mixed in the original audio after filming. This was shot as a continuous take. If I remember right, this was the third take.

There are a few spots where the puppetry doesn’t match well, and you can see my arm at 0:42 and 1:55, but overall I was pretty satisfied with the result.

The comments, ratings, and views were so much better than I expected too! I found this linked to a ton of gamer sites and although it wasn’t anywhere near as popular as the original, I knew I was on to something…

So here it is, the one that got it all started… Angry German Puppet!

Welcome to DumbAscii.com! The DumbAscii Files are a puppet troupe that loves to make parody and funny videos. Although I started this a few years ago, a new year’s resolution was to create this blog to keep everyone posted on what’s new and to give some behind the scenes info too.

I’ve always loved puppets and puppetry, of course I was a HUGE fan of the Muppets! One of my favorite toys was a very cheap ventriloquist dummy I got from the Johnson Smith catalog I (unfortunately) named “Dick”.

In fact I remember when I was a teenager, my friend Diane had these Tiny Toons stuffed animals she kept in her car, and I always made them dance and sing along with the radio. She said to me “you should be a puppeteer!” That always stuck with me. Even though it took almost 20 years, I’m finally now making some funny puppet videos and the like.

I’ve had over 1,250,000 total views of the handful of videos I’ve put online. One of them has even been featured on TV twice (on E! Daily Ten and TMZ). I wasn’t anywhere near as active as I wanted to be last year due to some health and work issues, but this year I promise to be more prolific and put something out at least every few weeks. Also I am starting to make some of my own puppets and characters now as well!

So as always, stay tuned for more and I hope you enjoy watching these as much I enjoyed making them!