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Your description isn't clear. Was it a) stop-motion animation, or b) hand puppets, or c) marionettes? Or something else?
Most of the puppet's movements aren't stop motion. It was human like because they move smoothly, like their mouths and limbs. It might be closer to marionettes. Everything is in live-action, and the scenes are set in dioramas or rooms (as in the diner segment). The puppets are too complex to be hand puppets.
this video
reminds me of the work I'm seeking, although the puppets have parts of their body controlled by hand. My belief on the work's puppet style is unclear, but it gives you a thinking on what the format is.
The adolescent characters are a boy and girl, pretty much the protagonists. The restaurant scene shows adults, with the focused ones probably middle aged, and the spaceship scene has another man, which appears to be a villain. I believe the spaceship has a room of screens secretly displaying the other characters, like a security camera control room.
Your link is to a video with a type of hand puppet. This type of hand puppet has the puppeteer's hand in the head of the puppet. When the puppeteer opens and closes their hand, the puppet opens and closes its mouth. Jim Henson's Muppets, like Kermit the Frog, work on the same principle—but this link you have provided is clearly NOT anything to do with Muppets, it's instead something very much in Uncanny Valley territory.
Try going to that link and exploring the "suggestions" You Tube has for things that are similar to that video. They usually seem to involve the term "creepy puppet".
Edited by KEVP
I wonder if it's one of the Gerry Anderson Supermarionation shows. Does the puppetry in these clips look like the right sort of thing?
Thunderbirds: Atlantic Inferno:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwNbuMCAsSE
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLBkYEzl700
These were done in the '60s, but I wouldn't be surprised if you mistook some of these for something done later. Sometimes the production values were really good, for what it was. They were sci-fi action-adventure stuff. I don't know if that fits with what you saw, or if yours was more kiddie or comical.
Edited by Megaptera
When I read the original post, I wondered if they were talking about "Supermationation" and Gerry Anderson, which is why I asked for some clarification. But it doesn't really seem like that is what we are talking about, it sounds more like some sort of hand puppets were involved. I'm thinking, again going from the OP's descriptions, that maybe it was some show where they used real people for long shots, and hand puppets for closeups?
KEVP
Yeah, it looks like we got the answer here. What I've watched doesn't have any action, but the format "Supermarionation" looks nearly exact to it might be, so it looks like Thunderbirds. Thanks.
Remember that there were OTHER "Supermarionation" shows besides Thunderbirds, all of which look the same to an initial casual glance.
Maybe it was Terrahawks. It was Supermarionation and made in the 80s.
^According to the other wiki, Terrahawks actually used hand-puppets, so you may have something there
otherwise, in Supermarionation stuff, Joe 90 and Stingray were also well-aired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_ROxS9BoE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jotnWt5GM08 respectively.
I saw a portion of a show or film from a channel which has a green logo, while visiting the Denver area. The format is quite unusual, as everyone are puppets with human-like movements, except in some shots. This means less stop-motion in most dialogue. It shows two adolescent characters riding a ski and/or a car through the snowy landscape. Then I see a scene in a dining restaurant nearby with few other characters. The restaurant has a toy train that delivers the food in plates to the customers. Then I see a scene with someone in a spaceship that landed around the snowy area.
I think it's made in the 80's because of the quality and the styles of the characters' hair and clothing. I seen this in the morning of July 16, 2011.