puppets

Shaun Tan’s website and Aquasapiens

Posted by hil

aqua51

Shaun Tan now has his own website. It looks relatively new. It’s great to see a number of illustrations under each picture book listing, and read his thoughtful and friendly commentary. I was also delighted to see some images from the puppetry-based theatre production of The Red Tree, which was produced as part of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s ‘Out of the Box’ festival for children in 2004. I had heard about this wonderful fish puppet on the grapevine. There are also some in-theatre pictures of some of our puppets for Jigsaw Theatre’s production of The Lost Thing.

One project that was unknown to me before, is Aquasapiens. Tan was commissioned by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Fremantle, WA, to design large-scale puppets for a street theatre event as part of the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival. The director was Philip Mitchell, the puppet maker Jiri Zmitko and sound designer/composer Lee Buddle. These creatures are fabulous! Here are drawings of the Yellow Naut‘ and ‘Shrimpy’. I also love this.

Aquasapiens is going to be part of the Adelaide Fringe in February and March, and is available to perform at schools from February 27 to March 10.

Apparently Spare Parts will also be adapting another of Tan’s books, The Arrival, which is about migration and is due to be published in April.

updated links 2015

The Magic of Marionettes by Anne Masson

Posted by hil

I remembered yesterday that the tip about storing marionettes by twirling them so the strings twist up together (in the comments under my last post) came from a lovely book called The Magic of Marionettes by Anne Masson. It was given to one of my kids, but I got a great deal out of it too, not so much because it was about puppets, but because it is written with a real understanding of the delight and empowerment that creating and making something can give you.

The book covers how to make the puppets, how to put on a performance, write a simple play, and it discusses props, scenery, sound effects and scripts that might be used, while keeping lots of room for individual creativity, and emphasizing that the process is as important as the result.

Simple rods puppets from recycled materials

Posted by hil

RodThese are two simple rod puppets which were made by my son when he was about 8, at a workshop that I was involved with.

The materials were recycled bits and pieces. The basic pattern was a plastic bottle for a body; a stuffed sock for the head; cardboard tubes running through the bottle neck for the neck, and for holding the puppet from below; strips of foam for the arms; wire rods for manipulating arms and hands; and odds and ends of fabric and other things (glitter, eyes, bobbles, straws, paper, offcuts of leather, ribbons and cord, and so on) for features and decoration.

The main preparation for the workshop, apart from collecting all the materials, was making the rods, though they were simple enough. They were a strong wire (it must not bend too readily), cut to size, straightened, anchored in a length of dowel at one end, and bent or hooked (so that could be poked into the foam at the wrist) at the other end. To fix the wire in the dowel, drill a hole down the centre of the dowel that the wire will fit in tightly, and then make a tiny bend in the wire a centimetre or so from the end before pushing it it. For this purpose the bend is enough of a barb to keep the wire in.

Craft glue was used to attach fabrics and foam, but we had a nifty way (I still think it’s nifty!) for the kids to attach the arms to the body: cut a X about 3 cm across into the plastic and just push the foam through. Again, the tension and points of plastic are enough to secure the foam. The elbows and wrists are made just with string tied tightly around the foam, but they are surprisingly effective.

I think the most important aspect when doing this kind of workshop (after providing basic ideas, materials, and help) is to leave the rest to the imagination of the makers, so that other ideas in construction, features, characters and the stories that inevitably emerge with them, are welcome and valued.

Simple rod puppets

Starting and finishing

Posted by hil

I was thinking today about how we go about starting and finishing things. It’s kind of curious and fascinating, don’t you think? How do we decide exactly what to do first, and how do we know when to stop?

This was prompted because I’ve started a new project in the last few days. I’m making a large body suit, and it has some mechanisms that have already been made, which I have to integrate into it. It’s a one-off, no prototype, so nothing to really draw on, and I anticipate quite a lot of problem solving.

Although this character has been discussed and planned on paper for a while now, making a physical start feels like a challenge, and I’ve been circling it at a distance, and doing ‘busy work’ around it. It’s rather like when you see someone swirling their pen in the air a few times before actually being able to sign their name, or like a dog going round and round before being able to settle down to sleep. So today I have been to the fabric shop to see what is available, and I’ve measured things and had lots of cups of tea. And I fiddled with some parts of the mechanism which needed bulking out, because that was a fairly straightforward thing to do. Tomorrow I will make a small plasticine model to make a pattern from, and then after all this nibbling around the edges I can probably make a more convincing start.

In the past I’ve regarded this phase as procrastination, or just something silly I inevitably do, but today I have shifted and decided that instead it must be a necessary and positive part of the process.

Finishing is equally as interesting. In this case, though, the exact finish will likely be dictated by a deadline!

Photos of Nyet Nyet’s Picnic

Posted by hil

nyet

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.

Machin-X: digital puppetry

Posted by hil

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

Posted by hil

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

Posted by hil

Jasper

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

Mummenschanz to tour Australia!

Posted by hil

MummenMummenschanz, 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