puppets

Warehouse Circus: Carnivale Puppet Parade at Floriade

Posted by hil

Resting

Over the last few months most of my time has been taken up with a number of projects to do with Floriade, Canberra’s month-long annual spring flower festival, which finished last weekend. My biggest scale project was taking workshops with a group of kids from the Warehouse Circus, collaboratively designing and helping them to make some big puppets for a carnivale puppet parade during Floriade.

Robin Davidson was the artistic director, bringing together the eight characters the kids had proposed (The Dude (from the circus logo), the Evil Gardener, two tulips, The Pie, Mirrorman, Mini Me, and a pirate) into a kazoo band.

We used quite a broad range of building techniques and materials, many of which the kids hadn’t had experience with before. Six of the characters were on stilts, some on extension stilts, and I was really impressed with how well the kids took on the physical and mental challenges of performing the characters, and the level of confidence they developed.

Video clip: Click picture to see the Warehouse Circus Carnivale Puppet Parade.

Puppet Rampage

Posted by hil

The line up of interested parties for Puppet Rampage 2007 looks pretty cool. Puppet Rampage is the biennial National Puppetry Festival produced by the Puppeteers of America, to be held in St.Paul, MN, in July 17-22, 2007.

Puppet in Berlin

Posted by hil

Berlinpuppet

(photo credit: irlLordy, used with permission – thanks!)

irlLordy took a great sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of photos of a cool puppet entertaining the queue on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin recently. I really like the aethetic, and it’s interesting to see a bunraku-style puppet being operated on such long rods. The puppeteers – are there five? – must have a really good understanding between them. Apparently the puppet did matrix-like leaps off someone’s shoulders in slow motion at one point. Please do let me know if you happen to know which puppet troupe this is – I’d love to know!

Cool photos of Beck

Posted by hil

Beckx

(photo credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Laughing Squid is one of my long time favourite blogs; I enjoy the mix of tech and visual arts, and Scott Beale’s photos. Today Scott has the best photos of Beck’s puppets I’ve seen yet, taken at Yahoo! Hack Day.

More Royal de Luxe

Posted by hil

I’ve been keeping a list of Royal de Luxe links since I first became aware of them last June. This weekend I believe The Sultan’s Elephant is in Calais, and then in La Havre at the end of October (26 – 29th).

The producers who brought The Sultan’s Elephant to London in June this year are bringing out a book of photos, reminiscences and articles about the event which will be published in November.

Meanwhile, some lovely Royal de Luxe photos at Flickr:

Le Grand Géant in the water at Pont Du Gard in August (by krisyid)
The Giraffes in Le Harve earlier in September (by jeffreyhill)
Machines of Spectacle at Le Grand Repertoire in Paris (by Tekrotzen)
Most recent Royal de Luxe photos

Giant Icelandic marionette

Posted by hil

This is a still from a video of a giant marionette in Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s being operated by three helicopters! There are some other videos here. I can’t find any other information about it, which is strange, but people seem to think it was being filmed as a viral ad for jeans. It makes me think of my favourite Roald Dhal book, The BFG.

Greetings from Australia for OneWebDay

Posted by hil


Greetings from Australia for OneWebDay yesterday/today! A few months ago I started making a sculpture or puppet, with the intention of it being performed in a public place on the day, but yesterday, the 22nd here, was so windy I would have got blown away, and today is, too. I’ve just updated my Flickr set of the making process, and maybe later there will be pictures of it in action. There is more of an explanation for the puppet with the photos at Flickr.

Cool new puppet building wiki

Posted by hil

Andrew at PuppetVision Blog, with others, has been working on setting up the Puppet Building Wiki, a new, collaborative project to create an online encyclopedia of free, open and accessible puppet building knowledge, tutorials and patterns for all types of puppets. Much like Wikipedia, the site’s open format allows anyone to create or edit any article. They’re asking puppet builders around the world to help the site achieve it’s goal – creating the most comprehensive database of puppet
building information in the world.

If anyone would like to help out and share their puppet building knowledge, information, tutorials or patterns you can help out by editing an existing article or starting a new one. Puppet builders can also visit the site’s Puppet Building Blog which will be updated several times each week with puppet building news, information, tutorials and resources.

David Tench Tonight

Posted by hil

Davidtench

I caught a little of the second episode of David Tench Tonight last night, and I’m quite intrigued. My impression on googling is that people disliked the first episode, but I wonder if it doesn’t have the same kind of sophistication and potential as Norman Gunston, and will take a bit of time to really get to appreciate.

David Tench is a larger-than-life cartoon talk show host, animated in real time using a sensor suit motion capture and digital enhancement technologies (like Peter Jackson’s Gollum). The character was conceived by Andrew Denton and technically designed by Australian visual effects company Animal Logic, whose Executive Producer Zareh Nalbandian says:

“Tench can break the rules of television at the same time as creating ones of his own. He is totally irreverent because he can be. This is a character and format that can surprise, challenge convention and constantly evolve. It’s the big advantage of the virtual character. Nothing is real, reality is what you make it and you can bend reality to any shape you want.”

Is it classed as puppetry? I don’t know, but my feeling is its so close it doesn’t matter, and animation and puppetry overlap in so many ways.

Of course you can already see Tench on YouTube. (don’t judge it only on the promo clip – the recording there has messed up the lip sync)
You can read more about David Tench at Wikipedia. Apparently the Wikipedia entry was part of the pre-show viral marketing. I haven’t decided if that was underhand or savvy – or maybe both.
The Herald Sun has an interview with Tench.
This behind the scenes article doesn’t spill much, but maybe it’s better than nothing!