Mr. Doodles — Tyler Litton

**Mr. Doodles**

One puppet’s quest to stay on Day-Time Television

Mr. Doodles was created for Fuge Camps in 2021. It tells the story of a puppet trying to find his place in the world of modern broadcasting. With a brittle spirit and fragile identify, Mr. Doodles tries to teach children’s programming with his sidekick Reggie the Rooster. After a fumble on national televisions, will he find his way back to network TV?

Learning to Paint with Mr. Doodles - Ep 1

Mr. Doodles is the host of the “Learning to Paint” show with co-host Reggie the Rooster. On today’s episode they meet Stephanie, and Mr. Doodle’s pride and fragility is tested.

Mr. Doodz - Ep 2

In Episode 2, Mr. Doodles tries his hand at content creation, bruh.

Wonders of Nature - Ep 3

Mr. Doodles is given a second chance with a new kid’s show, but winds up burying a body.

Puppet Palace - Ep 4

Mr. Doodles and Reggie guest star on another puppet show, but OOPS - they’re nihilists.

Puppet Duel - Ep 5

Mr. Doodles defends his honor in Puppet Duel, but who is the real opponent? Eh?

Learning to Paint with Mr. Doodles - Ep 1

**BTS**

Oh, you wanna know more? Let me tuck my shirt in real quick.

As a well-adjusted human being, I had no foreknowledge of puppetry going into this project so my team and I had a lot to learn. Working with puppets is deceptively hard, and the amount of time it took to set up a simple scene is far more involved than your average “run-and-gun project”.

One challenge was that there had to be a song in the project. So, I wrote my first song.

Check out the cover, which is waaaaaay better.

This song is featured in Episode 4 - Puppet Palace and needed to be a happy melody under deeply discouraging lyrics. I had all the puppeteers perform their own vocals to retain authenticity, and for it to sound like they might have been making it up on the spot.

Although only half of the song appears in the video, we decided to finish the rest of it in hopes that it could be used elsewhere, and low and behold the client put it on Spotify where I’m sure it’s someone’s favorite song. Maybe.

What I wanted for the Puppet Palace SET was simple:

Sesame Street with undertones of The Shining. It’s not that complicated guys.

- THE SET -

Phase 1

We had to take into account the height of a person + puppet. This set pushed us to make the decision that these puppets needed to interact with the world at their eye-level. So all of our puppeteers rode on furniture dolly’s on their back to accommodate for the height difference.

Phase 2

After the initial set was built we rounded out the space with set dressing.

Phase 3

This is pre-pipe & drape, but the added flowers, fire escape, trash cans, make all the difference.

Notice the red doors and address of 237, our homage to The Shining.

Bonus Round

An additional challenge of this set was that two of the walls had to fall and crush puppets.