puppetry

Foam construction puppet tutorial at Bear Town

Posted by hil

I’ve been enjoying PuppetVision Blog for a while now. Based in Toronto, Canada, it casts its net much wider, and looks at video and film puppetry.

PuppetVision’s blogger, Andrew, is also creating Bear Town, a web-based puppetry project. Part of the ‘behind the scenes’ information there is a step-by-step series of articles documenting the making of Tumbles B.Bear. There’s a useful tutorial about a soft foam puppet construction method nicknamed ‘the wedge method’, (free pattern) where a series of wedges is used to a make hollow ball of varying shape, as well as information about how Tumbles’ arms, hands and mouth are made.

Updated 2015: some links broken, some renewed

Rough cut bunraku puppets

Posted by hil

I’m making some bunraku-style puppets at the moment. They are about 60cm tall. I’ve just got to the stage where they are more-or-less complete in construction and movement, but still rough in finish. This is a stage I love – there is something very aesthetically pleasing about it – and I think it would be really interesting to use them unfinished in a play. I always almost regret having to finish them.

Bunraku-style puppets-3

They are moving really nicely:

Bunraku-style puppets-1

A few other pics of them below: the woman, the man, bending. Now I have to paint their faces, forearms and hands and the woman’s leg and foot; and dress them.

‘The Lost Thing’ to become a short film

Posted by hil

LtboyHaving made puppets for a theatre production of Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing’ last year, I was excited to find out that Passion Pictures is making a short CG film of the book. It will be fun to keep an eye on their gallery of pictures of work in progress over the next months. Among the images there at the moment are drawings of some of the utopian lost things. There were only five utopian lost things in the theatre production, so it will be great if we get to see more of them brought to life in the film. There are also images of a sculpture of the boy by Ron Mueck Mueck, that will be used for mapping the boy from all angles into the CG program. How cool is that!

Snuff Puppets: Nyet Nyet’s Picnic

Posted by hil

I wish I could be in Melbourne this weekend for Snuff Puppets‘ latest production, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic, which starts on Friday at Birrarung Marr on the banks of the Yarra.

In a collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous artists, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic is a contemporary work that revives ancient stories from the dreamtime, and uses giant puppets, dance, and music in an exploration of local monsters, bunyips and spirit creatures. Described as a ‘genuinely scary, culturally enlightening and engaging night of theatre’, the performance is the cultural highlight of Reconciliation Week and is free to the public.

The photo above was taken by Ponch Hawkes, and there are three others here:
The Nyet Nyet Women
One of the Nyet Nyet Woman
The Nyet Nyet Men

UNIMA 2008 Logo Competition

Posted by hil

The deadline for the Unima 2008 logo competition has been extended to accommodate Tafe and other educational institution courses. The due date is now July 22nd, 2005. Details are otherwise as outlined here. Go to it!

The Unima congress and festival is held every four years, and in 2008 it is being held in Perth, WA. This is exciting, as it is the first time it is being held in the southern hemisphere. It encompasses a ten day international festival of puppetry, a conference, and the Congress of UNIMA where the Executives and Councillors from throughout the world meet to discuss organizational and artform issues.

If you are not familiar with Unima, it stands for ‘Union Internationale de la Marionnette, and it’s ‘an international organisation bringing together people from around the world to contribute to the development of the art of puppetry, and to use it in the pursuit of human values such as peace and mutual understanding between peoples’. Here’s the Australian branch site.

Making of Nature Band Parade Puppets

Posted by hil

Over at Puppetry Australia, Sean Manners has put together a pictorial account of the building of the parade puppets for Nature Band, a community puppet project that ran as part of the One Van Puppetry Festival earlier in the year, held in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains out of Sydney. The puppets, five yellow-tailed black cockatoos, four trees and three
waratahs, were made by participants in community workshops that were held over several months.

‘The puppets were initially designed by Jenny Kee; realized by Paula Martin, a local designer and sculptor; the workshops were facilitated by Sean Manners, puppeteer and community artist; and the performance and project as a whole was directed and choreographed by Sue Wallace of Sydney Puppet Theatre.’

The Victory Theatre Cafe and Antique Centre in Blackheath has a cool community mural along one side, that surely must also have been designed by Kenny Kee:

There is also a bus shelter on the edge of Blackheath that I liked because it has been painted to celebrate the puppetry festival (click on the thumbnails for larger images):

'One Van' Bus stop mural
'One Van' Bus stop mural

I heard the distinctive yellow-tailed black cockatoo calls when I was in Blackheath. They are wonderful birds, quite big – about 60cm – and I always feel its a good omen when they are about, though their calls are somewhat plaintive. In Canberra it used to be quite rare to see these cockatoos, but since the devastating bushfires in January 2003 they have moved into the suburbs. A few weeks ago, we had the first ones in our garden. They spent several hours ripping the bark and branches of a dying gum tree to bits in search of borer insects.

Kamon&#233

Posted by hil

Kamone1Oh yeah, the World EXPO also has a pavilion mascot, a platypus called Kamoné. She was designed by Melbourne-based illustrator, artist, toy designer and storyteller Nathan Jurevicius, best known for his Scarygirl series of toys, comics and products.

The drawings are pretty cool and there are various versions of her: dancing, just herself, in a long dress, playing soccer, with ipod and backpack, with tote and pencil, as an artist? (interestingly this isn’t used – maybe its not clear enough), and as a scientist.

There is also a bodysuit puppet of her. There are numerous pictures in the Australian Pavilion image gallery, such as this one of her supervising the unloading of the platypus exhibit (minus her gloves). And here Kamoné is at Tokyo Station, meeting her friends the official Aichi Expo mascots, Kiccoro and Morizo, a forest child and a forest grandfather.

One other thing. There is nice flash graphic at EXPO2005, though its a pity you have to scroll down to get both images.

Puppetry Daemons in ‘His Dark Materials’

Posted by hil

By all accounts the two-part 6 hour stage adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is absolutely stunning. I think it has had two seasons at the National Theatre in London: one in 2003, and a second that finished earlier this month.

The daemons, physical manifestations of the human soul in the shape of animals that reflect a person’s character, are puppets. They were designed by Michael Curry, who is perhaps best known for the puppets in The Lion King. Stagework has an extensive website on the adaptation, and its possible to see a few of the initial designs there, and glimpses of the puppetry in some of the video clips:

Operating the golden monkey
Lyra meets Mrs Coulter
Cittagazee performance
Captured by bears
Lyra and Iorek (scene in rehearsal)

In both these and the puppets in ‘The Lion King’, I think the magic lies in how the overall shape and actions of the creatures are suggested. Often the puppeteers are built into the shape in unexpected ways, and they use their whole bodies to make the animal move. In ‘The Lion King’, for instance, the puppeteers playing the hyenas held the hyena heads low down and at arms length, while their own heads provided the high shoulder line that is so distinctive in a hyena’s overall shape. Likewise, the polar bears in ‘His Dark Materials’, are defined by a puppeteer holding a head mask in one hand and a great clawed paw in the other, with just the suggestion of great shoulders in what looks like a flexible curved line between the two, and a powerful lumbering gait.

Bridge to the stars, which looks as if its the natural online home for ‘His Dark Materials’ fans, has a section on the stage adaptation, including a guide to the Stagework site, images and reviews.

Woe: Cookie Monster learns about ‘sometimes foods’

Posted by hil

CookiemonsterSesame Street’s Cookie Monster is adopting a healthier diet, according to an article on CNN:

“Even Cookie Monster is learning to control his cookie cravings…. His sage advice opened our eyes to the simple joys of a tasty cookie and now reminds us that moderation is the key to healthy living.”

Sesame Street has always had an educational impetus, but there is surely more fun and value in Cookie Monster being the antitheses to other characters doing the right thing.