Giant Pinóquio puppet by Trigo Limpo ACERT

Posted by hil

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(photo credits and thanks: zetavares)

This fabulous giant Pinóquio puppet premiered last weekend at the Imaginarious Festival in Santa Maria da Feira in a street theatre production called The fantastic history of a child called Pinóquio by the theatre company Trigo Limpo ACERT. They come from Tondela, a small town in the centre of Portugal.

The choice of Pinocchio, the classic tale of a wooden boy who wants to become human, is particularly pleasing, because it reflects the puppeteers’ conceit of being able to bring inanimate things to life. And he looks beautifully articulated – I really like the way his leg and foot can turn and rest in his signature stance.

Zetavares has a great Flicker photoset of the 7 metre marionette, and has kindly let me post some of his photos here. He also has interesting sets of the making of the puppet, and the rehearsing the manipulation.

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The character was sculpted by Carles of Madrid and Nico Nubiola  of Taller de escultura De la Madrid & Nubiola, both of whom were involved with the production of the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics. They have a cool video of  how they made Pinóquio:

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora were involved with the manipulation of the puppet. I first saw pictures of Pinoquio on their blog Espaço das Marionet@s, which I have been following for a while now.

Trigo Limpo ACERT have previously made some other great street theatre pieces, two of them large versions of traditional wooden push-along children’s toys. Memoriar na rotunda had a man pedalling a bicycle, (making photos here) and Golpe d’Asa, a bird whose wings flap as its wheel base rotates.

The Nano Song: puppets explain nanotechnology!

Posted by hil

This cute Sesame Street style video won both the Critics’ Choice and People’s Choice awards in the ACS Nanotation NanoTube ‘What is Nano?’ competition for a video tutorial about nanotechnology. It was a ‘collaborative effort by a group of researchers from University of California, Berkeley including Patrick Bennett, David Carlton, Molly Felz, Nola Klemfuss, Glory Liu (singer), Ryan Miyakawa, Stacey Wallace, and Angelica Zen’.

Lull

Posted by hil

Andrew Bird – Lull (daytrotter version): cool music, interesting shadow puppetry and animation.

(via Loobylu Tumbles)

Margaret Wertheim at TED

Posted by hil

I always meant to do a post on the Institute of Figuring when I first came across it a few years ago, but now you can just watch Margaret Wertheim herself  explaining the beautiful maths of coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry in this great talk at TED.

Fun fun fun til Twitter took the t-bird away

Posted by hil

Twitter has now developed and then taken away three functions that made it exciting for me to use.

1. Track was taken away a year ago. Only some of us tasted it, but it was da bomb. Twitter knows.

2. SMS notification was taken away from Australians (and some other non-US countries) about 9 months ago. It was a buzz to receive tweets from a couple of good friends via phone. It was the whole rationale behind Twitter in the first place.

3. The @reply brouhaha that erupted yesterday is still unfolding, but it looks as if the underlying desire is to limit following through to conversations one’s friends are having with people you are not following. As many people have said, serendipitous discovery is one of the richer aspects of Twitter.

When I went overseas last year I took lots of photos for my own record and pleasure. People always say they are interested in seeing photos from trips, but more often than not they don’t really engage with them. But I did try to make a short photoset to show to people who said they were interested. The paradox I discovered was that the more I culled, the less interesting the photos became: you are drawn to choose the more iconic rather than the idiosyncratic. For instance, if you have to choose one photo to represent your time in Paris, you are more likely to pick the Eiffel Tower, rather than the funny alleyway litter bin that you could imagine becoming a puppet character. However, it is the layering of the unexpected and unusual like the latter, which sets up rich memories and stories of a place for the person who experienced them. In the same way, Twitter and it’s users might find themselves operating within a similar paradox.

In the meantime we wait for Friendfeed or others to do what Twitter has so far reneged on.

Desirée, my dear dead manta ray

Posted by hil

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This is the big dead manta ray prop that I made for the Street Theatre’s production of Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris.  Sadly Desirée – my name for her  – was cut from the final production, but I loved making her.  Manta rays are such awesome creatures!

Because she had a wingspan of over 2 metres, I decided chalk on the floor was a good way to start drawing up a pattern. I also bought myself a little plastic model of a manta to refer to, which turned out to be useful.

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From this I traced a pattern onto butcher’s paper and from there onto sheets of polystyrene which were then built up and glued into a block.

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I also decided to insert a strip of thin plywood into the underside right across the width of the wingspan, so that the wings would be protected from breaking, especially at the tips. I also did that with the fins that I added.

Then much shaping with a really sharp knife, a narrow power belt  sander, and sandpaper. I decided to keep the surface a bit rough, which often makes it easier for an audience to read.

When I use polystyrene that will just have a painted finish I skin it with muslin first. Here you can just see some of the muslin draped over the spray adhesive can on the right.

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I usually add a little bit of latex to the first coat of paint to help make everything stick to the styrene.

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Then it’s on to colouring; for the final shading I used spray paint so that the colours merged softly. It was tricky to seat in the eyes (painted and glossed wooden door knobs) and get the shape of the upper eyelid right.

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There are a few more in-between photos in my photoset at Flickr.

Yay! a Fail Whale card!

Posted by hil

My fail whale card from Yiying Lu!

I’m really happy – Yiying Lu sent me one of her cool Fail Whale cards! Here it is with my little sculpture. Thanks so much Yiying :)

Sea creature masks by Yiying Lu

Posted by hil

Yiying Lu (of fail whale fame) has designed a set of ten beautiful sea creature masks for children for the Sydney Aquarium. Go and look at them, they will make your day better!

Giant doll marionette in Brisbane

Posted by hil

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(Photo: Brisbane Times: Andrew Wight)

According to The Brisbane Times, this giant marionette doll, made by John Cox’s Creature Workshop, was being filmed on the streets of Brisbane for an advertisement for Allen’s Lollies. There is a short video by rockfotze at Flickr, as well as photos by zombietron, shonkathan and rockfotze, and a good close-up of her face.

(Influence of Royal de Luxe?)