{"id":140,"date":"2005-09-06T14:38:07","date_gmt":"2005-09-06T14:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/?p=140"},"modified":"2007-12-30T13:49:16","modified_gmt":"2007-12-30T03:49:16","slug":"spike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/2005\/09\/06\/spike\/","title":{"rendered":"Spike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was flipping around the channels on the TV a few minutes ago trying to find CNN. (This sounds nonchalant, but it really means beating the living daylights out of the remote to make it work). Instead, I landed up on the Information Channel &#8211; I have no idea what this usually shows, I will have to ask the kids &#8211; and much to my surprise it was showing tumblegum.com, a pilot show that I helped make puppets for in 1999. My puppet was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritsdancing.com\/puppets\/pictures\/picstumble.html\">Spike<\/a>, the larrikin <a href=\"http:\/\/burarra.questacon.edu.au\/pages\/goanna.html\">goanna<\/a>, played beautifully by Peter Wilson, Australia&#8217;s  most outstanding puppeteer. Here&#8217;s Spike on location at Googong Dam:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/33\/40700281_a50f510613_o.jpg\" alt=\"Spike\" height=\"368\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>He was about 6 feet long, and had huge claws made from chopping board plastic (which incidentally is a very useful material, being relatively strong and soft to work). I have pictures of him lolling immodestly on our trampoline in the sun while his paint dried.<\/p>\n<p>As far as I know the show never made it beyond the one-off pilot, though it was marketed with great optimism overseas at Cannes and in China, so it was unexpected and good to see it at least getting a showing. As a puppet maker, you have to get used to the reality that the time it takes to create a puppet is usually quite out of proportion to the time it&#8217;s actually on stage or screen. So it&#8217;s a nice feeling when their lives are extended into another season, or the show tours here or overseas for some years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was flipping around the channels on the TV a few minutes ago trying to find CNN. (This sounds nonchalant, but it really means beating the living daylights out of the remote to make it work). Instead, I landed up on the Information Channel &#8211; I have no idea what this usually shows, I will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[92,4,14],"tags":[342,1355,1365],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-portfolio","category-puppetry","category-puppets","tag-goanna","tag-puppetry","tag-puppets"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saZhI-spike","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}