puppetry

Beware the drop bears are, and she was

Posted by hil

Drop bears

HighWire’s (and my) drop bears debuted at Floriade this last Monday, and they will be roaming the gardens until the end of festival this weekend. They emerge during the hours of 11 through 3, and seem to like hanging around in the bushes to the west of the Stage 88 grassy area, but remember to rub vegemite behind your ears before you get too close.

Drop bears

Over the last few years I’ve developed my own way of creating patterns for 3D shapes, since I’ve never learned pattern making, and I don’t find it intuitive like I find carving out a solid shape. I’m sure its not novel, but I find it enormously helpful. I tried to take photos of each stage of the making process this time, to illustrate.

Drop bear mask

Australian hand shadow puppeteers

Posted by hil

The Sydney Morning Herald today talks to Raymond Crowe, a self-described ‘unusualist’ – ventriloquist, magician and hand shadow puppeteer from Adelaide – who, after 26 years in the business, has found at least temporary fame on YouTube with his Helpmann Awards shadow performance of Louise Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World:

Sean Kenan, another Australian hand shadow puppeteer, also has a presence on YouTube, and has recently been invited invited by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop to perform at the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore Pakistan later this year.

UNIMA 2008: registrations open, looking cool

Posted by hil

Unima2008

Aha! The new UNIMA 2008 website has been launched, and registrations are open for a wonderful time next April in Perth! Looks like there are going to be some fabulous international puppetry acts, performances from many Australian puppet companies, exhibitions, master classes, carnival day, and an attempt to set a new world record for the largest number of puppets on display in the Million Puppets Project (you can send a puppet, even if you can’t get to Perth). Appropriately, given the festival theme of ‘journeys’, a bunch of intrepid puppet companies are making the journey to Perth overland from the eastern states in the Puppet Caravan road trip, giving performances and workshops along the way.

There are a range of Festival Explorer Packages and if you get in early and book one now, you can take advantage of early registration prices. This exclusive priority booking period ends at midnight Monday Oct 1, Australian Western Standard Time: (GMT+8.00), so go to it!

I’m hoping to go, not certain yet.


Unima 2008
Unima Australia
Spare Parts Puppet Theatre
Million Puppets Project
Million Puppets Project on MySpace
The Puppet Caravan
The Puppet Caravan on MySpace

Cool cuttlefish and blenny puppets

Posted by hil

Cuttlefish

Raggy Rat has made a couple of beautiful marine-themed puppets for Portland’s Seafest: a cuttlefish and a tompot blenny.

Blenny

There are some great photos and commentary on the making process here. I love the mixing of different types of fabric, and the wool in particular reminds me of Mimi‘s use of wools. I’m looking forward to seeing photos taken at the festival, too. (And look at this cool jellyfish cake!). Thanks for letting me post your photos, Cat!

Peppa Pig theatricals

Posted by hil

Peppa2

Sweet images from Peppa Pig on ABC kids tv yesterday. Peppa and her brother and cousins made some puppets and put on a show for their parents. It’s a made for preschoolers, and I thought it hit the mark very well with skillful scripting and attractively clear images.

Peppa

Dragon

Posted by hil

Dragonz

Dragon is a beautiful animation ad made for United Airlines. It’s made using paper cut-out stop-motion puppets, and you can see the process and team, lead by director, Jamie Caliri, in The Making of Dragon. Caliri also directed the ending animation for Lemony Snicket.

(via Lines and Colours)

FurryPuppet

Posted by hil

Gurevich_2

This lovely creature was made by Maria Gurevich, one of the team at FurryPuppet, who make cool one-of-a kind custom puppets, art dolls and mascots. You can see them all in the gallery section, and also keep up to date with their creations on their blog.

Influence of Royal de Luxe spreads

Posted by hil

Dogpuppet

(photo credit: jazamarripae)

It’s interesting when you can see a show like Royal de Luxe having an influence on the culture. I think something like that might have been at work in this dog puppet that was at Barcelona’s Món del llibre, an annual fair to promote book reading/purchasing, oriented towards children. According to jazamarripae (thanks!) there were a couple of dogs and some camels, and this strange thing, all mounted on wheels and operated by levers and pulleys.

I mentioned a giant Korean boy puppet before, but have found a few more pictures of him in Korean now: photos from anomi1: 1, 2, 3,4. I’d still be interested to find out more about him and who made him. From the same occasion there is also this face which has the same puppet mechanism marks at the side of it’s mouth.

This cool girl puppet (photo by driguiluza) in Chile, where Royal de Luxe toured earlier this year, is another example.

_Kreibel_, who started the Royal de Luxe Central group photo pool at Flickr, has some related stencils, and a tutorial on how to do them. He also has some photos of Kijk mij! a street exhibition of Jordi Bover’s photographs of the audience watching Royal de Luxe.

Les Machines de l’île de Nantes

Posted by hil

Thanks to Darthbob from Laprise.org who recently alerted me to a new project related to Royal de Luxe, Les Machines de l’île de Nantes, which opened over this last weekend.

Machines

Planned as a new artistic, cultural and tourist venture, and part of an urban renewal of the docklands, it consists of numerous large mechanical creatures to build dreams around, imagined by François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice. They are installed in the great naves of the old shipyards on the island of Nantes, France.

First, there is a great elephant, similar to the Sultan’s, but a bit bigger at 12 metres high, which can take 30 passengers on its back for a 30 minute journey. It will journey every day.

Then there will be a huge tree, with branches that you can walk within. In time there will be herons in the tree, and people will be able to take rides in baskets below their wings.

Herontreerdl

The third part is a gallery of imagined machinical marine creatures, also rideable:

Le Luminaire des grands fonds:

Angler

(photo credit: Claude Joannis)

La Larve de crabe:

Larvae

(photo credit: Claude Joannis)

Le Poisson pirate:

Piratefish

(photo credit: Claude Joannis)

Le Calamar à rétropropulsion:

Squid

(photo credit: Claude Joannis)

La Raie manta:

Manta

(photo credit: Claude Joannis)

I think there is also a royal crab planned.

Other links:

Royal de Luxe – this unofficial French site is always the best for all up-to-date RdL news.

At Nantes Métropole:

  • dossier presse Eléphant
  • machinesfr.pdf
  • Les Machines de l’île : check links from this page
  • Les Machines de l’île: this site has plans, sketches, video and photos:

    • video 1: intro, bits of elephant and branches, maquette of the tree
    video 2: adapting the original buildings, building the elephant, in particular its feet!
    video 3: making the models of the creatures – very cute little squid, manta
    video 4: piecing the iron and wooden shell of the elephant together with crane.

    photos 1 – 18: the opening, with elephants first parade
    photos 19 – 26: models
    photos 27 – 49: making the elephant
    photos 50 – 55: the buildings

Maville.com’s special coverage: check out the manta, the angler fish in particular.

France 3: Les Fabuleuses Machines de l’île has a cool photo gallery – the best photo of the crab larvae so far.

At Flickr:

L’Internaute Magazine photo gallery: cool workshop making photos (added 19.7.07)