Vie Nolmans

Designing puppets to me is an obsession, just like my painting is. From a graphical background I started painting on silk. But as I was evolving to pottery, before I knew, I was creating animals out of pottery clay ...

So, 15 years ago, I started making puppets out of papier-maché, and after a while, I was thinking it would be much better to use softer material to get more freedom of expression. So I started to work with puppet clay on life size caricatures of pop artists, which I enjoyed a lot. It was noticed by TMF and Jim TV, so they wanted to make a small documentary on my skills.

In the meantime, I've been experimenting with so many different materials for various projects. Plastiline Animation characters, latex "Spitting Image"-styled puppets, foam characters, puppet theatre dolls, ... it was an obvious next step, because I was doing caricatures anyway. I've been working on a project for a Canadian University to design some Chinese girl dolls for interaction with autistic children. A Swiss ventriloquist commisioned me to create a giant bunny with all sorts of inside mechanics to be able to move eyes, eyebrows, mouth, ... Another similar project was to design some sort of "cybermonster" with moveable eyes and electronics to activate internal lights. It turned out a great success!

Creativity is always involved, artistic as well as technically, because you have to think of ways to make simple movements with very complicated mechanics.

What makes it interesting? Every project is a challenge! It involves new solutions for brandnew problems every time. But the major challenge still is: "to make them live".


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