puppets

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience: Workshop footage

Posted by hil

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience (see previous post) has released two videos of their awesome dinosaur puppetry:

Footage from the workshop
Torosaur v. Utahraptor

And here are a couple of stills from their newsletter.

Wwd_03

Steg
in the workshop. if you want an idea of HOW BIG this shows going to be, check out the size of the person working on the BABY brachi in the background (seen through Steg’s legs) … remember, he’s the BABY!

Wwd_14

Ankylosaurus in the workshop. To the right you can see one of the utahraptors in the making. There are two now in their final makeover stage and will be ready to wreak havoc with our first utahraptor who was one of the stars or the walking with dinosaurs launch, facing off with Torosaurus. (You can see someone behind the dino’s head, as an indication of scale)

I can see how you would come to call them affectionate things like baby Brachi and Steg if you were working on the build. I dare say they would have come in for a lot of swearing too! With only about five weeks till the first show in Sydney the makers must be under a lot of pressure.

Duck walks into a Bar

Posted by hil

Duck

I also received a note about Duck walks into a Bar, a ‘bar-hopping, Muppet-style character who likes to troll bars in search of babes, booze and free drinks’, created by Kevin Susman & James Murray. It’s not particularly my taste, but the puppetry, character and video production are slick, so take a look.

Finding Nemo: the Musical

Posted by hil

Brian Kolm sent me a note a few weeks ago about Finding Nemo: the Musical, a new musical stage show at
Disney’s Animal Kingdom. (Thanks, Brian!). If you page down you can see photos of some of the large puppets, which seem impressive.

‘Principal characters such as Marlin, Nemo and Dory will be represented by live performers operating animated puppets. Some puppets are larger-than-life — such as Crush, the cool sea turtle, who is nearly the size of a Volkswagen, and Nigel the pelican, who stands 22 feet tall.


Other characters will be portrayed by a diverse array of puppetry styles, including rod, Bunraku and shadow. Tap dancing sharks, puppets riding bicycles, and a punk rock routine by Bruce the shark create theatrical magic and fun throughout the big blue world.‘

The Laughing Place has a couple of extra pictures in their two-page gallery.

The puppets have been designed by Michael Curry, who was the co-designer for The Lion King. The production opens officially in January 2007, but meanwhile preview shows have begun, and you can read a few reactions here.

Warehouse Circus: Carnivale Puppet Parade at Floriade

Posted by hil

Resting

Over the last few months most of my time has been taken up with a number of projects to do with Floriade, Canberra’s month-long annual spring flower festival, which finished last weekend. My biggest scale project was taking workshops with a group of kids from the Warehouse Circus, collaboratively designing and helping them to make some big puppets for a carnivale puppet parade during Floriade.

Robin Davidson was the artistic director, bringing together the eight characters the kids had proposed (The Dude (from the circus logo), the Evil Gardener, two tulips, The Pie, Mirrorman, Mini Me, and a pirate) into a kazoo band.

We used quite a broad range of building techniques and materials, many of which the kids hadn’t had experience with before. Six of the characters were on stilts, some on extension stilts, and I was really impressed with how well the kids took on the physical and mental challenges of performing the characters, and the level of confidence they developed.

Video clip: Click picture to see the Warehouse Circus Carnivale Puppet Parade.

Puppet Rampage

Posted by hil

The line up of interested parties for Puppet Rampage 2007 looks pretty cool. Puppet Rampage is the biennial National Puppetry Festival produced by the Puppeteers of America, to be held in St.Paul, MN, in July 17-22, 2007.

Puppet in Berlin

Posted by hil

Berlinpuppet

(photo credit: irlLordy, used with permission – thanks!)

irlLordy took a great sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of photos of a cool puppet entertaining the queue on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin recently. I really like the aethetic, and it’s interesting to see a bunraku-style puppet being operated on such long rods. The puppeteers – are there five? – must have a really good understanding between them. Apparently the puppet did matrix-like leaps off someone’s shoulders in slow motion at one point. Please do let me know if you happen to know which puppet troupe this is – I’d love to know!

Cool photos of Beck

Posted by hil

Beckx

(photo credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Laughing Squid is one of my long time favourite blogs; I enjoy the mix of tech and visual arts, and Scott Beale’s photos. Today Scott has the best photos of Beck’s puppets I’ve seen yet, taken at Yahoo! Hack Day.

More Royal de Luxe

Posted by hil

I’ve been keeping a list of Royal de Luxe links since I first became aware of them last June. This weekend I believe The Sultan’s Elephant is in Calais, and then in La Havre at the end of October (26 – 29th).

The producers who brought The Sultan’s Elephant to London in June this year are bringing out a book of photos, reminiscences and articles about the event which will be published in November.

Meanwhile, some lovely Royal de Luxe photos at Flickr:

Le Grand Géant in the water at Pont Du Gard in August (by krisyid)
The Giraffes in Le Harve earlier in September (by jeffreyhill)
Machines of Spectacle at Le Grand Repertoire in Paris (by Tekrotzen)
Most recent Royal de Luxe photos

Giant Icelandic marionette

Posted by hil

This is a still from a video of a giant marionette in Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s being operated by three helicopters! There are some other videos here. I can’t find any other information about it, which is strange, but people seem to think it was being filmed as a viral ad for jeans. It makes me think of my favourite Roald Dhal book, The BFG.