I’m intrigued by this footage of the dragon Toothless taking flight for the first time at  Melbourne’s Creature Technology Company!  Toothless stars in DreamWorks and Global Creatures’ new arena spectacular How to Train Your Dragon Live which premieres in Melbourne on 2 March, then tours Sydney, Brisbane, and Aukland.  Check out their new TV commercial, various other videos and their FaceBook page .

Previously: How to Train Your Dragon Live

I was amazed when I first learnt about Lotte Reiniger a few years ago and saw this video of how she made her stop motion shadow puppetry films. The intricacy and deftness with which she plans, cuts and arranges the silhouettes, and the matter-of-factness in how she describes the process is quite breathtaking.

The Icelandic band Amiina play beautiful new musical soundscapes for three of Reiniger’s animated fairly tales in their live show Animagica, which has been touring Australia recently. Their instruments include violin, glassophone, musical saw and water-filled glasses. Below is a sampler of the performance, but you can also see more-or-less complete filmed performances of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty at YouTube.

The UK contemporary puppetry company Folded Feather recently built two large spectacular puppets out of car parts for Hyundai’s New Thinkers Index, a campaign ‘about new thinking and new possibilities’.

Previously: Folded Feather’s chickens

Shortly after the Kinect was launched in late 2010 Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson from Design I/O used it make a quick interactive puppet protoype by skeleton tracking on an arm. Their updated 2.0 installation above, Puppet Parade, looks great fun, allowing

children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or making food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.

The unedited clip where it is easier to see the movements in more focus is also interesting. Although these are made differently they share some qualities with Philip Worthington’s earlier Shadow Monsters.

This fantastic air-powered 16 foot tall spider puppet is made by Tim Davies. Wired.co.uk has more technical details about the structure and how it operates. (I think this information must come from the artist’s site, but it is down at the moment).

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.

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.

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’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.