Puppet Premieres on Nicktoons

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
By: Ryan Ball

Nicktoons will host the world television premiere of Puppet, the latest animated short film from award-winning animator Patrick Smith (Handshake). The darkly comedic cartoon premiered in 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival and has gone on to win more than fifteen international film festival awards. Those who haven’t caught it on the fest circuit can watch it this Thursday, August 23, at 10 p.m. eastern time as part of the 2007 Nicktoons Animation Festival.

Puppet tells the story of a young man who creates a sock puppet that takes on a life of its own. The puppeteer soon becomes the puppet as he is unable to control his creation and becomes the subject escalating torture.

“For me, Puppet is a metaphor for life as a creative person, how your work oftentimes gets the best of you,” Smith says in a video message on his website. “I animated the film because I thought the iron of a hand puppet beating up the person wearing it was just too perfect.” View the video and brief glimpses of the film at www.blendfilms.com/index.html.

Smith, who directed episodes of MTV’s Daria and Downtown, recently released Liquid Tales-The Animation of Patrick Smith on DVD through his Blend Films shingle and Microcinema.