I mentioned performances of Nyet Nyet’s Picnic, by the Snuff Puppets, at the Big West Festival recently. At Flickr, Peter Stuckings has some great photographs of some of the puppets, starting here. Thanks to Jose at titereblog for finding them.
Computer bug box
This is one side of my ‘computer bugs’ traffic control box, done for Colour-in Canberra. It’s on the corner of Corrina and Callum Streets in Woden. If you’d like to see the other sides and top, there are a few more pictures here. I think people are likely to interpret them as gremlins, but to me they are about becoming involved with the intricacy of the internet, and how rich an experience that can be.
Machin-X: digital puppetry
Andrew from PuppetVision, has opened another blog,Machin-X to do with digital puppetry. In his introductory post, Andrew defines digital puppetry as distinct from 3D animation and motion capture:
I define digital puppetry – at least for the purposes of this blog – as the manipulation and performance of digital objects and characters in real-time using a mouse, joystick or some other kind of input device. The forthcoming Jim Henson series Francis? That’s digital puppetry. Machinima? That’s a homebrewed form of digital puppetry. This is definitely digital puppetry too.
Keep an eye on Machin-X as it documents projects and explores developments in a very new field.
A stitch in time
Update: My Flickr page where I have this photo stored is now showing ads for a flavoured lip plumper and long lasting, naturally flavored lip glosses! :-P
The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello
Another winner in the recent Australian Film Institute Awards was The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, which picked up Best Short Animation, and Oustanding Achievement in Craft in a Non-Feature, Production Design, for the director, Anthony Lucas. It caught my attention not only because it looks cool, but because it’s another example of the exciting work going on with shadow puppetry and new technologies that I mentioned in a couple of previous posts.
Back in October, Ward was really enthusiastic about seeing Jasper at the Ottawa Animation Festival:
Omigosh, I absolutely LOVED the next film… Is it stop-motion? CG? It’s a little bit of both and it looks entirely amazing. Harking back to the very first animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), Jasper is done in silhouette, like an elaborate shadow puppet play.
You can get a feel for film by looking at their wallpaper downloads. There is an interesting mix of silhouette and photographic detail. And I like the whimsy of the imagined world and the gazette; some of it is quite pointed. Too bad Jasper not going to be screened here in Canberra.
Anthony Lucas is from 3D Films, which specializes in clay and stop-motion animation for TV commercials, station IDs and special effects. It’s an interesting site to take a wander through. There are some precursors to Jasper. For instance, there are stills and making details of the SBS Station IDs that were done with silhouettes and organic materials to give them a handmade look, as well as a quick time movie of one of them. And the selection of images from their film Holding your Breath are great. I like the look of Bad Baby Amy, too.
Updates:
Lucas‘s Jasper Morello has been nominated for an Oscar in the best short animation catagory.
A review in The Age.
A short video clip from Jasper Morello.
Jasper Morello will be screening on SBS on Friday 10th March at 8.00pm.
The DVD of Jasper Morello, including a ‘making of’ featurette and other award winning films by director Anthony Lucas will be in shops on March 15th.
Updated 2015: broken links
I oppose the death penalty
Today Singapore executed Nguyen Tuong Van, a young Australian man. I oppose the death penalty. I always have: my abhorrence to the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia in 1967, when I was 13, is a very distinct and early political memory. In thinking about of Van Nguyen, it’s all too painful to remind oneself that the death penalty is considered acceptable and necessary in many countries, including the US, which is just coming up to the milestone of 1000 people executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Wear a yellow ribbon over the next few days to show your support for Van Nguyen and opposition to the death penalty.
(image: CUADP, and Amnesty International)
Updated links 2015
Mummenschanz to tour Australia!
Mummenschanz, the renowned Swiss mime and object theatre group, will perform the world premiere of their new program, 3×11, a 33 year retrospective of their work, at the Sydney Theatre in Walsh Bay on 31st January 2006. The season runs till 11th February, 2006. Afterwards they tour Australia, New Zealand, and South America, where on 12th April they will open at the International Festival in Bogota, Colombia.
Bookings on 9250 1999 or Ticketek 132 849.
I’m wondering if I saw them long ago at the Adelaide Festival of Arts? Did they ever perform there? I know I saw them on The Muppet Show.
Updated links 2015
Big West Festival
If you are in Melbourne, The Big West Festival in Maribyrnong looks as if it will be a good time. Full program details are available here.
For puppetry fans it’s a chance to catch Snuff Puppet’s Nyets Nyet’s Picnic; Men of Steel, a high energy cookie cutter kitchen puppetry extravaganza; the disturbing crocheting that is Foxy’s House of Horror; and others.
The venue is the Village (the Village Railway Reserve behind Footscray Station, McNab Ave, Footscray). Entrance will be free during People’s Day
on Saturday from 1 – 7.30 pm.
Look Both Ways: Sarah Watt’s animations
(Image from Dendy Films)
I’m delighted the movie Look Both Ways did so well at the Australian Film Awards this weekend, taking out Best Film (Bridget Ikin), Best Direction (Sarah Watt), Best Original Screenplay (Sarah Watt), and Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Hayes).
Its a real gem: everyday, quiet, low key and unpretentious, but deals in subtle and intense ways with life and death and the things in between. Sarah Watt says: “I try and say things like it’s a romantic comedy. But unfortunately I have a tendency to look on the blacker side of life, so I suppose it’s a romantic comedy about fear, maybe, with a little death thrown in.” She has also said “I guess it’s a thing of feeling like you’re extremely fortunate, but with an awareness of how many troubles there are in the world and figuring out how to live with that fortune, whilst not stomping on the heads of those less fortunate. That’s a line that a lot of Australians have to tread daily.”
Look Both Ways is set in Adelaide, where I grew up, and it’s always fun to see familiar places in movies, especially when it doesn’t happen very often. (Shine was the last time for me). Most of the filming was done down towards the port, and the sense of atmosphere, light, dryness and heat haze was absolutely recognizable as a stinking hot Adelaide heatwave.
Another striking feature is the short animations which were done as a collaboration with Emma Kelly (from Tantalus Interactive) and Clare Callinan:
‘Animator Emma Kelly (who collaborated with Sarah on her shorts) drew all the cells over several months. Each drawing was scanned and printed onto suitable water-absorbent paper. Sarah then hand-painted all the ‘watery’ sequences, and Clare Callinan (again a previous collaborator) painted the other sequences, with Sarah finishing each painting. All the painted cells were then re-scanned at Iloura Digital Pictures in Melbourne, camera moves were resolved, and the sequences were recorded out onto 35mm, for integration into the film.’
The animations represent the internal lives of the two main characters. In accordance with their professions, Meryl’s are painterly, and represent her often fearful thoughts (clips (1, 2), while Nick’s are more photographic montage and are visual memories of his life (just a taste in this trailer). There are a couple of other trailers on the LBW site.
I came across another of Watt’s animations online. It’s from a twenty-three minute animation The Way of the Birds, based on a book of the same name by Meme McDonald. It tells the story of the Eastern Curlew:
‘After breeding and nesting in the Siberian grasslands, the adult birds migrate south again within a month or so, leaving their chicks there in the tundra. When they are less than eight weeks old, the chicks make the 13,000 km migration across the world to parts of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand all on their own.’
There are also animations by Watt in an associated online documentary about the Eastern Curlew, A Year on the Wing.
Updated 2015: broken links. Sarah Watt died in 2011.
