Lucas Ainsworth & Alyssa Hamel have a Kickstarter appeal going for these cool mechanical creatures made in kit form out of cardboard. The animal moves either with a manual winding mechanism, or by itself if you build in an additional the gear kit.

(via @dugnorth)

A fine drawing by Alexandre Kha (Mister Kha on Flickr), titled Korea : a shadow puppet.

Journalists from the Liverpool Echo were the first ever to be allowed to visit the company’s headquarters in Nantes and they have an article and brief behind the scenes video clip. This gives us a glimpse of the workshop, and interviews with the director who coordinates the teams of people who move the giants, and the Little Giantess’s movement conductor.  I was interested to see La Machine viewed as a rival company! There seemed so much cross-over between the two that I’ve always assumed they were associated or sister companies!

I also hadn’t seen the Little Giantess dancing with joy before! At Flickr kingo62 has a great photo from the dance.

And I was taken with Xolo being washed and having his teeth brushed. His ears have great movement, they’re really expressive.

Previously:

• Xolo will be in Liverpool too
• Royal de Luxe’s Sea Odyssey
• Xolo, Royal de Luxe’s new puppet
• Search my blog for Royal de Luxe (and influence of RdL)

For a long time Royal de Luxe had no website, then a very rudimentary one.  Now they have a new one; great to see, though maybe not yet as expansive as you might desire!

I bet these would get snaffled as components for more complex puppets!

(via Laughing Squid)

Here’s a great photo of Xolo, Royal de Luxe‘s giant dog!  It’s just been announced that Xolo will be appearing the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacle in Liverpool in a couple of weeks time, along with the Little Giantess and her uncle, the deep sea diver.

Previously:

• Royal de Luxe’s Sea Odyssey
• Xolo, Royal de Luxe’s new puppet

Handspring Puppet Company UK, the sister company to Handspring Puppet Company South Africa, has a major new dance theatre production called Crow premiering in mid-June as part of the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival in London. It is inspired by Ted Hughes’ 1970 poetic work Crow.

Crow witnesses God’s creation in the Garden of Eden and adds his own dry trickery to the events. Droll, lonely, adaptable, laughing, watching, instinctive and curious, Crow is in all of us, and in these poems Hughes presents the songs he would sing. – London 2012 Festival

The prototype puppet looks cool! (via the Telegraph.co.uk)

As does the illustration for the promotional material:

Eric Bass and Sandglass Theater have been appealing for support on Kickstarter for their theatre project D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks. It will be full-length theatre piece based on stories written by groups of people with late-stage dementia, exploring the surprising creative potential of people living with dementia. There is a short but interesting making video included. The appeal has been successful, but I dare say they wouldn’t say no to further pledges!

These are two videos of a cool audiovisual installation, Mécaniques Discursives, being developed by Yannick Jacquet (aka Legoman) and Fred Penelle. It’s an intiguing mixture of shadows and shadow puppets, unlikely contraptions, projection mapping, and edgy music.

Four years ago La Machine debuted their giant spider, La Princesse in Liverpool. This year, as one of the cities directly connected with the Titanic which sank on 15 April 1912, it’s marking the centenary with numerous events, the highlight of which will be the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacle by the associated company, Royal de Luxe, on 20 – 22 April. It’ll feature the Little Giantess and her uncle, the deep sea diver, in a story adapted for the occasion. A number of cool promo ads in which the Little Giantess is wandering the city and peeping into different famous places have been released.

Search my blog for La Machine and Royal de Luxe if you are interested in more links – I’ve posted a lot about them and their influence over the years!