Spirits Dancing

It sure was a happy night last night – after all the nail biting of the last few days and the start of the count last night, the John Howard era has come to an end!

Shan sent me his last election puppetry video, Howard’s Way, yesterday, but I must admit it felt too much like tempting fate to post it then!

Shan might have the first Rudd puppet out there:

Of course, now I have to decide what to do with my own two Howard puppets. They are too toxic to burn (just like the real thing, really!). I’m going to close my Vigil blog, but the puppet, which started out as an anti-war one, remains, as does the scarecrow one I made as a protest against the Howard government’s refugee policies. Any suggestions?

Previously:

• Mick Jagger of Australian politics
• Search for a scapegoat
• Once Upon a Coffee Cup

Tags: australia, howard, politics, puppetry, puppets, rudd, video

Graham Base’s 1986 alphabet book Animalia has been turned into an CG-animated TV series which is premiering today at midday on the Ten network in Australia, and simultaneously on BBC1 and CBBC in the UK, PBS Kids in the US and CBC in Canada. There are 40 half-hour epidodes, and you can see a trailer here. It’s made in Australia, mostly at Photon VFX.

Remember how we scoured each drawing for the small boy hidden in the page? He has been developed into a main character, Alex, who along with a friend, Zoe, get conjured into the magical world of Animalia. It sounds promising – I just hope I remember to watch it!

Here are some links that interested me:

• animalia.tv : Website and trailer
• Digital Media World: Jami Levesque, CG Supervisor, Animalia Productions, will present a behind-the-scenes look at the Making of Animalia on Thursday 15 November at 11.15am at the Australian Effects & Animation Festival 2007 in Sydney.
• Animation Magazine: precise
• Animalia Animated and The Series that (almost) never was: longer articles in The Age
• At youtube: Graham Base talking about the series in two sections: 1, 2; and a glimpse of the character maquettes .

Tags: animalia, animation, books, graham base, maquettes, tv series, video

I’m taken with this lovely leaf logo which belongs to a new green blog Earth2Tech (a new part of the GigaOm blog network) which will focus on the business side of green and clean technology.

And check out the cool Power of Wind ad produced by Nordpol+ Hamburg for EPURON, a renewable energy company based in Germany.

(via Laughing Squid)

Tags: green, power of wind, video

So cute! Sophia’s Harry Potter is too.

(via Steve Garfield)

Tags: blackberry, iphone, tecnology, video

Tags: video

I’ve written previously about Shan Jayaweera’s John Howard puppetry satires. Now with an election looming later in the year, ‘Australian Prime Minister John Howard needs to find something
new to blame and scare the voters into voting for him’. Follow his efforts in a welcome new series, John Howard – Search for a Scapegoat:

• Episode 1: Howard looks at former grand Mufti Sheik Taj el din al Hilali.

• Episode 2: John Howard goes into the music world to find two potential scapegoats to help him win the next election. There is also an advertisement for the latest Liberal Party
  Reception centre.

Tags: john howard, politics, puppetry, puppets, shan jayaweera, video

The Tale of How is a beautiful and intreguing animation, a labour of love by three friends calling themselves the Blackheart Gang, who hail from Cape Town, South Africa. It’s the second part of a larger story they envisage, A Dodo Trilogy. Their ‘making of’ video introduces the makers and explains how they went about it.

(via She Dreams in Digital)

Update: Siouxfire has a cool Concise Overview of “The Household”, a series of interviews, production
images, and information on the two follow-ups completing the Dodo
trilogy as well as the following trilogy (the Bear Histories) at Siouxwire. Thanks, Siouxfire!

Tags: animation, art, blackheart gang, make, tale of how, video

(photo credit: David Fletcher)

Radio National’s Bush Telegraph has audio of their April 23rd interview with Jillian Pearce (fast forward to the 36 minute mark). Jillian is a performance artist living in Natimuk, the small town at the foot of rock-climbing mecca, Mt Arapiles, in rural Victoria. Jillian and her performing arts company, Y Space, have for some years been doing exciting work with rock-climbers, dancers, animation and puppetry in ‘unusual and high places’, such as the Natimuk wheat silos, exploring images, stories and relationships with the space and land. Check out their past and present projects, and some of their video.

Tags: animation, arapiles, dance, natimuk, projected image, puppetry, puppets, silos, video, y space

Actually, my favourite Sendak picture book is In the Night Kitchen. I love the illustration, the cityscape made from kitchen packets and utensils, the dreamlike whimsy of it, and Mickey’s confidence. Above all, I like the part where he models the dough into a plane:

What better way to describe how you go about the creative process? I was delighted to find this lovely video animation of the book, adapted and directed by Gene Dietch, complete with jaunty music:

Tags: creativity, illustration, in the night kitchen, sendak, video

(Photo credit: wellingtonany)

Mentioning the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are a few days ago reminded me that I had a bunch of WWTA/Sendak links that I collected when I was trying to scrounge information about the film. (As it happens they are keeping things very well under wraps, which is understandable.)

Take a Swim on the Wild Side: article about the filming taking place in Nov 2006 on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. There are two pictures of one of the monsters on the beach,and wading out in the water, but don’t get too excited – they are so tiny you can’t really make anything out! It describes the puppets (made by Henson) as follows:

The seven creatures stand up to 275 centimetres tall. Although made of foam, they are heavy and hot for the actors and stunt doubles operating them. Word is they wear them with the head on for no more than 30 minutes at a time, with 10 and 15-minute breaks in front of an air-conditioner… Heavy boots inside the suit and massive clawed hands make it difficult to move.

Loungelistener’s photoset of the performance of Where the Wild Things Are at Detroit Opera House, performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet. Some very cool picture of huge puppets on stage and behind the scenes.

Hand puppets and soft toys, and here
Action figures 1,2,3,4,5,6
Graffiti/stencil in Melbourne
Stencil art
Jack-o-lantern
Leg tattoo
Max tattoo
Mural in LA
Mural at the Philadelphia Flower Show, 2006
Costumes at DragonCon
Float in Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 2006
Pavement chalk art
6 part home videos of WWTA Interactive Metreon theme park – glimpses of one of the big puppets.
The Rosenbach Museum has Sendak Gallery (holding original drawings), shop, and is hosting a Spring Festival this coming week
Mommy a video about Sendak’s new pop-up book.
WWTA animation, I think the 1988 one.

There now, I can delete my Wild Things bookmark folder!

Tags: art, film, puppetry, puppets, sendak, video, where the wild things are