Hooray for two-dollar shops!

Posted by hil

Tacky but interesting: this is a huge spider garden spike that I got at the $2 shop the other day. It’s a hand span across, and the connections between its legs and body are fine springs, so that when the spike is jolted the legs have an incidental movement. The best movement you can get out of it is a kind of drumming of the legs, where, on each side, legs 1 and 3 are in sync with each other, and legs 2 and 4 are doing the opposite. Then it has the right kind of action for a huntsman spider.

Spider3

I have a couple of other insect garden spikes, a bee and a dragonfly (bought out of curiosity when I was working on making giant bees and dragonflies a few years ago). They are much smaller than the spider, with bodies about 7 cm long, and the wings are on double springs. The dragonfly has much lighter springs, and a much better incidental movement than the poor bee, whose springs and wings are way too heavy.

Jonathon Oxlade

Posted by hil

For me Jonathon Oxlade was the stand-out performance of the One Van puppetry festival in late January. His short performance during the Saturday night cabaret was exciting, bizarre, gross, and hilarious. Jonathon works as a freelance theatre designer, illustrator and puppeteer.

According to his bio, among many other things, he created The Red Tree installation — ‘an interactive experience full of little surprises for the eyes, ears,heart and mind’ — that accompanied the QPAC’s Out of the Box production of ShaunTan’s beautiful picture book ‘The Red Tree’ in 2004.

Redtree

This year he is designing ‘Creche and Burn’ (on stage in April) and ‘The Dance of Jeramiah’ (in Oct-Nov) for LaBoite Theatre, and a production of the Dicken’s classic ‘A Christmas Carol’ for the Queensland Theatre Company late in the year. He is currently working on a picture book, too.

Interior grip design for foam puppet mouths

Posted by hil

At Transformed Puppet, puppeteer and artist Ronald Binion has an excellent page about issues to do with making the interior of a foam puppet mouth both comfortable and effective in manipulation. He illustrates the kind of hand grips that he prefers.

Grip

As he notes, the interior is just as important as the exterior aesthetics in terms of using the puppet expressively; and as there is a propensity for puppeteers to suffer from repetitive strain injuries in the long run, it is also an occupational health issue that puppet makers have to keep in mind. Binion is also right in suggesting that there are many solutions to the problem. One of the joys of puppet making is that it is about problem solving, and individual approaches are valuable and part of the art. I particularly like the look of the thumb tube that is ‘connected to the mouth plate at only one point, allowing the thumb tube to act as a lever, and not force the thumb to conform to the angle of the mouth plate’. It’s also vital that the hinge of the mouth fits snugly into the hinge of your hand, between your thumb and fingers.

Take a tour around the Transformed Puppet (updated link 2015); there are some interesting puppet pictures and productions there. (Via PuppetVision Blog)

 

Olavi Lanu’s ‘Reclining figure’ sculpture

Posted by hil

This is a dawn picture of one of my favourite sculptures in Canberra, on Ellery Crescent outside the School of Art. Its by a Finnish artist, Olavi Lanu, and was made in 1982.

You can see it enlarged and from a few different angles here.

At first I really did think it was group of real granite boulders that just happened to look like a person sleeping. I like imagining that rocks or mountains are slumbering spirits that sometimes might stretch and come alive to go about their business when no-one is about. Of course there are lots of stories along those lines; the ancient stone creature in Patricia Wrightson’s children’s book The Nargun and the Stars comes to mind.

But Lanu’s reclining figure is made from fibreglass resin, presumably on a wire form. Apparently it was originally covered with moss, but over the years lichens have taken over. There is another figure by Lanu not far away, but sitting among some trees.

My White Rabbit for February’s Month of Softies

Posted by hil

What a scramble – I forgot February was so short! But here is my White Rabbit for Loobylu’s Month of Softies, which this month was on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. He stands about 40 cm (15 in) tall, and is covered in a very soft kind of fluffy material, (I’m not sure what – its not fleece or
terry towelling). He was going to have a blue jacket and be holding a
pocket watch, but I ran out of time to make those today.

rabbitc

The rabbit is actually a very simple glove puppet, as he fits on your hand and you can turn his head with a rod inside his body. He is very cuddly, and its fun to cradle him your arms (without it being obvious that one arm is inside) and make him come alive.

rabbitd

Update: Here are some pictures of him now he is finished:

White Rabbit puppet

Mini book of Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature

Posted by hil

I’ve blogged about Ernst Haeckel before, but yesterday I picked up such a cool little book: a mini version of Art Forms of Nature, published by Prestel. Its only 12cm x 9cm, and has 25 plates of his drawings. Of course at that scale you lose something, and I would still love to have the large format version, but its still very satisfactory. There is a range of Prestel Mini art books, by the way.

Lord of the Rings Exhibition at the Powerhouse

Posted by hil

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney is hosting a great exhibition to do with how Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy was created. Its been running since late December, and will close on April 3rd.

There is a lot to see: props, jewellery, weaponry, armour, costumes, models, artefacts, design drawings and paintings, marquettes, moulds, the Ring itself, and prosthetics. There is also a swag of video coverage about how the digital effects, special effects and make-up were achieved, and video interviews with cast and crew, though a lot of that already appears on the extended DVD.

I’m not a great fan of Lord of the Rings. Its unrelentingly male, and I’ve always appreciated the joke that Shelob is the most convincing female character. But there was lots to enjoy about the films, and this exhibition. My overwhelming impression was how wonderfully detailed everything was, and how much thought and care had been given to its making.

Gandalf’s grey robe is made of a beautiful rough mixture of natural fibres, (linen, hemp and silk, if I remember correctly) woven locally in NZ. I got a buzz out of seeing his wonderful bent felt hat (after John Howe’s great illustrations) , as well as all his ancient tomes. And lying among them, the charming surprise of his toffee bag, a small drawstring leather pouch!

Gdf2

Gandalf the Grey (courtesy www.john-howe.com – cool site!) Despite being a real Cate Blanchett fan, I had been disappointed with how Galadriel’s character was written in the film. But her dress was stunningly beautiful, white and luminescent. In contrast, the vacant dark Ring Wraith’s costume had a real sense of foreboding about it.The jewellery, weapons and objects like sword sheaths and straps were beautifully crafted and decorated. It was fun to see Frodo’s mithril coat of mail, and actually handle samples of the chain mail that was painstakingly made for Gimli’s and other characters’ costumes.

There were reproduction models (specially made for the exhibition) of Treebeard’s head, the cave troll and a goblin, which were cool. I loved seeing the marquette of Shelob’s head, and finding out that she was modelled on a tunnel web spider that the Kiwi designer Christian Rivers found in his garden. Of the building or scene models, I particularly liked the ruined Hobbiton Mill.

From a maker’s point of view it would have been good to find out in more detail the exact process of how some of these things were made, and the materials that were used, but I guess that would be catering to too specialist an interest. I haven’t read The Making of the Lord of the Rings, but I doubt that would go to that level of detail either.

I hoped to be able to buy a postcard of Galadriel’s dress to send to a friend’s daughter, but the merchandise in the inevitable shop at the end was boring, just the usual stuff that has been around in shops anyway. You would think that it would have been worthwhile for both sellers and buyers to have some merchandise available that actually reflected the finer focus of the exhibition.

You are meant to book for the exhibition if you are not a member, though the crowds had dropped off when I saw it a few weeks ago, and it was easy to get in. If you decide to go, its worth considering a membership to the Powerhouse. We qualified for a ‘rural family’ membership which cost $2 more than entrance to the exhibition, and gives us other perks for the year ahead not only at the Powerhouse, but places like the National Gallery of Australia and Questacon.

Patchwork and white rabbits

Posted by hil

Finding Loobylu, and a very pleasant morning at Tilley’s last week, spent drinking coffee and sorting through a friend’s collection of fabrics, has made me dig out a picture of the quilt I made for my daughter about 8 years ago now. Its still loved and in use, but getting worn in places, particularly the blue-marbled silk that is in the wavy sea section of the middle panel.

quilt

I’m all enthused about Loobylu’s Month of Softies. The theme for February is ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and I’ve started making a white rabbit puppet!

A tentacle mechanism

Posted by hil

When I was making puppets for ‘The Lost Thing’ a few months ago we had to come up with a simply-made tentacle that could start out straight, and then reach about a metre or more, and curl around to some extent at the tip. Here is the drawing I made of the mechanism I invented, in case its useful to other makers:

Tentacle
(click to enlarge)
The tentacle shape is made of a very soft foam, and has two tracks of heavy duty fishing line running up each side, though small sections of plastic tubing. The kind of tubing I found good was antenna housing that model-car hobbyists use, because it is strong and rigid.When the fishing line is pulled the tentacle curls, and when it is released the foam itself acts as a kind of spring, returning the tentacle to an at-rest straight position. I did have to put some additional spring and rigidity in the core of the foam, though. It was an experimental mixture of different lengths of spring wire, boning and strip plastic, with the idea being to incrementally decrease the rigidity towards the tip. You have to balance aspects like having the foam soft enough to compress easily, and the core springy enough to return but not too rigid to bend easily, and so on.The tentacle was covered: a very thin layer of dacron batting to make it all smooth, and then lycra.

The curls in simple tentacles usually only work in two directions. They are mechanically similar to those intriguing flexible wooden snakes and fish whose bodies are sliced into lots of cross-sections, and then constructed again with a leather or canvass strip running up the middle of the body:

Snakecurl
A tentacle made like this moves from side to side, not up and down, or with any twisting. The thing that excited me about the foam tentacle was that by pulling on both lines with varying pressures, it would twist around in a very sinuous way. It was not a feature that could be used much in the play, as the puppeteer only had one hand free to operate the tentacle, but it was an interesting discovery. It would also be worth experimenting with trying three or four operating strings, if the base of the tentacle was in a firm housing rather than being hand-held.