Spirits Dancing

Bird skeleton

Posted by hil on February 18, 2010 under environment, make, portfolio, props

This suggestion of a seagull skeleton is a prop for a new play I’m working on, but I rather like it as an object for itself. It’s given me some ideas for making some stranger ones when I get some time later.

By coincidence, today I happened across Chris Jordan’s photographic collection Midway: Message form the Gyre, a photographic documentation how albatross chicks on Midway Atoll ban in the middle of the Pacific Ocean often die because they end up being fed heaps of plastic junk. It’s shocking – only look if you are feeling strong.

Tags: albatross, bird, make, prop, skeleton

New face

Posted by hil on January 22, 2010 under make, sculpture

Tags: face, make, sculpture

New work continued

Posted by hil on January 15, 2010 under make, sculpture

Tags: make, scultpure

Experimenting

Posted by hil on January 14, 2010 under make, sculpture

This is some new experimental sculptural work I’m busy on at the moment.

This face is essentially calico over foam.

The following one is foam at the moment, but I am going to try a cracked surface on it.

Tags: faces, sculpture

Cross-section wheat seed

Posted by hil on December 6, 2009 under make, props

I have some catching up to do on posting about my work projects.

First up is the cross-section wheat seed that I made for CSIRO Plant Industry, for their annual display at Floriade in September. In other years I’ve made a caterpillar and cross-section flower for them. The wheat seed is carved out of polystyrene, and surfaced with a mixture of materials: fabric, paper mache, paint and latex. There is a photoset of the process.

I was pleased when I realized I could use a strange stretchy and very synthetic fabric for instant and variable cell textures. I had used this fabric for skin texture on a goanna puppet in a TV pilot years ago. At the time the pilot program was taken to a childrens’ program market in Cannes, and there was hopeful anticipation of it being sold to China. Someone with dollars in their eyes advised buying up extra fabric against the day when we went into full goanna and other animal puppet production, but there I was ten years later cutting into it for the first time!

The unlikeliest thing about the wheat seed was how cute it was. Everyone who picked it up cradled it like a baby, and admired its cute little tuft of bristles!

Baleful

Posted by hil on November 11, 2009 under creatures, make

I finished the red bird creature today and started a yellow one. I keep on thinking of this look as baleful, but the dictionary definition has more of a connotation of menace than I’m reading into it.

A new creature

Posted by hil on November 10, 2009 under creatures, make

Not finished yet.

Tags: make

How my shell is coming along

Posted by hil on November 9, 2009 under make, portfolio, sculpture

Here are a few photos of how my tissue paper shell came out of the mould.

Tags: make, sculpture, shell

Wow! King Kong for stage!

Posted by hil on September 26, 2009 under creatures, make, puppetry, puppets, theatre

Photo credit: Simon Schluter, The Age

This spectacular 7-metre-tall animatronic puppet of King Kong is being built by the Creature Technology Company in Melbourne, the company that produced the amazing arena show Walking with Dinosaurs Live, which is currently touring the UK after extensive performances in the US.

The puppet is being built for King Kong on Stage, a stage adaptation for New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 2011.

According to an article in The Age,

The partially built King Kong is now a high-tech assemblage of steel, fibreglass, airbags and Lycra-encased polystyrene. When modelling is finished by late next year, he will be controlled by 70 cigarette pack-sized motors. His face alone will conceal 40 of the motors to communicate his emotions as he is transported from Skull Island to Manhattan, where he finds love with a young blonde and a precarious position on top of the Empire State Building.

King Kong Live on Stage will use up to five models of King Kong with each operated by three puppeteers using remote technology called a ”voodoo rig” from backstage.

Interestingly, in the light of the suspension of the puppetry course at the Victorian College of the Arts, Creative Technology has 32 full-time staff and 14 VCA graduates working in its puppet fabrication department, and expects to employ 60 people on the King Kong project by next year. They see the VCA puppetry course as a vital in training the type of skilled people they will be looking to employ in the future.

‘Melbourne is in the running to become the world centre for animatronic design and puppetry but it won’t happen if they remove the puppetry course,” said Mr Barcham (CTC general manager). ”Those people [making the decision] wouldn’t even know there’s a new genre of entertainment coming out of Melbourne.”

Previously:

Puppets for Canberra Youth Theatre’s TANK

Posted by hil on September 24, 2009 under creatures, make, portfolio, props, puppetry, puppets, theatre

I had a really enjoyable build recently, making a swag of zany puppets and props for Canberra Youth Theatre’s production TANK, which is playing now at Canberra’s spring flower extravagaza, Floriade. TANK is a rather Pythonesque look at our relationship to water, written by Adam Hadley, directed by Pip Buining, and designed by Imogen Keen. It’s told in six 6-minute stories, played to an audience of six per story. Performances are free and run at Floriade on 12,13, 19, 20, 26 and 27 September 2009. Later, on 23 – 28 November, it will play in Garema Place in Canberra CBD, at 11am and 12noon.

Here are some of the puppets and props; check my Flickr portfolio set for others.

The meercat and the meercat hat: