My interest was piqued by photo #32 in the Big Picture’s post about Carnival. It’s an impressive dragon puppet float that took to the streets in the Nice Carnival recently. I don’t know who made it, but there are resonances with Royal de Luxe’s giant puppets, for instance the carving of the head, elements of the construction and operation and the way it breathes smoke.
This great spider is one of the newest creatures by the French company, La Machine (that I posted about a few days ago). Known as la Princesse, her performance in the streets of Liverpool, England, last September was a highlight of the 2008 European Capital of Culture celebrations there. She was commissioned by Artichoke, the company who brought Royal de Luxe‘s Sultan’s Elephant to London a few years ago.
A giant spider conjures up dramatic visions of Shelob, huge rearing fangs, giant trapdoors, buildings being webbed in, or the populace being picked off one by one and spun into food parcels, tasty morsels for later. But in one of the BBC videos, her creator, Francois Delaroziere, described the emotion he wanted to provoke as ‘sweet and in love’.
There are squillions of photos of la Princesse online now; here a few links as starters:
This giant marionette performance was presented at the Beijing Olympics last year by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. It derives directly from Royal de Luxe’s giant puppets, but the story is about a Chinese girl and a butterfly awakening one of the terracotta warriors. If you dig down in Johnson & Johnson’s site, you can see the trailer, the story board and some cool photos of how the puppets were made. The tie to the theme of J&J caring seems somewhat tenuous to me, but never mind!
I’ve been fascinated by the huge puppets instigated by Royal de Luxe for several years now, so while we were in France we went to Nantes to ride their huge sister elephant at Les Machines de I’ile, and to see all the other wonderful semi-fantasy creatures in their emerging menagerie. It was wonderful – if you get a chance, go!
Revitalizing the old shipyards on I’ile de Nantes, Les Machines de I’ile really is a glorious and grand folly in the best sense of the word, flights of fancy made real. We rounded the corner of the building and there was the elephant, absolutely enormous – it’s 12 metres high! – gently swinging its trunk and wafting its ears, and blinking, as it waited to take it’s next walk around the docklands. From upstairs above the workshops, at the same level as the elephant’s head, we could see the construction and carving close up, and get some idea of the massive mechanics that make it able to move.
Our ride boarded via airplane steps further along the route, and we climbed up to the balcony built into the elephants’ side. The doors into its tummy are decorated with curly turrets and carved animal heads. Inside there is a spiral staircase up to the platform on top, where passengers can look out in all directions, try to work out the mechs in the neck and ears, adopt Titanic-like poses at the front, and waggle the elephant’s tail at the back via a lever that pulls a cable connecting all the segments of the tail! Every now and then the elephant trumpets, and if you are lucky you can operate that from inside it’s belly. I rather suspect they like to keep how it is done a secret, but it’s hands-on and not hi-tech! More often the trunk whooshes steam and water.
The promenade is satisfyingly long – 45 minutes, and it didn’t matter at all to me that perambulating along at 1/4 km per hour you don’t actually cover much distance.
After our ride, we walked out along the steel pole and wood paneling branches that are a prototype for the enormous heron tree that is planned. Hanging along each branch are boxes of plants, the idea being that in time they will provide the greenery of the tree. Extensive research has gone into finding the right kinds of plants, since they have to survive on little water, and in quite an exposed position.
The various models of the whole tree are amazing masses of wire and wood!
I’ve previously posted about the various ride-on creatures that are being built for the emerging Marine Worlds Gallery, and there are lots of photos of them now at Flickr. Since then the Giant Crab, the Bus of the Abyss, and the Storm Boat have been added, and there are some photos of those in my Flickr set.
Outside the workshops is a small carousel roundabout, also with wonderfully unusual creatures to ride – my favourite was a rearing stag beetle. I have lots of photos of these, too, but I think they can wait till another day.
Today I came across this photo of a giant boy marionette, taken in Sydney’s CBD in late January. It’s very much like Royal de Luxe’s little giantess (who has been visiting Santiago, Chile, in the company of a rhinoceros) but I doubt he is theirs. Does anyone know the film company, or what production they were working on?
Update: A couple of people have uploaded videos of the puppet. Apparently it is to be in a Korean clothing commercial of some sort:
I assume this was a practice session, since the articulation has a way to go, but it’s interesting to see how tricky it is after the seemingly faultless performances by Royal de Luxe. The hips look a bit too wobbly as if they might need to go back to the drawing board, but the untidy looseness in the legs and arms lend a bit of boyishness at times. I wonder what it is made out of? I’d guess plastic not wood. I was really surprised that Royal de Luxe uses wood.
Royal de Luxe’s four-day street spectacle, The Sultan’s Elephant, is in Antwerp, Belgium, this weekend. Here is a link back to my collected of links about them, to which I will be adding the following:
The front and back legs opposite each other step ahead at the same time, propelled by an electric motor. When those legs land, hydraulic brakes lock the wheeled feet, and the other two legs take a step. Canting from side to side, Raffe lumbers ahead at about a mile an hour. A propane engine runs only to recharge the batteries, so the beast is quiet and efficient. When Lawlor let Raffe shuffle off alone in the desert, it walked for eight hours.
— Popular Science
You can follow the building process through to it’s completion in time for Burning Man 2005, when it fulfilled Lawlor’s original purpose, to see Burning Man from a height. The giraffe has done various gigs since then, most recently appearing at Maker Faire. (Still going 2014) Plans are now to add ‘computer-controlled flashing giraffe spots, an electroluminescent circulatory system and a gas grill’. :-)
Some other giraffes of note:
In 2000, Royal de Luxe (who recently put on The Sultan’s Elephant street theatre spectacle in London) had a similar spectacle, The Hunters of the Giraffes, with a huge puppet giant boy, a mother giraffe and her baby. Scroll down this page for details.
The find of my week was the discovery that Emmanuel Bourgeau, a sculptor in Plogonnec, has a small gallery of photos (> la gasette de l’atelier>Septembre 2004 – mai 2005: un elepahant et une petite geante) of the construction and carving of the huge elephant and girl in Royal de Luxe’s spectacle, The Sultan’s Elephant, which paraded the streets of London last week. Isn’t the net wonderful? I’ve added this link to my collected Royal de Luxe links.
