tiger

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.

Tyger

Posted by hil

Tyger from Guilherme Marcondes on Vimeo.

Tyger is a terrific short film directed by Guilherme Marcondes. While William Blake’s poem, The Tyger, was the starting point, it ‘doesn’t attempt to illustrate or pay homage to the original text’. Marcondes interprets the tiger as symbolizing ‘a hint of wonder along with a fear of progress. The tiger is as much dangerous as it is marvellous, and this ambiguity makes us avoid the pure romantic vision of society’.

The story is about relating city to jungle and people to animals, and it is achieved with a wonderful mixture of imagery – a great bunraku-style puppet tiger, used with black light technique; Sao Paulo’s urban landscape as a photographic setting; drawings with a lino-cut quality that morph people into animals, and order into chaos; and animated glowing lines that sprout and twine like jungle vegetation. The music is cool, too.

Joao Grembecki and Cia.Stomboli in Sao Paulo, Brazil, made the tiger, and the puppeteers are Joao Grembecki, Cassiano Reis and Fabio Oliveiro. The full credits are here.

Updated links 2015