It was really a display model, but the strings do work the puppet. Over the weeks, while waiting for enough natural lighting to film, I learned to simulate dance or rather skating moves. A couple of days earlier I found the shoulder strings could mimic this.
Now, the difficult part was how to manipulate the puppet with one hand, either left or right, when I have to still operate the camera. That entailed practicing through watching the camera's flip screen.
Without too much planning, I proceeded to capture random scenes, with the final frame being the puppet fallen as if it had crashed into a gift box. Included background audio from a Christmas CD. I snapped a still image of that last frame for a gif to achieved the desired transition. Fortunately for this video, I just needed the first and last image, since I used a WeVideo preset style. Good to know that WeVideo now provides editable transitions and effects as well.
I was rather pleased with the results. As I have yet to make my dream paper puppet come to life, I was happy with the staging involved in this project. It's back to making animated gifs, until next year.
In case you were wondering. This was sold as a Pinocchio. My snowman marionette would have been a more appropriate choice, but this one works better.
