Throw Spaghetti at the Wall: A Puppet Maker’s Case for Saying Yes to Weird Ideas

Hi, I’m Sam Carter. I’m a professional puppet maker, fabricator, and the creator of Boopos Blanks, a line of DIY puppet kits designed to give people a professionally built starting point for creating characters of their own.

Since this is the first Boopos Blanks blog post, I figured I’d start with one of the philosophies that has shaped a surprising amount of my creative career:

Throw spaghetti at the wall.

I don’t mean saying yes to everything.

I mean putting yourself out there. Applying for something even when you don’t know if you’ll get it. Pitching the strange project. Trying a new material. Building something you haven't built before. Saying, “Sure, why not?” and seeing what sticks.

That approach has led me to some pretty interesting places throughout my career as a puppet maker and fabricator.

Making Room for Weird Creative Projects

I was recently looking at the projects I have coming up over the next several months.

There’s plenty to do.

I’ll be refurbishing and rebuilding puppets for upcoming stage productions and getting those characters ready to perform again.

I’m also continuing to grow Boopos Blanks.

Boopos started from a pretty simple idea: I wanted to create quality puppet blanks that other people could turn into characters of their own.

Instead of starting every puppet completely from scratch, you can begin with a professionally constructed puppet and concentrate on the part that is often the most fun—deciding who that puppet is going to become.

Add eyes. Fur. Hair. Ears. Horns. Teeth. Clothes.

Make it weird.

That's the point.

But even with all of those projects ahead of me, I realized I was missing something.

I wanted something big, strange, experimental and completely different from what I had been working on.

Surprise: I'm Building Giant Parade Puppets

Back in January, I came across a grant opportunity and applied. Then enough time passed that I pretty much forgot I had done it. This morning, I opened an email and discovered that the grant from Fulton County Arts and Culture had been approved.

I'm going to build giant parade puppets.

Part of what makes this project so interesting to me is the amount of creative freedom involved. I get to design the puppets, experiment with materials, figure out how they need to be engineered and operated, and ultimately determine what these giant characters become.

For a puppet builder, that's a pretty fantastic playground.

Building a giant parade puppet also creates a completely different set of problems from building the smaller hand-and-rod puppets I normally work with.

How much does it weigh?

How will a performer carry or operate it?

Where does the structure need reinforcement?

Which materials can create the shape I want without making the puppet impossibly heavy?

How does the character move?

Those are exactly the kinds of fabrication problems I love solving.

We're Going to Build Them With the Community

There's another part of the project I'm especially excited about.

The grant includes an opportunity to hold a community puppet-building event, which means other people will actually get to help bring these giant puppets to life.

Puppet making is the best kind of group project. Because puppet making is really a collection of creative decisions and practical problems that get solved one at a time.

A piece of foam becomes a head.

Fabric becomes skin.

A mechanism creates movement.

A strange pile of materials slowly develops a personality.

Then suddenly there's a character staring back at you.

Giving people an opportunity to participate in that process is exactly the kind of thing I want to do more of through Boopos Blanks.

Why I Keep Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall

None of this would be happening if I hadn't filled out an application months ago without knowing whether anything would come from it.

So, this is my call to action. Just throw the spaghetti against the wall.

You don't have to know how everything is going to work before you begin.

Apply for the grant.

Pitch the weird idea.

Try the material you've never used.

Ask the person you think will say no.

Build the thing you aren't completely sure you know how to build yet.

Sometimes nothing happens.

That's okay.

Sometimes the spaghetti sticks.

And every once in a while, you open your email on an otherwise normal morning and discover that you're about to build giant parade puppets.

I'll be sharing the design process, experiments, successes, failures and actual construction of these puppets here as the project develops. I'll also be writing more about professional puppet building, fabrication, character design, DIY puppet making, and the work happening behind the scenes at Boopos Blanks.

If you're interested in learning how puppets are made—or you're thinking about building one yourself—stick around.

We've got some weird stuff to make.

Want to build a character of your own? Explore Boopos Blanks DIY puppet kits and start with a professionally constructed blank puppet ready to customize, or learn more about our puppet-making workshops for groups, events, and creative experiences.