David Simon’s new venture Treme premieres soon in the US. It looks full of promise, though I guess it will take ages to get here. My friend Amy put me onto The Wire some years ago, (my son and I still sometimes smilingly say ‘and then I gotta dry that shit up’). I’m truly hooked, but taking it slow, watching week by week on SBS, where we are in the middle of the third season; so lots of good stuff to go yet.
tv
Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden
Before Tony Robinson played Baldrick in Blackadder and hosted Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History, he did a great little kid’s story show called Fat Tulip’s Garden. Imagine my delight to find a few of the episodes on TouTube. It’s interesting to see it described as a cult classic – I thought it was just me!
Flesh and Blood
Mary Black and Shane Howard’s lovely duet version of his song Flesh and Blood. It was replayed on Rockwiz (SBS) last night.
Mr.Squiggle and friends
Mr. Squiggle, a dearly loved kids TV puppet show in Australia for many years, has an exhibition as part of the Unima 2008 puppetry festival in Perth. Although its regarded as iconic, I have to admit running against the flow; I never really loved it either as a kid or an adult. I do like the puppets and their characters, though, and it was interesting to see how simply made they were made. Blackboard for instance is a piece of cardboard, with little (sand?)bags for feet, and the reason one of his eyes isn’t animated is that it was made so quickly they didn’t get that far. Of course, it gave him more character! Blackboard and Gus the cantankerous snail were always my favourites.
Mr.Squiggle’s creator, Norman Hetherington, and his wife Margaret, who scripted the shows, are both here at the festival.
- The photos below are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Please use them within the terms of the license or make special arrangements to use them, and list the photo credit as “Hilary Talbot” and link the credit to Spiritsdancing.com.
Mr. Squiggle
Bill Steamshovel. His neck and catapillar tracks are plain foam.
Gus
Update: my own squiggle.
My attendence at Unima 2008 is supported by the ACT Government
Animalia becomes animated
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 .
Peppa Pig theatricals
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.
Dragon
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)
Street party tube men
I rather like this new ad for Tooheys beer, which features lots of those tall inflatable tube men as revellers at a street party. It was made by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney.
Bread and puppet
Take a look at this really silly advertisement for Noble Rise breads. I mean, why would you bother, when he is so obviously satisfied with a puppet? ;-p
(The clip only worked in IE for me)
