Human stories about puppets, and vice versa.
Hello darlings. Contents:
0 - The Kickstarter for Sock Puppets is live, and that’s maybe underselling it.
1 - I’m not a puppeteer, but I play one on TV.
1.5 - Interlude - Snow is cold, but it can sparkle.
2 - I’m not a video editor, either.
3 - Always show me your puppets.
4 - On printing in China (which I’m not).
5 - Stretch goals are REAL and they can happen to YOU.
6 - Everyone in my Discord server is cooler than me.
7 - Thank you, seriously.
0 - The Kickstarter for Sock Puppets is live, and that’s maybe underselling it.
I launched the Kickstarter campaign for Sock Puppets on Tuesday. Then I lost my mind when it fully funded 60 minutes later.
This newsletter will talk a little about the process of running the Kickstarter. It’ll also share cool, lovely, or weird things that happened this month. There will be stories, with vignettes in-between.
1 - I’m not a puppeteer, but I play one on TV.
On Friday, January 17th, I spent the morning filming the Kickstarter video for Sock Puppets. I had the whole day off, with plans to fly to Winnipeg later that afternoon. It was the perfect day to shoot the video: natural lighting and nobody to disturb in a common space. How long could it take to film a 2 minute sales pitch?
Clever readers will see where this is going.
I started by building the set. I cut up old t-shirts and glued them to pizza boxes, hanging them from the ceiling to make clouds.
I carefully steamed bed sheets and quilts to make a backdrop that didn't look like I just pulled it out of the laundry hamper. I pinned and re-pinned the two stretches of fabric, trying to get them to hold without visible duct tape or folds.
Naturally, there were plenty of both anyway.
This process took all morning. That’s not bad, unless the amount of time you imagined spending on “the set” began and ended at “duct tape a sheet to the wall”.
So now it’s noon and I’m frantically recording takes.
Here are some things that someone more experienced might have known:
Hand puppets are performed above the body, and sets are generally built to accommodate that. Here’s an image of Jim Henson performing as Kermit alongside John Cleese.
It’s funny how, as a viewer, you would never question the fact that a two foot tall frog is at chest height. Dining rooms can have hanging light fixtures. For me, this meant filming slightly lower than I might have wished to.
Herman, please, don’t caress me like that. Puppets don’t automatically look at cameras… but they have to do so, because eye contact sells the illusion of life. If you’re filming yourself, you know which way your eyes are facing. If you’re filming a puppet, you have to watch the screen to make sure they’re pointed towards the camera.
Character voices are tricky! Herman’s voice needs a high larynx and a low back-of-tongue.
What does all this mean? I didn’t have time to think about it as I tumbled through five takes, ripped the set down (killing a nearby plant) and then bolted to the airport.
But it would come back to haunt me… in post.
1.5 - Interlude - Snow is cold, but it can sparkle.
It was -26°C (-15°F) in Winnipeg. I spent a few days not thinking about puppets and walking around in a frozen but beautiful city. Late at night in a polar vortex, I walked alone through glittering pathways abandoned by locals and tourists alike.
When I got home, I spent a couple days reflecting and getting back into daily life.
2 - I am not a video editor, either.
I will now paint you a picture.
A man sits at a computer in the pajamas he woke up in. It is 9PM.
He is hunched forward, covered in a blanket. He’s spent the last two days learning a complex video editing program and editing his own awful mouth noises out of a video he shot last week, apparently with the driest mouth that has ever existed.
He pulls up the next shot. Then he puts his head in his hands. Oh my god. It’s the ear again.
It turns out, if you shoot beside your head instead of above your head, you can get fun little souvenirs from your human body.
It also turns out that if you do your best puppet voice for too long, your last take sounds like this.
My shots were a mess.
And yet.
I finished the video. And was proud! And even created a fancy little animation for the start. Learning is fun!
Maybe just don’t learn something extremely complicated right before you absolutely need the product of that learning. Maybe be a little more proactive on that, actually.
3 - Always show me your puppets.
After I launched the Kickstarter, Chrit Hameleers on Bluesky shared a post that made me both grin and scratch my head.
“Was introduced to @kurtrefling.bsky.social's lovely weird puppet game at spellenspektakel 2024 and had an absolute blast. Big recommend go check out this kickstarter ☝️"
With it, Chrit shared a picture:
Everyone should always show me pictures of their Sock Puppets sessions because I love them.
But also, I had a MYSTERY on my hands.
Sock Puppets has been in development for three years, but it’s never been publicly distributed. The fact that someone found it, read it, and liked it well enough to run it (twice!) at a convention across the ocean, in a different language… I’m just blown away. I don’t even know how this happened.
Huge thank you to Joep from the tabletop community dutch20 for running this; total surprise and entirely unexpected endorsement from one of your players.
4 - On printing in China (which I’m not).
Sock Puppets is not my first Kickstarter, but it is the first time I’ll be printing and shipping the game myself.
Printing and shipping are both complicated things with a lot of moving parts, so I wrote an article sharing what I learned while preparing for Sock Puppets. I figured I might as well save the next person some trouble.
A few hours later, I got a direct message. A gentleman reached out to say that my printing costs were “crazy high.” He recommended I print in China or Eastern Europe, and shared some cost figures of his own.
I replied to say that I wanted to print local to reduce carbon emissions, but asked out of curiosity what printers he'd worked with. He said "I famously worked with a Chinese company and it didn't go well," and pointed me towards Lithuania.
Folks, I looked it up. China pulped his finished print run; censored it. Wild stuff. Not sure why he's still recommending that pathway, but the whole interaction was so strange and fascinating that I had to share.
5 - Stretch goals are REAL and they can happen to YOU.
I only had two stretch goals for Sock Puppets. One was to pay my talented illustrator, Xan, a bonus for the work they did on the project.
The other was, like so much of my work in RPGs, a joke that became serious.
Five thousand dollars later, to my joy and horror, I am now committed to making a video of Herman reading the rules of Sock Puppets to everyone.
It’s the least I can do.
6 - Everyone in my Discord server is cooler than me.
At last, we come to the traditional end of this newsletter: a section where I express my appreciation to the small community of people who share glimpses of their art and lives in my Discord server.
To kick us off, Xan (illustrator of Sock Puppets!) shared a drawing they mocked up to revamp their leopard gecko’s tank. Per Xan, we’re going for “abandoned, overgrown train station in purgatory vibes”.
Some of my favourite things shared in the server are glimpses of mundane life or everyday objects. Here’s a signpost that must have struck my dear friend Ian the same way it strikes me to see it.
Perpetual sweetheart Amze is a super talented artist and printmaker whose works always dazzle me. He’s exploring figure drawing for the first time in years, and god, I love the form and movement in the sketches he shared.
Rose is a tireless practitioner of both art and craft. She shared her recently completed pencil roll, which can store a full 52 pencils.
Naturally, we oohed and ahhed. Which prompted Rose to share something perhaps even cooler: her Gauntlet of Many Pencils, to sketch from life on the go. It looks like THIS.
And on that high note, we’ll call this letter to a close.
7 - Thank you, seriously.
Whether you’re a regular recipient of this letter or joining me for the first time, I am so grateful you chose to engage with these reflections. Creative work is always a whirlwind for me, and that’s never more true than with a big project. I’m very lucky to have the support to make games like Sock Puppets, and all the other games yet to come.
So, once more, thank you. If you’d like to join my small community to hear about my games or share and celebrate other people’s art, you are welcome to do so. If you’d like to get letters like this in the future, you can click below. Let’s call it… a monthly letter.
Until then.
Warmth,
Kurt