Steve Axtell Interview at S. Tyneside England

Here is Magic Convention Guide's review of my interview by Martin Duffy.



Steve Axtell Lecture - South Tyneside International Magic Festival
March 14th, 2009 by Richard Morrell

Steve Axtell of Axtell Puppets was interviewed in a very interesting hour long session by convention organizer Martin Duffy.



Steve started off by talking about the background of his company and how he got started as a boy with his interest being sparked by Sesame Street. He went on to talk about how to use a puppet giving several demonstrations with his own products, tips such as to always keep the puppet moving, and to point the eyes down to the audience were valuable advice from an obvious master.



As soon as Steve put a puppet on he was animating it complete with unique voice via his ventriloquial skills. He then went on to demonstrate his now world famous and best selling product, the Axtell Drawing Board, providing some interesting tips and techniques sent in by other users and he talked about the use of his Axtrax system to back this and the puppets. Next he demonstrated his Big Baby and the very funny Human version, this was followed with some tips on his bird arm illusion.



Finally he talked about creativity and how he comes up with some of the ideas, and what he has in the pipeline, and to that end he finished by demonstrating his anamatronic line, all remote control characters that can be freely controlled or left to move on their own, which look amazing, including a dragon that breathes smoke, a giant book and a cute baby gorilla and one final character a life size puppet that looked very much like Paul Daniels!