puppets

Cloudbuilder’s 3D iPhone puppets

Posted by hil

cloudbuilder's 3d puppets

Kara Jansson Kovacev (Cloudbuilder) creates intriguing and creepy 3D iPhone puppet images on an iPhone 3gs using the Sculptmaster 3D and Brushes and/or Layers apps. She also makes puppets and toy theatre.

On my first attempts using Sculptmaster 3D I found controlling the results difficult, and my images very blobby. But perhaps the lumpiness is intrinsic to the app, and part of the spookiness of Kovacev’s images comes from the juxtaposition of that lumpiness with the definition added with the other apps.

Awesome 3d papercraft portrait

Posted by hil

papercraft self portrait by Eric Testroete

Eric Testroete, a 3d artist in Vancouver, made this awesome papercraft self-portrait head mask for Halloween last year. If you scroll along at his site you can see the making process. Wouldn’t it be cool to use heads like this in theatre?

Hand shadow wallpaper design

Posted by hil

hand shadow wallpaper

I rather like these wallpaper designs from Paper Boy Wallpaper. The hand shadow puppet one comes in inverse colouring, too.

animal skeleton wallpaper

Two puppet-related iPhone apps

Posted by hil

Small Wonders’ Battle of Puppets is described in a detailed review in the Your Local Guardian as ‘a quirky, inventive, beautifully styled and thoroughly likeable castle defence game’. Likewise, most reviews I have seen have been favourable. It’s certainly a cute idea to frame the game as a puppet show. I quickly lost interest in the game itself, though lets face it, I’m not particularly adept or interested in that kind of game.

I think I might have more fun with Elmo’s Monster Maker:

Erth’s magnificent tiger puppet

Posted by hil

Erth's metal tiger puppet

(Photo credit: anthonyung. Thanks for the CC licence. Click to enlarge)

This magnificent tiger puppet was one of the highlights of the recent Chinese New Year Twilight Parade celebrations in Sydney. Videos at the ABC, and on YouTube show it in action, and e_yew at Flickr has a close-up of the tiger’s head.

According to Street Corner:

The 3.5 metre tall City of Sydney float is operated by nine puppeteers and has an audio system in its belly to make it roar and purr.

Constructed from found and recycled materials, the float celebrates the Year of the Metal Tiger and is a symbol of City of Sydney’s commitment to sustainability.

The Metal Tiger was built by renowned prop maker Erth and its parts include vacuum cleaners, take-away food containers, aluminium cans, bicycle parts, grid iron and hockey guards, pool noodles, old speaker boxes, kitchenware, hub caps and motorbike components.

The float will be adorned with 100m of LED bud lighting, 90 metres of rope light, and tips the scales at approximately 300kg.

Australian puppetry links and news

Posted by hil

Towards the end of last year I added an Australian puppetry links page here. It’s listed above with the other site navigation tabs. It is a little more than links because there are brief notes with some of the entries.  I also started up @OzPuppetry,  a Twitter account for Australian puppetry news, which you can see running real-time updates in the widget in the sidebar to the left.

What prompted me to do both was the frustration I felt when I received an out-of-the-blue email asking my thoughts on the ‘puppetry industry, or lack thereof’, in Australia. Although in many ways I’m only on the periphery of the industry, I was aware of lots of exciting and diverse puppetry at the time, as I tried to convey (pdf). So I decided to write down publicly what I did know as links, and to track news as I saw it on Twitter.

But I should say straight up that I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing either.  At the moment I’m enjoying it, but I don’t intend to tie myself to it if my interest wanes.  Also, with many of the puppetry community here taking to FaceBook for notifications and networking, perhaps it is only a matter of time before it becomes redundant?

Interview with CTC’s Sonny Tilders

Posted by hil

ABC’s Radio National Artworks program has a great interview with Sonny Tilders who is the creative director at  Creature Technology Company in Melbourne, the company that produced the amazing arena show Walking with Dinosaurs Live, and is now making a giant King Kong for the stage. Exciting stuff.

Terrapin puppet sale

Posted by hil

Puppet

(Disclaimer: I have no idea which puppets will be for sale, so please don’t assume the puppets in the photos here are in the sale)

Terrapin Theatre Company in Hobart is selling off many puppets from its 35 year history and that of its predecessor, Tasmanian Puppet Theatre.

The puppets will be on sale on Wednesday 25 November from 4pm to 5pm at 23 Wellington Street, North Hobart.  They are priced from $10 to $180, with the majority of older puppets at $25. CASH ONLY payment required on the day. Please don’t bring kids with you as there is as there is little room and it is semi-industrial.

When I was at the 2nd National Puppetry Summit in Hobart in 2006 there was a window display of  a wide variety of puppets from Terrapin from over the years.  This puppet with its huge head and little body was my favourite. It was made by Greg Methe for the 1997 production The Fork.

Puppet

I also loved these platypus, quoll, and Tasmanian tiger puppets that were made by Axel Axelrad. I took a number of photos of other puppets in the display, a few of them are here.

Puppets by Axel Axelrad

New adaptation of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival coming to the Sydney Festival

Posted by hil

Red Leap Theatre from New Zealand will be bringing a new theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan‘s book The Arrival to the Sydney Festival in January. I love the look of what I can see in this video of highlights, in particular the aesthetic feel and muted colours, the puppets and the imagery.

Arrival redleap

(photo credit: Robin Kerr)

arrivalship

(photo credit: John McDermott)

I saw the adaptation of The Arrival by Spare Parts Pupppet Theatre at the Unima 2008 Puppetry Festival in Fremantle. It has gone on to win a number of awards, and recently had a season at the World Puppetry Festival in Charleville Mezieres, France.  I felt the strength of that production was in the projected animations and digital imagery, and that the story line and emotional content had been simplified for a very young audience.  I hope Red Leap’s production will be able to tap further into the richness and drama that the book holds.

Previously:  Shaun Tan