Cool trick! How to get into making shadow puppets

Shadow puppetry is an art form that requires nothing more than a light source, a surface to project that light onto, and a shadow-casting object that moves between the two. It's also an ancient storytelling method —  with roots as far back as the third century BC in India — and popular worldwide. 

Traditional shadow puppets are flat and made from leather or paper, with details cut into them to resemble facial features and clothing. Contemporary shadow puppets can be made from virtually anything, and can be 2D or 3D too. And because the light source can be anything bright, from the sun to a flashlight, it's an extremely accessible trick to pick up.

To learn more about how to get into shadow puppetry at home, we chatted with Chloé Ziner, one half of Vancouver-based shadow-puppetry duo Mind of a Snail.

Why to learn it and when to perform

While shadow puppetry may be popular with kids, Ziner said there's a misconception that it's just for kids. "It's a very diverse and sophisticated art form that people dedicate their lives to," they said. 

It's also an inexpensive hobby to try out since you can use recycled materials and things you have around the house. In fact, shadow puppetry can be seen as an opportunity to work with different media and exercise your creative muscles. "I think my favourite part of the process is those moments of discovery: the 'aha moments' where you have an idea. Is this going to work?" Ziner said. "Craft the thing, try it out, and then the magic happens."

It's also a novel activity to do with friends, and it can even be a way to meet new people. Ziner and their partner Jessica Gabriel have been hosting community jams for years, where people craft puppets around a theme and make up stories together. (Fun fact: their first gig was at a rave. In a forest!) With pandemic restrictions, they moved the events online, and during the interactive Shadowjam every Sunday, community members can type commands in the chat to trigger sounds and lighting effects in real time.

"Maybe do a Zoom show for your friends or family," they said. "You can take an old shoebox and cut out the bottom of it and put just regular office printer paper over it and then prop up your cellphone flashlight behind to shine the light. And you have a puppet stage and you can decorate the outside."

How to get started

Crafting shadow puppets can be as simple or elaborate as you like. Mind of a Snail has detailed suggestions online for making frames, landscapes and the moving parts like the puppet's jaw. Ziner recommended using materials that have a bit of weight to them and are sturdy enough to keep their shape, but also thin and supple enough to work with, such as paperboard you might have around.

And it's likely you already have what you need to get started. "If you have an idea, grab some materials like, honestly, [a] cereal box, cardboard — maybe you have a cool plastic bag that when you hold it up, light can shine through it, and it's an interesting colour,"  they said. "And you can even just use your cellphone flashlight."

If you'd prefer not to craft puppets, you can find a light source and use your body to make shapes instead. "Hand shadow puppetry is its own art form." said Ziner. "It's wonderful, and there's tutorials online of how to make hand shadow puppets."

As for what kinds of stories to tell, the possibilities are endless. Your shadow puppet tale can be original or an adaptation of an existing story. Ziner suggested trying to recreate a fairy tale or other story from your culture. "Or you can make puppets of yourself and your family or little animals and see what happens," they said. "See how the animals want to interact with each other.

Ziner said not to worry about making your work too polished. "Just do it and have fun and don't try to make it perfect," they said, while adding that you should make things interesting and use colour. "We have a collection of onion bags: beautiful woven textures that you can get in the shadows. I'm just thinking of other [textured] things like bubble wrap, stuff that comes in the mail, different cloth. Look around your house and see what you can find, and use recycled materials and make something that brings you joy."

How it's done

To bring your puppet to life, Ziner said, it needs three things: breath, focus and weight. 

"Always paying attention to your breath and putting breath into your puppets," they said. "Those rhythmic micro movements can give emotion to a character that would otherwise be a flat, still creature or shape — just an object."

Focus is about where the puppet is looking and what it is sensing in a scene. "It can hear; it can see," Ziner said. "[Focus gives the puppet] attention and consciousness and helps direct what's happening in the story. So if a sound happens over here, a puppet looks up to it and pays attention to it."

And Ziner noted the importance of the puppet having weight. "So [it's] not just floating around arbitrarily in space. It has weight. It sits on the ground in a certain way and moves across its environment because of the weight itself. Even a bird flying in the sky has a certain weight to it." Ziner said.

If you're making puppets of people or animals, it can be helpful to observe the movements of those people and animals in real life. "We have a show that's about these magical talking crows … inspired by all the crows that fly by our window," said Ziner. For that show, Caws & Effect, they studied and imitated how the birds moved. "It's all about observing the movement that something is doing and trying to recreate that and give the illusion of life."

As for adding sound effects and voices, Ziner said that while the style has been made popular by television shows like The Muppets, it's not a necessary component of shadow puppetry.

"If voices bring you joy, yes, go for it," they said. "[But] there's also a lot of wonderful, compelling, beautiful puppetry that is wordless."

As with the other aspects, Ziner suggested you personalize the sound, like adding your favourite song, and not feel pressure to perform voices the whole time. The message seems to be: make it your own. "Puppetry in general is such a wide artistic medium that almost every puppeteer has a different way of doing things," they said. "And they're all wonderful in their own way."

Sebastian Yūe is a Toronto-based writer, model, voice actor and player of many games. They are the author of Lake of Secrets, an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, and Corpus, an unofficial supplement for Heart: The City Beneath. Sebastian has been playing card games since they were six. Follow them on Twitter here.