In the process of being made. Still rough.
Worbla has been used to create amazing puppetry pieces: we’ve collected a gallery here to showcase some of the ways it has been used to create moving magic.
I wanted to add moving jaw to the hare puppet as in the story the hare speaks and i thought that it would look better if the mouth move ena...
In the process of being made. Still rough.
I’m making some bunraku-style puppets at the moment. They are about 60cm tall. I’ve just got to the stage where they are more-or-less complete in construction and movement, but still ro…
The flesh of Model Magic compound is not yet applied. The framework insures some things before the sculpting begins and the air-drying timer starts ticking: The body segments are sized in the right proportions for a specific character (female and male puppet frameworks have different proportions in…
Ebay - love it or hate it - broadens one's horizons as well as one's posterior. Over the past couple of weeks I have sold and sent curios to Germany, China, Italy, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the American states of Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, as well as to places nearer home. This antique watercolour painting of a girl knitting woollen stockings is now winging its way to Boreray, a small island in the Outer Hebrides with a single croft and a population of one... Photos by Alasdair Watson. ...if you don't count the flock of feral Hebridean sheep, whose wool is sent down to Makepiece of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire to be knitted into fairy tale dresses. * This pretty Georgian flame-stitch reticule recently found a new home in a place I'd love to visit sometime - Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields in the East End of London. Inside, the rooms have been arranged in an "historical imagination" of what life might have been like for a family of Huguenot silk weavers, as if they are still in use and the occupants have only just left. Each room is a "still life drama". Photo James Brittain. I wonder what drama my little woollen purse will be part of? Will it hold a lover's billet-doux, a stolen jewel, a widow's last few pence? * Folk Art and its associated traditions are another passion of mine so I was thrilled the other day when Simon Costin of The Museum of British Folklore fame decided to give a home to this 1930s jig doll or limberjack. (I'm sure he's Fred Astaire!) These traditional wooden jointed dolls are puppets who dance on the operator's knee, accompanied by a jolly folk tune. We met Mr Costin with his travelling museum a couple of years ago. Will Fred accompany him in his retro caravan, around the British Isles - to quote from the museum's manifesto - promoting, celebrating and revitalising the folk heritage of Britain? * I do my best to ensure that our Ebay offerings have a safe journey wherever they travel. I hope this Chinese bowl has arrived home safely, and that Catharine Susan is dancing around her new home in California... ...and that this Victorian cushion cover will soon be plumped up and gracing someone's office chair in Australia. ***
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Another Suspense festival show I was involved with was 'Spirit' (a show created and devised by Susan Beattie and Kate Middleton), performed this time round at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. Susan very kindly asked me to puppeteer alongside herself and Beatrice Pentney and also commissioned me to make two marionettes, a boy and his mother, for a scene in the show. Here are some 'work in progress' shots of the puppets.
As it turns out, I just signed the contract for my novel, Songs for a Machine Age, which will come out next November from Hadley Rille Books. This is a good thing, a nice thing, and it makes me happy. However, in the process of all this, I've been having to think where the premise for this book comes from. Like all things such as this, there are layers of influence; and my love of the 18th century and its pointless, beautiful machines, created solely for the pleasure of their existence, has been around so long that I can't put a finger on it; but I think the place where I can start for the influences of this book came from a robotics class I took for educators. It began with training us how to use the robotics kit that we were being given, in the hopes (I think) that we would buy it and use it and it would become the Next Big Thing. The people teaching us were deeply involved in First Robotics, a big, expensive robotics competition for high school students. They started the workshop with how to build things, how to use the tools at hand, and how the various available parts worked. We all built the same thing, a little remote-controlled car, and experimented with the various parts. My experimentation was to put two large wheels and two small wheels on my car, the sizes being diagonal to each other, so the car could not ever have four wheels on the ground at once. This meant that when I changed directions, the car would rock back and forth in a very interesting way. I wanted to build a tower on top with moving parts so that the moving bits would sway or swing as the car rocked. However, the robotics people thought I was odd. They went on to do a series of task-based design assignments; we were supposed to find creative ways to pick something up and move it to a targeted area, or follow a line, or push a ball somewhere without losing it. I came away from this event totally fascinated with the difference between their way of thinking and my own. I wanted to do robotics so I could build interesting things that were beautiful and could move; they thought robotics were about, well, industry. Building a car. Moving a thing from here to there. Tasks. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that machines, in our modern world, are all about tasks, about work, about doing things for us. They are our slaves, our brawn, extensions of us; but they don't do the fun stuff. They do the work. We give them assigned tasks. They were birthed from the can-do attitude of the 19th century, not the Cartesian ideals of the 18th century. Instead of "how can we reproduce, or enlarge upon, the miracles of nature," it was "how can we increase our productivity so that we might subjugate nature, overcome the laws of physics, and make things easier for ourselves?" What happened to the idea that machines might be agents of miracle? True, computers and their ilk do many miraculous tasks, and enrich our lives with music, video and the like; but we are still listening to and watching canned people, not enjoying the machines for the sake of themselves. We are not looking at the idealistic side of it; we are simply wanting good bandwidth. One of the only places in common culture where the workings of the machine are considered, are prized, is in the world of robotics. And in robotics, at least in the traditional venues, they care mainly for tasks. Except. Except for Burning Man, and Maker Faire, and, in its purest form, Steampunk. Except for some areas of the art world. In other words, people who like to make stuff, and arty people who like to find out how things work. People who like their machinery tactile, silly, creative. Why should we only purchase goods made in factories? Why shouldn't we create our own devices? Why shouldn't we hack the manufactured goods and turn them into something beautiful and divine and oh-so-ours? Bring the beauty back into our lives? Automaton Caterpillar, probably by Henri Maillardet Before I wrote Songs for a Machine Age, I hadn't thought clearly about all of this. What I actually said to myself was, I want to write about a place where the only machines in the whole culture (with a very few exceptions, like flour mills) are entirely aesthetic. A place where machines are honored, admired, and used only for the celebration of religious festivals. I began to write Neddeth's Bed, to find out what that place was like, and as it progressed, I began to think more deeply about this place: how did the culture get this way? Did they just naturally not think of the practical applications of machines? Or did something happen in their history? What if, for example, the Industrial Revolution never happened? Or, even better, what if something went so awry with the Industrial Revolution that a country rose up against it and threw out the whole idea of manufacturing, reshaping their culture to be entirely based around making things with one's own two hands? And what if the need for technology, for cool devices and complex machinery is regulated by a class of people who were educated entirely for the purpose of making beautiful machines, who are experts on the bad old days -- drilled in the horrors of manufacturing -- so that it won't happen again? I still haven't finished Neddeth's Bed. Songs for a Machine Age came from the questions I had while writing Neddeth, and grew into a fun adventure novel, with all of the above questions as background. But the layers of understanding, like so many things, went on from there, and now I'm working on the next layer down, the reason why their revolution happened. What could possibly change a culture so much? I had to find out, so I am writing it; and it is definitely not a fun adventure novel. So if you need me, I'll be in the basement, peeling the onion of my world -- and rooting around in all the machine-parts. ...and... if you want to see some machines that distinctly remind me of some of the Festival Devices I imagined in Songs, check these out: Such amazing attention to detail! Seriously, it's extraordinary how every tiny piece of these devices are carefully crafted. Just exactly like I imagine the devices in the book. Now if this artist only made things that were ambulatory...! More on U-Ram Choe Odd bonus: Interesting blog post about Descartes and automata.
Photographs and descriptions of how I built two birds and the hen that lays golden eggs for "Into the Woods".
I have had several questions on how to make the handle to control a cable puppet. I have a tutorial on how to make a cable puppet , and ho...
Claire Brooks is already proving adept at the craft of making puppets. This is only her second project, but the detail is extraordinary.
Making puppets again - Stuff is squishing out the sides again - my life gets super busy and instead of doing the things that I know need doing, I head sideways into a new project for relief. Photo blog on how to make ping pong puppet eyeballs. If you recognize him at all, you'll see he is the beginnings of a Storyteller Puppet ala James Christensen style. The Festival Merchandise Committee thought it would be kind of cool to have a storyteller puppet. And, if it's possible, more than one. ___________________________ Want inspiration? Some e-how videos, good stuff Tools and Supplies: How to Make a Puppet eHow.com Other links Wow, love these! Furry Puppet Studio And here - this guy is pretty awesome too! The Golden Glue Gun ...and something just for the beauty of it Shadow Puppets
Donovan Zimmerman of Paperhand Puppet Intervention invited us into his Saxapahaw studio these two Saturdays. His group is doing their annu...
Claire Brooks is already proving adept at the craft of making puppets. This is only her second project, but the detail is extraordinary.
European Touring Exhibition This is a larger exhibition with a core of 40 exhibits and was launched in February 2008 as part of PhantasieMechanik at phaeno, Wolfsburg. It will be at Museum Boerhaave until September 2011. Availability until September 2012 only. Exhibiton Floor area: from 300 sq metres. Rental Fee: 25000GBP per 3 month venue.
The crusade to privatize Chicago's (and America's) public schools is not the same thing as a desire to reform our schools. You can believe in charter schools within a public school system to innovate curriculum (I do) and believe that...
Pierwodruk: Lalkarze świata: / Puppeteers of the World: Ilka Schönbein, TEATR LALEK 2022, nr 2-3 (148-149), ss. 51-55 (wersja polska), ss. 56-61 (wersja angielska) W cyklu portretów współczesnych lalkarzy świata nie może zabraknąć...
The £2million Sea Odyssey began as a 30ft mechanical girl came to life in Stanley Park, commemorating the loss of more than 1,500 lives in the 1912 disaster.
" Sculptor/Artist Tom Haney, maker of one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted automata, kinetic art, mechanical sculpture and other works of modern art."
Face armature is one of the most challenging things in puppet making, since it’s so small, it has to make very subtle movements and requires knowledge in miniature mechanics. That’s why many stop motion productions prefer using 3d printing. But it is possible to achieve a nice range of facial expressions with relatively simple techniques just by using aluminum wire.The key here is accuracy. Everything should sit exactly in place, a displacement of a millimeter here or there can affect whether th
Linda S. Wingerter began learning about art, puppet mechanics and performance while growing up in her family’s New Jersey puppet theater, The Stringpullers. Linda studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and spent her junior year in Rome with the European Honors Program. Since graduating in 1996 her illustrations have been seen in computer programs, opera posters and children’s magazines such as Weekly Reader and Cricket. Her seven award winning children’s books include One Grain of Sand, by Pete Seeger. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Eric Carle Picture Book Museum and the White House. From 2004-07 Linda apprenticed with Puppetsweat Theater, assisting Leslie Weinberg with puppet construction and performing under the direction of Robert Bresnick in shows all over the east coast including Master Peter’s Puppet Show at the Kennedy Center. She was a puppet artist in residence at Wesleyan University in 2005, and was Project Manager of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s epic community performance cycle 613 Radical Acts of Prayer for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in 2008. Linda is known in Connecticut as a multi-talented vaudeville artist, incorporating fire, visual arts, dance, roller skating, musical saw and circus skills into her eclectic performances. Her acts have been featured in the Forgot to Laugh Side Show & Animation Festival, Hartford First Night, the Ideat Village Art Festival, Honk Fest, and in venues from the Mohegan Sun Casino to the Coney Island boardwalk. Her unusual talents have appeared in shows such as Hamlet (Elm Shakespeare Company), Terra Mirabila (Projects 2K), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New Haven Theater Company), VaudeVillain (Broken Umbrella Theater Company), Radical Derby (International Festival of Arts & Ideas), and The Servant of Two Masters (Hamden Hall School) for which she was also choreographer and resident circus instructor. Linda is the founder of many community projects such as the thriving New Haven Circus Collective, a roller derby coach, a teacher of puppetry at Quinnipiac University, an art teacher at Common Ground Summer Ecology Camp, and a staff member of the Costume Department at the Yale School of Drama. Linda has worked with Cornerstone Playhouse for 10 years as a stage manager, costume designer and scenic artist. See more of Linda's work at www.paintedbooks.com. (See the Teaching PreK-8 article about Linda here.) Shadow puppetry and dancers in Linda's "Polly & The Moon" at the Forgot to Laugh Festival. Linda as the Mermaid Statue at Hartford First Night. (top photo Mike Franzman, shadow puppet photo Natalie Scarpelli)
