Kate Bush’s cool shadow puppet animation, Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe, was made to accompany a segment of the track Lake Tahoe on her new album 50 Words For Snow. In a note about the animation on her site she credits Robert Allsopp for the beautiful puppets.
If you are in Melbourne, the shadow puppetry featured in tonight’s Melbourne Australia Day Concert 2012, What’s in your Suitcase?’ should be a treat. Gary Friedman is the puppetry producer and puppeteer, accompanied by a number of supporting puppeteers, and Conor Fox the puppetry director. Gary also designed the 60 square metre suitcase set that doubles as a shadow screen. I hope we get to see video footage of the puppetry sequences later.
I’m happy to see a strong representation of the multicultural stories and identity that make up Australia today.
The concert starts at 7pm at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, and the program and full credits are available in the concert handout (pdf).
Continuing on with my pattern making, once the clay sculpt is done I cover it first with aluminium foil, and then with masking tape. The foil covers the complex contours easily and stays in place, and the masking tape holds the foil shape together when it comes off the maquette.
I draw cutting lines keeping in mind both where to cut to get the pattern off the model easily, and where seams are going to be best for assembling the final pattern in fabric. I also sometimes mark midlines or possible dart lines that might be useful later.
It’s also good to label the pieces before they are cut off, because they are not alway easy to identify once they are cut up. These are still not 2D; they’ll need to have some further cuts made in them, but I haven’t chosen fabric yet, and if it’s stretchy I may not need as many cuts.
I began a new project yesterday, a commissioned soft plush toy. I can’t disclose exactly what at the moment, but can show some indistinct making shots. A clay maquette is probably a weird way to start a softie, but I find drawing a 2D dressmaking style pattern with darts and tucks difficult. It’s much quicker for me to start with a 3D shape and make a pattern from that.
Here’s the rough wire armature intended to hold the clay up,
followed by chicken wire and some crumpled newspaper to fill out the space.
Then the clay is sculpted on top, embedding in the wire.
(photo credit: David Gilford/complexify @ Flickr - thanks for the CC license)
This beautiful sculpture of the notorious albino sperm whale, Mocha Dick is by the artist Tristin Lowe, made in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. It’s huge! – 52 feet long and 10 feet tall – and made of industrial wool pieced over an inflatable vinyl understructure. The gallery at the Virginia Musuem of Fine Arts shows some other great images including a close-up the barnacles.
Towards the end of last year I was commissioned to make a marionette which was to look like, and be a Christmas present for, my clients’ son. They provided a few photos, and seemed pretty happy with the likeness when they picked it up.
For various reasons I was swayed to try carving a wooden puppet. It seemed a good learning challenge, and I’d recently been inspired by Kay Yasugi’s marionette carving workshop in Prague. How cool would it be to do a workshop like that! And there were practical reasons, too; in particular, short hair and a short beard is hard to represent well, and I thought the stippling of the wood would be a good and minimalist way of doing it, which proved right.
I was delighted to find that Puppets in Prague not only runs workshops, but has really detailed puppet making tutorials online – a wonderful resource! I used jelutong timber, a good substitute for the recommended but hard-to-get Linden or English Lime. I found the exacting woodwork for the body difficult, especially without a band saw, and I didn’t get things lined up perfectly. But I really enjoyed the carving! Puppets in Prague offer ready-made components in their online shop and another time I think it could be worth my time to buy those and concentrate on the carving.
The online tutorials didn’t detail exactly how the puppets were stringed to the controller. Kay at Pupperoos very kindly set me straight and sent me photos of how her puppet was stringed. Many thanks, Kay!
There are some making photos in my Flickr photoset.
If you have a paper, workshop, or performance that you would like to present at the 4th National Puppetry and Animatronics Summit in Australia, please submit your proposal to the Summit Steering Committee by 31 January 2012.
The summit will be held in Melbourne, 5 – 8 July, 2012, and hosted by the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Building on the best experiences of the previous Summits, the 4th Summit will provide a stimulating and provocative program of workshops, masterclasses, and forums for policy discussions and debates that celebrate the arts of puppetry and animatronics.
An exciting new feature of the 4th Summit is a ten day performance project masterclass lead by an international guest artist which culminates in a presentation at the opening of the Summit. There will also be a film program and a Summit Club where puppeteers can perform experimental items and works-in-progress.
I’ve been to the previous summits in Melbourne 2002, Hobart 2006, and Perth 2008 and found them very worthwhile, so it’s good to know there is another one coming up.
I ended up making four of these replica skippets some years ago. They are used as hands-on items in school tours, so they have a hard life, and they are back for repair. There is also an intrinsic weakness, since the cast resin lid is heavy in comparison to the slight anchoring available for the hinge. I keep thinking that the ideal solution in future will be 3D scanning and printing in metal.
And this is a photo that I like from yesterday. The blue feathers probably belong to crimson rosellas. Our new floor makes a great background!
And by the way, I support the STOP SOPA protests against internet censorship.
I’ve spent some days giving my studio a huge clean-up, including moving and cleaning shelving, washing down the walls, and some reorganising. It took a lot of effort but it feels worthwhile. Apart from anything else, my work often generates a lot of dust and particles that settle everywhere, and although I use safety gear I worry a little about the health risk.
There seems to be so much surface space, though I know it won’t last for long!
The inaugural Tarrengower Puppetfest is coming up quickly! It takes place in the central Victorian town of Maldon on 10 -12 March 2012. The relaxed rural setting, where people can easily walk between performance venues, cafe’s and eating places, should be a drawcard as it was at the One Van Puppet Festival, which used to be held in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.
The artistic director, Richard Hart from Dream Puppets, has put together a great program, and there are more performances yet to be included, including a puppet slam. Dream Puppets also puts together the Oz Puppetry Email Newsletter which is a good way of keeping up to to date with Australian puppetry news, and the festival.
