The last few working days I’ve been making a couple of giant butterfly body suits. These are to go with the masks and wings I made some years ago for The Fool Factory. You may run across the new butterflies at the National Folk Festival at Easter time in Canberra.
This is a giant remote control snail that I recently made for The Fool Factory for their promotion of National Science Week 2011. It’s about a metre long, fitted onto the chassis of a remote control car, and has eyes that move from side to side. It’s made to look somewhat like Australia’s largest land snail, the Giant Panda Snail, which inhabits sub-tropical forests in Queensland.
I’ve posted photos of the making process. The shell is shaped polystyrene layered with paper mache, and then painted. The body is made from thin PE foam sheeting covered by a strange irregular and stretchy netted fabric which I used for the skin texture, then painted. Inside the snail there is a cage that separates and protects the body from remote control chassis, and a small aluminium structure that holds the servo motors that rotate the eyes.
I’m also like the following picture of the snail in my studio, although it reminds me of when we first moved into our house and there was a small crack by the back door where leopard slugs used to come in during the night to eat the cat food in the laundry! Worse was when they used venture further into the house and we could accidentally tread on them barefoot if we were up in the night tending babies – eew!
The Fool Factory’s Sunflower gives a unusually taciturn glance at the Walk against Warming a couple of weekends ago. I also love this one of the Rat Patrol at Cutflat.
I’m missing blogging! Heaps of things to blog about and no time to do it, is the story. I figure as far as making work goes, I have to make hay while the sun shines. Hoping to get back to it more often in December when the play I am working on has made its run.
Making this huge Fruit Batman character for The Fool Factory has been the thing keeping me so busy last month. The wingspan is 6-7 metres, and it is a stilt-walking character. The wings are articulated, and it has animatronic eyes and ears, but it was my brief to build the creature around those supplied elements. He is now in Adelaide, doing some performances in the streets during the Fringe Festival.
I’ve made a set of photos that show some of the making process. And there are some more stills and a couple of quicktimes on the Fool Factory’s new site. I was particularly happy with the head:
I’ve recently finished a small Frosty the Snowman puppet for The Fool Factory. Frosty will be joining Mini Milo and Milo the Clown in Milo the Clown’s Snow Show, playing at Thredbo’s Fun and Games Room from April 10th through 16th.
