tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85959833487081668872024-02-07T21:59:51.664-05:00The Abstractionsthe puppetry of
Grant HardingGranthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-73639852683941253052019-02-26T13:07:00.000-05:002019-02-26T13:10:25.826-05:00First Drafts Suck, and That's OkayFirst drafts suck, and that's okay.<br />
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In 2007, scholar Robert Winter gave a talk where he played some of Beethoven's early drafts for the "Ode to Joy" movement in his ninth symphony. And, well... they're not good. At all. You can watch the whole talk <a href="http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/robert-winter">here</a>, but this is the relevant part:<br />
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It's equalizing, isn't it? Even for a super genius like Beethoven, a piece doesn't just come in a single flash of inspiration. You have to work at it to make it good.<br />
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A more recent example: When Pixar was writing their first feature film in the 1990s, they knew they wanted to do something about living toys, as in their Oscar-winning short film <i>Tin Toy</i>. But the story went through major changes.<br />
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Here's a quote from Pixar's Andrew Stanton, as interviewed on the podcast now called <a href="http://www.theqandapodcast.com/">"The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith"</a>:<br />
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<i>The original idea of </i>Toy Story <i>was a Rip Van Winkle story, where Tinny [from </i>Tin Toy<i>] was in an old shop, and then boxed up in the attic, and it became this huge chain like Toys R Us. And you cut to twenty, thirty years later, the box is found and he's opened up and suddenly he finds himself in this "city" of different aisles, and trying to find his original owner. And that eventually morphed into a road picture with him and a ventriloquist's dummy. Which then turned into a spaceman toy and a ventriloquist's dummy. And then we thought it should be the opposite of a spaceman, so it became a cowboy. </i></blockquote>
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If someone asked you to describe the plot of <i>Toy Story</i>, you'd probably start with "Well, a spaceman toy and a cowboy doll..." And yet neither of those characters were in the first draft! What did survive through all of these rewrites was the idea of a lost toy trying to get back to his owner, which is really the essence of the story.<br />
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One more example. This one has less to do with actual rewriting, and more to do with cutting out unnecessary elements. A few years ago, Ryan North (of <a href="http://qwantz.com/">Dinosaur Comics</a> and <i>Unbeatable Squirrel Girl </i>fame) wrote <a href="http://btothef.tumblr.com/">a blog reviewing the novelization of <i>Back to the Future</i></a>. The blog is hilarious, mostly because the novel's writer made some very strange choices. But it's also really interesting, because the writer was working from an earlier draft of the script than the one that was actually shot.<br />
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I specifically want to draw your attention to <a href="http://btothef.tumblr.com/post/18950902663/spoiler-alert-the-craziest-thing-in-this">this post</a>, about the scene where Doc tests out the time machine by sending his dog, Einstein, one minute into the future. North reprints for us the following dialogue, noting that "what made it to the movie is in bold and the rest is BONUS novelization words:"<br />
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<b>DOC: What did I tell you: eighty-eight miles per hour! </b>Just as I figured. <b>The temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 a.m. and zero seconds.</b>
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<b>MARTY: Jesus Christ! </b>[Actually in the book he says “Christ Almighty!” <i>but whatever</i>]<b> You disintegrated Einstein!</b>
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<b>DOC:</b> No.
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<b>MARTY: </b>But the license plate’s all that remains of the car and dog and everything!
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<b>DOC: Calm down, Marty. I didn’t disintegrate anything. The molecular
structure of both Einstein and the car are completely intact.</b>
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<b>MARTY: Then where the hell are they?</b>
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<b>DOC: </b>Not where, when.
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<b>MARTY:</b> I don’t understand.</blockquote>
North goes on to say: "Notice how nothing was lost when we cut out all the non-bold stuff? <b>THIS IS YOUR CHALLENGE AS WRITERS</b>: to be able to see and cut the non-bold stuff in your writing even when nothing on the page is actually in bold."<br />
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Which brings me to my own work -- specifically, my in-progress puppetry skit, "Channels", in which Mumford clicks between various TV shows (with a soundtrack constructed from real TV recordings) and things fly out of the screen and attack him. I completed a first draft of "Channels" back in June, but I know it needs serious work.<br />
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I'm not good enough yet to spot what Ryan North calls "the words in bold" all by myself, so I've been performing the skit for some creative friends. I've already performed it for filmmaker <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2016/10/joan.html">Pixie Cram</a>, and I plan to also show it to burlesque dancer and producer Saffron St. James, as well as Gloria Guns from <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2017/12/live-visuals-for-scary-bear-soundtrack.html">Scary Bear Soundtrack</a>. I've been noting down which parts people laugh at, and also listening to their suggestions about what to keep, what to cut, what to add, and what to reorder. The skit is going to be much, much better for having gone through this process.<br />
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So if your first draft is bad, don't despair. This is the natural order of things.Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-68612263430069710062019-01-17T22:20:00.001-05:002019-01-17T22:20:18.907-05:00Pyongyang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Back in September I was involved in a music video shoot with <a href="http://www.scarybearsoundtrack.com/">Scary Bear Soundtrack</a> -- a band I've <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2017/12/live-visuals-for-scary-bear-soundtrack.html">collaborated with before</a> -- for their song "Pyongyang". And the video is finally done!<br />
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My puppets feature heavily in the video, and I even sneak in there myself.<br />
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We shot the whole thing in one long, exhausting, and extremely fun day. The director, Steven Hunt of <a href="http://sdcvideo.ca/production/">SDC Video</a>, was really receptive to suggestions from everyone. Puppeteers often have strong opinions about how their puppets should be filmed, and it was cool that I could say things like "I think this should be a series of two-shots" and be really listened to.<br />
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What are you still reading this for? Watch the video!Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-89738211991356416912018-11-14T22:49:00.000-05:002018-11-14T22:49:56.656-05:00Super Simple Puppets<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For almost a year now, I've been a contributor to the children's website <a href="https://supersimpleonline.com/">Super Simple</a>.
They produce a ton of kids' content for the internet, especially
animated YouTube videos. My job has been to create blog posts, mostly
about science, with activities that preschoolers can do.<br />
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Two of my posts have been about puppets, with templates that kids (with their parents' help) can print out and assemble.<br />
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<a href="http://bit.ly/PeekabooPuppet">Here's one that went up today: a puppet of Peekaboo Cat</a>, a character from one of their most popular videos. I'm really pleased with this one; I designed the puppet so that it can actually play peekaboo!<br />
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And back in June, for Super Simple's dinosaur week, I modified my <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-bouquet-of-blackbirds.html">blackbird puppet</a> once again to make <a href="http://bit.ly/dinopuppet">a puppet of the German pterosaur<i> Pterodactylus</i></a>. It was really important to me that it be accurate, so I actually consulted with some paleontologists and paleoartists to make sure I had all the shapes and proportions right.<br />
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(In the picture below, the eyeball is much higher on the head than it's supposed to be. That big bump is actually the pterosaur's soft tissue head crest.)<br />
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Super Simple does a lot of great work, and I'm proud to be associated with them! Their video series <a href="https://supersimpleonline.com/sing-along-with-tobee/">"Sing Along With Tobee"</a> features the puppetry skills of Trish Leeper, who was the body performer of Ma Gorg on <i>Fraggle Rock</i>.Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-2248816838882738912018-05-16T16:48:00.000-04:002018-05-16T16:55:16.669-04:00Blue Light SpecialMy supporters on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/theabstractions">Patreon</a> paid for a blue bike light, which I'll be using as a special effect in my puppet show, "Channels".<br />
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Here's a little video showing how it will work:<br />
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You can see all my video updates for as little as a dollar a month by <a href="https://www.patreon.com/theabstractions">becoming a patron!</a>Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-47163951508065268762018-01-21T20:16:00.003-05:002018-02-03T14:08:24.339-05:00Patreon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've just started <a href="https://www.patreon.com/theabstractions">a Patreon page</a> for my puppetry projects. If you enjoy my work and want to
see me make more of it -- and if you can afford it -- please consider <a href="https://www.patreon.com/theabstractions">becoming a patron</a>. Thank you!<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-54435248901245762772017-12-30T17:39:00.001-05:002019-01-17T19:20:54.035-05:00Live Visuals for Scary Bear Soundtrack<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" gesture="media" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxVZbK9ltZc?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
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I created the live visuals for <a href="https://scarybearsoundtrack.bandcamp.com/">Scary Bear Soundtrack</a>'s song "My First Northern Lights" at their concert at the <a href="https://theshang.wordpress.com/">Shanghai Restaurant</a> in Ottawa on 20 October 2017. (The video above was edited by me from footage shot by Julie Cruikshank and Mabe Kwan.)<br />
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Most live concert visuals are created digitally, but I made mine by pointing a camera at a small-scale puppetry setup, then connecting that camera to a projector. This gave my visuals a unique kind of tangibility.<br />
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The bear constellation puppet was <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/07/cave-painting-bear-puppet.html">inspired by a Paleolithic cave painting from France</a>. It's made of cardboard body parts, covered in material cut from a pair of black tights, then attached to a black glove worn on my right hand. The outline is a piece of string, and the stars are punched out of paper.<br />
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The stage is a piece of Plasticore, covered in more black tights and punched-paper stars. It has a hole in the middle to poke the bear through, and it's held up by PVC pipe stuck into the bases I created last year for my <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2016/11/me-and-my-shadow.html">shadow puppet stage</a>.<br />
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Illumination was provided by a lamp mounted on the camera tripod. I fiddled with the camera's settings to crank up the contrast while at the same time deliberately underexposing. This had the effect of "crushing the blacks" -- making the subtly different shades of black all look the same so that they all blended together.<br />
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Doing a performance like this allowed me to combine the best elements of live and filmed puppetry. Since I really was performing it live in front of an audience, I could respond to the music in real time, and the performance had a spontaneity that wouldn't have been there if I were just showing a prerecorded video. But since I was using a camera, with a single, fixed point of view, I could work with the lens to play with depth in a way that wouldn't normally be possible on stage.<br />
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The northern lights themselves were created with the device shown above: the two pieces of wire looped around two of the fingers of my left hand, and the green ribbon, held so close to the lens that it was out of focus, formed the aurora.<br />
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If you're a musician, and you'd like to hire me to create live visuals for your next concert, <a href="mailto:gahrdng@alumni.mta.ca">send me an email!</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photo by Jim Dooley</i></span></div>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-18216340260208485042017-10-03T16:57:00.000-04:002019-01-17T19:20:43.659-05:00Scary Bear Soundtrack Concert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On October 20, the Abstractions will be performing at a <a href="https://scarybearsoundtrack.bandcamp.com/">Scary Bear Soundtrack</a> concert at the <a href="https://theshang.wordpress.com/">Shanghai Restaurant</a> on Somerset Street.<br />
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Scary Bear Soundtrack is an Ottawa-based indie synth pop band fronted by my friend Gloria.<br />
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Several songs will include my puppets as vocalists or musicians. But one song in particular will feature my first foray into live projected visuals, which are becoming a big thing these days. I'll be making use of some ideas developed for the <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/search/label/bears">bear play</a>, which now seems to be on permanent hiatus.<br />
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Here's a sneak peek preview. If you know the circumpolar constellations, you can guess what's going to go in that empty space in the middle.<br />
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The concert will actually be our second collaboration. Way back in 2010, I performed with Gloria at what I believe was Scary Bear's first public performance, back when they were still acoustic (and I still had hair):<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-43844329169211461592017-06-04T20:26:00.000-04:002017-06-04T20:26:47.564-04:00Meet Mumford<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I built the original Mumford at <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2013/06/animotion-rules.html">Mermaid Theatre's Animotion</a>. We were given a bunch of empty containers of various shapes and told to make something. As a result, he was the first puppet I ever built that I didn't design first -- I just started building and saw where it took me.<br />
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I made a big mouth out of yogurt containers and a fat little body out of a milk jug. With those features, I thought maybe he should be an opera singer, which is why I gave him a bow tie and permanently closed eyes. His springy arms were inspired by Tom Servo of <i>Mystery Science Theater 3000</i>. When I started performing him, he developed a nonsense dialect, and his character fell into place more easily than any other puppet I'd made.<br />
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It was my wife Julie who
suggested his name, after I mentioned that we'd listened to a lot of <a href="http://www.mumfordandsons.com/">Mumford & Sons</a> while building our puppets. (There's <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Amazing_Mumford">a Muppet with that name</a>, but what the hell.)<br />
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The original Mumford is a tabletop puppet, performed from behind. At Mermaid Theatre, I developed a routine for him where he's trying to eat a piece of cake, but the phone keeps ringing. Here it is again, because I think it's really good:<br />
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Flash forward to now, and I'm working on a routine wherein a puppet watches TV and things fly out of the screen at him. The audio will be a collage of real clips from television, the crummier the better. Originally it was going to feature Moss as the unlucky protagonist, but I quickly realized that it should be Mumford instead, the poor hapless guy that stuff just <i>happens</i> to.<br />
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This meant that I'd have to build a new version of Mumford, one that could be manipulated from below, Muppet-style.<br />
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I wondered if the new Mumford should be built out of more "proper" materials than milk jugs and yogurt containers. But both my wife and Mike Petersen (of Mermaid Theatre and <i>Fraggle Rock</i> fame, who loved my cake/phone routine) agreed that I should keep the materials the same. (It occurred to me much later that it's appropriate that Mumford is constructed from trash, because so is this routine.)<br />
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So, I set to work. The new Mumford's hands included two features I'd never used before: removable arm rods and poseable fingers. For both, I took a lot of inspiration from <a href="http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/puppet-in-progress-from-the-foam-up.54680/">Kim McFarland's amazing Fraggle puppets</a>. I cut a hand shape out of a piece of foam, then sliced it down the middle to create two halves. On the inside of one of the halves, I glued a long piece of wire, twisted and bent into four fingers. I also glued in a short piece of plastic tubing, the right width to accommodate a piece of coat hanger bent at an angle.<br />
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For his arms, I bought a spring and stretched it out slightly with pliers. As with the tabletop version, his hands needed to be weighted so that his springy arms wouldn't just stick out to the sides. I used three washers per hand, gluing them to the inside of one half, and cutting a depression into the inside of the other half.<br />
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Once I'd glued the two halves of the hand together (leaving a gap at the back of the hand so that the arm rod could be inserted and removed), I used scissors to sculpt the hands into a more refined shape. Later on, I would add another piece of plastic tubing, in the same orientation as the vertical part of the arm rod, but with a slit cut in the back for inserting and removing the rod. This prevents the hand from twisting around the rod's axis. You can see this tube protruding in the picture below; I ended up trimming it to be shorter than this.<br />
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I actually had a hard time finding a 4 litre milk jug -- <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-canada-milk-comes-in-bags">in (Upper) Canada, milk comes in bags!</a> -- but once I found one, I attached the arms, the bow tie (made of cardboard and a pop bottle lid), and the legs (made of cardboard and crumpled newspaper). I discovered that working the arms with rods from below meant that they needed to be longer than they were in the tabletop version; I would later move the legs lower on the body to accommodate these proportions.<br />
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Mumford's head was probably the most difficult piece to figure out. As with the tabletop version, the head was made out of yogurt containers:<br />
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But while the tabletop head was controlled from behind, with holes in the back of both the upper and lower jaw to stick my fingers in, the head in the new version had to be controlled from below. It needed a natural-looking neck, yet I wanted to still be able to open the mouth as wide as possible for the sake of expressiveness.<br />
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So there was lots of experimentation (and many wasted yogurt containers) as I tried to figure out the best place to put the hinge and holes. (Luckily, I got a lot of yogurt for free from my job at the Herb & Spice Shop.) For help, I reached out to Michael Schupbach of the <a href="http://puppetkitchen.com/">Puppet Kitchen</a>, whom we met while honeymooning in New York City. Taking his advice, I made the upper part of Mumford's head longer by combining two containers of the same size, extending the head backwards to cover my hand completely. This way, my hand entered the upper jaw from below, so there was no need to put a hole in it, only in the lower jaw. This looked a lot more natural.<br />
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I used foam to make hand grips on the mouth plate, which is made from the lids of the yogurt containers.<br />
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For the neck, I used a white sweatshirt sleeve, taking another suggestion from Michael Schupbach.<br />
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I attached the neck to the body at the bottom of the body, giving the neck freedom to move at the top. As with the tabletop version, I sculpted his eyelids out of foam with scissors.<br />
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I removed the handle from the back of the milk jug and did some reconstructive surgery, supplementing with bits of an empty vanilla jug I got from work. I put some foam on the inside of his back to adjust the position of my arm, and I made the neck hole a neat oval.<br />
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The structure completed, I then covered his head and body with two layers of hockey tape, a wonderful material I learned about at Mermaid Theatre that takes paint very well. I painted his head and body white and his bow tie red. Here he is hanging upside down so that I can paint his legs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Qe2dhaW_uC10YtNNWI2fHGrQ9nKDNhS0F_aeVn0nJVEqOfC_HDDjhAgwVxYZ85EUmO38uUqqJfQTvoFpNL42RnNHMSS9pCdsM6XQTeP3_peuEEI58JFIWFmfFIlQmURtKxV-qOxe9mnL/s1600/IMG_20170420_094958.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Qe2dhaW_uC10YtNNWI2fHGrQ9nKDNhS0F_aeVn0nJVEqOfC_HDDjhAgwVxYZ85EUmO38uUqqJfQTvoFpNL42RnNHMSS9pCdsM6XQTeP3_peuEEI58JFIWFmfFIlQmURtKxV-qOxe9mnL/s400/IMG_20170420_094958.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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And here's the completed Mumford, with a (still unpainted) prop TV that I made from a Styrofoam cooler for the skit I'm putting together.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHuulbM60sH1KtixINU9Nalo-WzytTDvVN2PWZ38xdWVdGYeiTxB668hiSXQ26VTYWFOJ5scMAIusg_sFtx0KWQtl48FrS4UkNSmjQfDACeIyvul0y_a17XzCz18a-eb_nfQY5rhj2S6WN/s1600/IMG_20170522_231709.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHuulbM60sH1KtixINU9Nalo-WzytTDvVN2PWZ38xdWVdGYeiTxB668hiSXQ26VTYWFOJ5scMAIusg_sFtx0KWQtl48FrS4UkNSmjQfDACeIyvul0y_a17XzCz18a-eb_nfQY5rhj2S6WN/s400/IMG_20170522_231709.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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When Mumford walks across the stage, I plan to grip one of his legs with my left hand and use that to manipulate his body in a walking motion. This will help create the illusion of a floor underneath him. For
years, I was obsessed with the idea of trying to manipulate the legs of a
puppet that was visible only from the waist up, figuring that even that barely visible movement of the legs would enhance the reality of the puppet (an obsession which culminated in <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.ca/2015/05/a-new-technique-for-shooting-legs-of.html">Moss' legs walking on a carpet</a>). Since Mumford started out as a tabletop puppet, this kind of movement is already built in.Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-58302956193564462362016-11-13T14:28:00.000-05:002016-11-13T15:17:49.824-05:00Me and My Shadow <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhst2TWJfk1vuC0x4UzwPom4gQqGlY_O2-14ABC-YQaPxu7BPQ3NqOpDZ0qxGiR7kAM_zv2mrJetiM3sjL7X2IXscy6B69FRnbmUw5yKMPR-kw3vcfPJUZGPp35AOSAz5ugt0r1LJfDsboj/s1600/sita+DSC_0004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhst2TWJfk1vuC0x4UzwPom4gQqGlY_O2-14ABC-YQaPxu7BPQ3NqOpDZ0qxGiR7kAM_zv2mrJetiM3sjL7X2IXscy6B69FRnbmUw5yKMPR-kw3vcfPJUZGPp35AOSAz5ugt0r1LJfDsboj/s400/sita+DSC_0004.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Lately I've been trying to find ways I can improve my <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.ca/p/workshops.html">children's puppetry workshops</a>.<br />
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When I talk about the different kinds of puppets, I explain how shadow puppets work, and I show the kids this picture of a Javanese wayang kulit puppet:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0XSLTLfr14YglM7YHMJ1bBDmlJIiZehma1T0uIHK5gXta4ZsbZSqxd75F-5Z9aADx2bPXLWnCb9k3F9Ivt1m7O3eNz2Eaj83X5my2bR3A5qVSsCaExnsR9dNp39MoP_8RyYoTJPGp4t5G/s1600/old+sita.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0XSLTLfr14YglM7YHMJ1bBDmlJIiZehma1T0uIHK5gXta4ZsbZSqxd75F-5Z9aADx2bPXLWnCb9k3F9Ivt1m7O3eNz2Eaj83X5my2bR3A5qVSsCaExnsR9dNp39MoP_8RyYoTJPGp4t5G/s400/old+sita.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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But as with <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.ca/2015/07/modifying-mr-punch-2011.html">Mr. Punch</a> a few years ago, it occurred to me that I ought to have a real shadow puppet to show them. Why pay me to show them a photograph?<br />
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I enlarged that picture (identified as Sita from the <i>Ramayana</i>) and cut it out. Then I traced it onto card stock and cut out the body, the two upper arms, and the two forearms/hands.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigXPdt0v62VXDG6R3JVC5sXG-Ol2C6ztG0sineO9RDu6LtMrE0JdIo7wfJiT1vIqDWAB_oGLS5LH8J5B-t40-xzZgyL4PukdCsYR8oACcQOPDUZ2w1y4GYar3KOCkSpM98Vkppv1XBOnSJ/s1600/IMG_20160813_191915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigXPdt0v62VXDG6R3JVC5sXG-Ol2C6ztG0sineO9RDu6LtMrE0JdIo7wfJiT1vIqDWAB_oGLS5LH8J5B-t40-xzZgyL4PukdCsYR8oACcQOPDUZ2w1y4GYar3KOCkSpM98Vkppv1XBOnSJ/s400/IMG_20160813_191915.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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In my research, I came across <a href="http://www.greenerbali.com/image-files/ubud-wayang-kulit-shadow.jpg">this picture from GreenerBali.com</a> and saw that these puppets have a lot of internal detail. Some things, like the eye, I cut out myself, along with holes in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists to create joints. But for the rest, the solution (as suggested in <a href="http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/01/wayang-kulit-indonesian-shadow-puppets.html">this post by blogger That Artist Woman</a>) was to use paper doilies. I bought some that were the right size to have the same curvature as the relevant parts of the puppet. I cut out the parts of Sita's body that needed detail, leaving a narrow border around the edge to maintain the proper shape. Then I placed each doily in the position where the holes in the doily corresponded best with the edges of the cut-out area. I glued them in place with PVA glue.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV_Y4EzEhGbdE2cNbDQ3tyWo_q3oQrOxlN-l5cbFduWKkfYZCEgsv9OI_IEwjGLk9pXNRlD5TOha0dDZtP9uRWb9M6kEF8PwKIapS_w7GGkNXFVe_07X1MQV1mIidBN5PJFT6naT2dc4TS/s1600/IMG_20160825_232808.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV_Y4EzEhGbdE2cNbDQ3tyWo_q3oQrOxlN-l5cbFduWKkfYZCEgsv9OI_IEwjGLk9pXNRlD5TOha0dDZtP9uRWb9M6kEF8PwKIapS_w7GGkNXFVe_07X1MQV1mIidBN5PJFT6naT2dc4TS/s400/IMG_20160825_232808.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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One nice thing about being married to an artist is that I almost never have to buy my own paints. Once the doily pieces were all in place, I painted the puppet black and gold, and then (taking another suggestion from <a href="http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/01/wayang-kulit-indonesian-shadow-puppets.html">That Artist Woman</a>) sprayed all the pieces with three coats of Mod Podge, the sealant beloved by Pinterest crafters everywhere. I used the spray kind so that it wouldn't gum up the doilies and block light from getting through the holes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlP_bu46ELEKou0ZeZ7H39SWI3VcAAB8WAAZZ4qXK_Zs0kX1oFOc2DcEefqDzJHGLhPCVXdimdEc23NcBU7Eqw14rtR3Io2EBaqGb0RnKHfjPeQm58iGBYqqdWEvhQWy72-fLw5Fb3CE86/s1600/IMG_20160908_081506.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlP_bu46ELEKou0ZeZ7H39SWI3VcAAB8WAAZZ4qXK_Zs0kX1oFOc2DcEefqDzJHGLhPCVXdimdEc23NcBU7Eqw14rtR3Io2EBaqGb0RnKHfjPeQm58iGBYqqdWEvhQWy72-fLw5Fb3CE86/s400/IMG_20160908_081506.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I attached the body parts together with joints I cannibalized from a shadow puppet kit that my friends <a href="http://centretown.blogspot.ca/">Charles</a> and <a href="http://artengine.ca/pixiecram/">Pixie</a> got for me in Turkey. The control rods were made from my old standby, coathangers. I used pliers to bend the rod for the body into the proper shape and hot-glued it into place. I epoxied the ends of the arm rods to the wrist joints so they could rotate a full 360 degrees, as is typical for these puppets. To make the other ends of the rods easier to hold on to, I bent them around and covered them in electrical tape.<br />
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And here she is, along with the photograph I started from:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNp8HH9JOgo9QfTHgCfH66dIuLuQpiAYjAv2JwRpOylmtGFbfpRzeGhp2uSqfP5SeS4EcDmE599M-dJCt4muCm42fh67g0S3BN1wjX5dk3K1kfoCcWpWA-aZ_W7vRLTG6rSqPGu4TNUdEj/s1600/IMG_20161029_165204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNp8HH9JOgo9QfTHgCfH66dIuLuQpiAYjAv2JwRpOylmtGFbfpRzeGhp2uSqfP5SeS4EcDmE599M-dJCt4muCm42fh67g0S3BN1wjX5dk3K1kfoCcWpWA-aZ_W7vRLTG6rSqPGu4TNUdEj/s400/IMG_20161029_165204.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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Nailed it.</div>
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At the same time, I built a stage to perform her on. It was good that I built the puppet and the stage concurrently, because then I could tailor them to each other, continually adjusting the height of the shadow screen and the length of the puppet's rods until they worked perfectly together.<br />
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My <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/search/label/bears">bear</a> colleague <a href="http://onceuponakingdom.com/">Katya Vetrova</a>, who has done a lot of shadow work, suggested a shower curtain as the screen. I was going to use a big cardboard box to make a more traditional shadow puppet stage, but since portability is essential, I came up with a stage that could simply be rolled up for transportation.<br />
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The screen is supported by two vertical pieces of PVC pipe, leftover from some abandoned project. I tried a few things to hold the pipes up, but ended up going with my Dad's suggestion and getting some heavy pieces of metal designed for plumbing. The PVC pipe fits snugly inside the brass piece, which I've permanently screwed into the galvanized pipe flange. No danger of this falling over!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgKXZZHY0BbIu08PK8pjMj86EwEVeKIFMvL9kdUEyngw5S0nB9u2yBa75vA-1g4qcThjfksguOFiRUCETYTK2n80MtugO_PueRJ3rEwfs3lmstE22LIIYjIu4nf7AE-KOy_0Gynhp-kfl/s1600/IMG_20161027_095843.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSgKXZZHY0BbIu08PK8pjMj86EwEVeKIFMvL9kdUEyngw5S0nB9u2yBa75vA-1g4qcThjfksguOFiRUCETYTK2n80MtugO_PueRJ3rEwfs3lmstE22LIIYjIu4nf7AE-KOy_0Gynhp-kfl/s400/IMG_20161027_095843.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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I got a white vinyl shower curtain, cut it to size, ironed it flat (with a dishtowel between the iron and the vinyl!), and hot glued its left and right edges to the two pipes.<br />
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In this picture you can see the stage in use. Sitting on the table between my arms is a plastic cell phone stand, on which sits my cell phone with its flashlight function turned on to provide the illumination. When not in use, I slip the pipes out of their metal bases and roll up the screen like a scroll.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4230EklCxAKsbTt3iFSePU_e0phx8NQHphgAVARye_Hc5ea3I74uH4NAXvx3HkP-9ACr3118_dJPSncmlFl7jdsvpWuxFtYSCdrL7BB0_5APRpM8E0dj08H2Y2ygG4bYB1gGQUTlOdhqa/s1600/14959189_946352476533_1406364780_o-good.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4230EklCxAKsbTt3iFSePU_e0phx8NQHphgAVARye_Hc5ea3I74uH4NAXvx3HkP-9ACr3118_dJPSncmlFl7jdsvpWuxFtYSCdrL7BB0_5APRpM8E0dj08H2Y2ygG4bYB1gGQUTlOdhqa/s400/14959189_946352476533_1406364780_o-good.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Andrew Gwyn</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">And now I'm all set. With the lights off, the picture at the top of this page shows what the kids will see. Much better than a photograph.</span></span></div>
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-82002642399311282202016-10-22T16:14:00.000-04:002016-10-22T16:16:13.624-04:00JoanAbout a year and a half ago, <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2015/04/joan-trailer.html">I shared the trailer</a> for my friend <a href="http://artengine.ca/pixiecram/">Pixie Cram</a>'s short film <i>Joan</i>, an impressionistic retelling of the story of Joan of Arc.<br />
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Well, the whole film is now online! Check it out:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/90381351?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe><br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/90381351">Joan/Jeanne</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user1080913">Pixie Cram</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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Pixie made <i>Joan</i> during an artist residency at <a href="http://daimon.qc.ca/en/">DAÏMÔN centre de production</a> in Gatineau, Quebec. The whole film is stop-motion animation, even the parts with live actors (a process called pixilation). The visual style was inspired by paintings.<br />
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I assisted with a few of the shots, including the candle flame and the pomegranate, and I played the role of the cleric.<br />
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I also made one other special contribution. It was winter, and one day on my way to the studio, I slipped on the ice and cut my hand. When I arrived, I asked Pixie if she had a Band-Aid. She said "Yes, but first, can I film your bleeding hand?" I said sure. So when Joan has her vision of stigmata, that's my hand -- and that's real blood!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZlRTHr5GfSkTa_shvYtX19F_LzUG1jmX7YvLE1nAR9erBrI6nWY_rAECzLGNRLvgkDV3BGi1dWNIZC4cmOgC37g3mdexYFLO6sXlTkm6q_RwDe7IWyBPLsRQdiyxGreghhM8xX2EhVgh/s1600/2014-01-17+15.09.14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZlRTHr5GfSkTa_shvYtX19F_LzUG1jmX7YvLE1nAR9erBrI6nWY_rAECzLGNRLvgkDV3BGi1dWNIZC4cmOgC37g3mdexYFLO6sXlTkm6q_RwDe7IWyBPLsRQdiyxGreghhM8xX2EhVgh/s400/2014-01-17+15.09.14.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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For more behind-the-scenes information, check out <a href="http://ottawaindiefest.com/five-questions-with-pixie-cram/">this great interview</a> Pixie did with Ottawa Indie Fest.<br />
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This past summer, Pixie shot her next film, the post-apocalyptic <i>Pragmatopia</i>. I didn't help out with that one, so I can't wait to see it!Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-49649255085933133752016-06-12T12:53:00.000-04:002016-06-17T19:23:42.522-04:00The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Eric Carle FavouritesThis blog has been silent for a while because it's been a crazy few months, which culminated in us buying a house!<br />
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One thing I did recently was to attend Mermaid Theatre's touring production of <a href="http://mermaidtheatre.ca/for-presenters/our-productions/very-hungry-caterpillar/"><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Eric Carle Favourites</i></a>. It's a black light show featuring three stories -- <i>Little Cloud</i>, <i><i>The Mixed-Up Chameleon</i></i>, and <i><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i></i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLjnKOeZLFOYTbrb3ejDyLJzZ6rLytlhX3emm_OUioO03kIFPS8AGHDD4mKPU5kJyDy2eq9XKXNyt5cUdC9tlsvVK0D60uNhGTQAvQDLNz_iM5juKRPVwsnSdSCpHssEIAdhOiP-zhDeD/s1600/caterpillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLjnKOeZLFOYTbrb3ejDyLJzZ6rLytlhX3emm_OUioO03kIFPS8AGHDD4mKPU5kJyDy2eq9XKXNyt5cUdC9tlsvVK0D60uNhGTQAvQDLNz_iM5juKRPVwsnSdSCpHssEIAdhOiP-zhDeD/s320/caterpillar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photo from Mermaid's website</i></span></div>
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The audience was, of course, full of kids who know the books backwards and forwards. So when the caterpillar appeared, the audience went so wild it was like a rock star had stepped out on stage. ("Oh my god, it's THE very hungry caterpillar!")<br />
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One effect I really loved was the chameleon's tongue shooting out to catch a fly:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2WLH7tPU9RnuT8hqWQdD8gBe7LLsUt5iKiw-Mb6e4Pe9mH4ucoxGfNzcR8hKxN1XF2UFjSL_KLbX5iulzeoynU_hCNJNwTsibS7EEtJXiasxWQVQpyc8BOeDSClGKCPGy5s905IkUsZp/s1600/The-Mixed-Up-Chameleon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2WLH7tPU9RnuT8hqWQdD8gBe7LLsUt5iKiw-Mb6e4Pe9mH4ucoxGfNzcR8hKxN1XF2UFjSL_KLbX5iulzeoynU_hCNJNwTsibS7EEtJXiasxWQVQpyc8BOeDSClGKCPGy5s905IkUsZp/s320/The-Mixed-Up-Chameleon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photo from Mermaid's website</i></span></div>
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I couldn't figure out how they'd done it; it looked like animation. Turns out the tongue is painted onto a conveyor belt (unconnected to the chameleon's head), which the puppeteer pulls from the far side to make the tongue shoot out. Meanwhile, the fly is a two-dimensional rod puppet painted on both sides. The puppeteer "twiddles" the rod between his fingers so the two sides of the fly rapidly alternate, like a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatrope">thaumatrope</a>. It looks really cool.<br />
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The show was also a reunion for me, as my classmate Simon from <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.ca/2013/06/animotion-rules.html">Animotion</a> was one of the puppeteers! It was great to see him again. Check out this terrible selfie I took.<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-85551523116804256732016-01-27T19:16:00.000-05:002016-01-27T21:56:32.614-05:00ExbearimentsThe bear play continues to move forward, albeit very slowly since everyone involved has multiple projects on the go. This past summer I did a couple of experiments, both based around the idea of wearing a bear on my hand like a glove.<br />
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For the first one, I tracked down a black bear Beanie Baby and dissected it. (Some might call this sacrilege, but our country's economy went off the Beanie Baby standard years ago.) It was almost exactly the right size, though I had to safety pin a few things to get it to fit my hand exactly. The top hat is a mock-up made of Bristol board.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/idRGFIgUU6c?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
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The second experiment was a variation on the <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/07/cave-painting-bear-puppet.html">cave painting bear puppet</a> I'd made the summer before. It still has an uninterrupted outline, this time made of glow-in-the-dark plastic string (the kind you make bracelets out of at summer camp). The bear's two-dimensional body parts are made of black craft foam, and they aren't attached to each other, but they're all attached to a black glove I'm wearing. The constellation Ursa Major is painted on it in glow-in-the-dark paint so that it looks like a constellation come to life. (It looks even better in total darkness, but the camera couldn't pick that up.)<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y_Ip4j_zd38?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-84105335393304773222015-10-29T19:54:00.000-04:002015-11-01T22:30:51.379-05:00Atlatl's LegsIn the last couple of weeks, I've made a lot of progress with Atlatl's legs.<br />
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<a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-to-make-big-puppet-feet.html">When we last left our heroes</a>, I'd built his feet, and I'd made them the biggest I could, figuring I could trim them down later. I'd also started to build one of the legs.<br />
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Well, I tossed out the leg I'd started and made something different. His new lower leg started with a straight cylinder of one-inch foam.<br />
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As always, I used GIMP a great deal to superimpose images of the foot I <i>wanted</i> over images of the foot I <i>had</i> so I could figure out what I needed to do. Referencing a lot of photos of elephants, as well as a <a href="http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-draw-animals-elephants-their-species-and-anatomy--vector-24902">tutorial by Monika Zagrobelna</a>, who has an amazing series of tutorials on drawing various types of animal, I decided that I would indeed make the feet smaller.<br />
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I wanted to keep the back of the foot at the same point, so I started by hacking off a chunk at the front, as seen above. Then I redrew the oval in the new, smaller space, and cut it out. Here's the bottom of the foot now:<br />
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The foot is going to get narrower as it goes further up. The red oval in the picture below shows where the circumference of the foot will be at the top of the thick piece of foam. It looks like I'm cutting my own toes off, but the edge of Atlatl's foot will actually pass through the piece of foam that sits above my shoe. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMUqZV4d7VQqmrDuaWIFdjYVVOQ7SMrfGO8BeM6TX7Cm6A_2kUYtnQKInSNw6RgYtZjWQpRQe6JkevZrOSLku7ZHVQQb7ElpmDp-DGfEEoCG9N60-baXQZrHFIi88IG9FHEkH3B0YQ9vL/s1600/leg3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMUqZV4d7VQqmrDuaWIFdjYVVOQ7SMrfGO8BeM6TX7Cm6A_2kUYtnQKInSNw6RgYtZjWQpRQe6JkevZrOSLku7ZHVQQb7ElpmDp-DGfEEoCG9N60-baXQZrHFIi88IG9FHEkH3B0YQ9vL/s320/leg3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I also bought a pair of pyjama pants that fit over my regular pants; I'll be building Atlatl's legs around them. I safety-pinned the big cylindrical foam leg to one of the pant legs, and that's as far as I've gotten for now.<br />
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*****</div>
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Update, three days later: I've now sculpted the foot further, so it really is narrower at the top.<br />
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I started by drawing a green line around the side of the foot, to mark the level at which the foot should hit its largest size. Then, I stuck a metal rod into the foot at a point on the red circle, and out again at that green line, so I knew where the diagonal edge of the foot should be. Then I cut through the foam until I reached the rod.<br />
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Then I removed the rod and did the same thing at a point slightly further along the red circle, cut down until I reached the rod, and then cut across from the first point to the second point.<br />
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Then I did it many more times, until I'd gone all the way around the foot. I then used the scissors to neaten up the new edges I'd made. <br /><br />
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It now looks much more like an elephant foot, and it's easier to walk in it too. You'll notice that I also trimmed the bottom of the leg. Below the cut is where the leg will curve outward to meet the foot.<br /><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Before and after</span></div>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-72066971294969503602015-09-10T11:18:00.000-04:002015-09-10T11:18:49.047-04:00Puppet Hand Mechanism (2006/2010)<i>I'll be taking down my old website soon, so I'm converting some of my
old pages into blog posts so they don't vanish from the internet
forever. This is one of them.</i><br />
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<table> <tbody>
<tr> <td>Palm of hand:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-vBxX75SPVsQMjDQZtejp3CUA7a1jqRQuVbDta_LfRsAFuosaZLQxzaMcliIdLZ_Clx-Qlc2EM9TOj2OVyjoAPO0XaDva-CmB4yAY4XK1-yTpi2jHrEzZwED0U6tzKj23EtUWCqZ4_7-d/s1600/hand_palm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-vBxX75SPVsQMjDQZtejp3CUA7a1jqRQuVbDta_LfRsAFuosaZLQxzaMcliIdLZ_Clx-Qlc2EM9TOj2OVyjoAPO0XaDva-CmB4yAY4XK1-yTpi2jHrEzZwED0U6tzKj23EtUWCqZ4_7-d/s640/hand_palm.jpg" width="250" /></a></td> <td>Back of hand:<br />
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</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
This is the mechanism that gives Moss his working left hand. It's very
low-tech, made of cardboard, drinking straws, elastic bands, masking
tape, and invisible thread. The mechanism is based largely on <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20101202184527/http://yesmag.ca/projects/robo_hand.html">this activity</a> from Canadian children's science magazine <i>YES Mag</i>.<br />
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Below is a video from 2006 of the mechanism in action:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/keo25BhgKas?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
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The red trigger seen in the video is from one of those "snapper" toys with a plastic animal head on the end of a stick.<br />
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In 2010, I replaced the trigger with the arrangement seen below: the
four threads run through a hoop (made from a paperclip) on the arm rod's
dowel and tie onto a plastic ring, which I pull to close the puppet's
hand. This method gives me more control and a wider range of motion.<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-39762889056591499742015-08-15T16:34:00.000-04:002015-08-15T16:34:26.816-04:00Puppets Up! 2015Last weekend was the eleventh <a href="http://puppetsup.ca/">Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival</a> in Almonte, Ontario. It was also the eleventh one that I attended. <br />
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The highlight act of the festival for me was <a href="http://bignazo.com/">Big Nazo</a>'s <i>Intergalactic Creature Band</i>. The show was presented as a rock concert being put on by extraterrestrials in the hope of drawing more of their kind out of hiding. The aliens were all larger-than-life puppets and costumes with latex skin that looked like they stepped out of my fever dreams. Creatures came and went, and the lead singer went through multiple physical transformations, all while playing catchy rock music. Not pre-recorded, either -- they really were playing guitar, drums, and bass while wearing these ridiculous outfits. It was delightfully bizarre.<br />
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In the picture below you can see Cornea the Astro Troll (left) interacting with the lead singer (right, in one of his many incarnations). Cornea is a walkaround character whose head takes up most of her height. The performer inside can wiggle her arms and nose, open and close her mouth, and even stick their arm (clad in a red sock) out of her mouth to be her tongue!<br />
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I also enjoyed <a href="http://figurentheater.is/figura/index.php">Bernd Ogrodnik</a>'s <i>Peter and the Wolf</i>. We'd seen Bernd at Puppets Up! back in 2009, when he performed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vm20L0NVHg">this amazing piece</a>, among others. <i>Peter and the Wolf </i>featured beautiful tabletop puppets that borrowed elements from marionettes. Using a clever control on the back of the head, the puppeteer could work the head, arms, and legs of a character, all with one hand!<br />
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We weren't allowed to take pictures during the show, but here's a picture of the set. It had magnets strategically positioned around it to hold characters in place when the puppeteer's hands were occupied elsewhere.<br />
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Saturday night was the festival's adult-only cabaret. I did a tabletop puppetry act based around the song "Nice Legs Shame About Her Face" by The Monks, featuring Moss and my new character, Lexi. If you can't tell, Lexi was built specifically for this act. Her legs are from a Barbie doll knockoff, and my middle and index fingers go inside them, enabling her to walk around. I might do a post about her design and construction sometime later.<br />
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Atlatl made his work-in-progress debut in the parade on Sunday. He got a pretty good response from the crowd, and I was able to keep my arms up inside his head for the entire seventeen minutes that it took to walk the route. In the picture below, you can see the title character from <a href="http://www.tanglewoodmarionettes.com/">Tanglewood Marionettes</a>' <i>The Dragon King</i> on the left.<br />
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Also on Sunday, our friends Nicole and Stef came to the festival with their four-year-old and ten-month-old. For all the times I'd been to the festival, I'd never gone with kids before. It was great fun -- we took them to Tanglewood's aforementioned <i>Dragon King</i> and <a href="http://www.frogtownpuppets.com/">Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers</a>' <i>The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow</i>. We'd seen both shows before, and both of them are great. We're also friends with both troupes, so they let us take the kids backstage afterwards. Cedar, the four-year-old, thought that was really cool; she'll probably insist upon it at every puppet show she goes to from now on. Here we are goofing around with Frogtown's sheep puppets.<br />
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A terrific festival all around. See you in 2016!Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-91091616701938861662015-07-19T09:16:00.001-04:002015-07-19T09:16:58.580-04:00Modifying Mr. Punch (2011)<i>I'll be taking down my old website soon, so I'm converting some of my
old pages into blog posts so they don't vanish from the internet
forever. This is one of them.</i><br />
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In my <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.ca/p/workshops.html">children's puppetry workshops</a>, I explain that there are many different kinds of puppets, ranging from shadow puppets to marionettes. When I talk about simple hand puppets, the example I always use is the centuries-old character of Mr. Punch.<br />
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I never actually had a puppet of Mr. Punch to show to the kids, and I'd never been able to find one for sale. So at the 2011 <a href="http://puppetsup.ca/">Puppets Up! festival</a>, I bought the rubber-headed puppet seen above from Joanne Bigham of <a href="http://opendoordesigns.ca/">Open Door Designs</a>. He wasn't exactly Mr. Punch -- he seemed to be intended to represent his German cousin Kasperle -- and so I set about modifying him.<br />
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I discarded the body altogether and kept the head. I rolled a piece of card into a cylinder and glued it into the hole in his neck, reinforcing it with pieces of foam inside the head, so that it would fit more snugly over my finger and give me more control during performance.<br />
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The nice thing about a character like Punch is that everyone has a slightly different interpretation of how he should look, so I was able to pick and choose my favourite elements from all the versions I've seen. For example, I wanted his hat to be shaped like <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Punch_magazine_cover_1916_april_26_volume_150_no_3903.png">Richard Doyle's illustration</a> for the cover of <i>Punch</i> magazine. I still had a plastic banana left over from my video "Viewer Mail #1", and it was just the right shape. I cut a hole in the top of his head and glued the end of the banana into position; this would form the internal structure of the hat.<br />
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My girlfriend [now wife], artist <a href="http://juliecruikshank.wix.com/jmcruikshank">Julie Cruikshank</a>, repainted his face for me, as he looked far too kindly. Our inspiration came from the Punch illustrations of <a href="http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/10/punch-and-judy.html">George Cruikshank</a> (her ancestor?), and the grey hair was based on <a href="http://richardcoombs.co.uk/">Richard Coombs</a>' amazing Punch and Judy show (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv0ffFxUC5Q">a tiny portion of which can be seen here</a>).<br />
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Now he <i>looks</i> like the kind of guy who would throw a baby out the window.<br />
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I ordered a pair of plastic doll hands from Etsy seller "The Pattern Guy" and glued them to some rolled-up pieces of card that would fit snugly over my thumb and middle finger. I made sure to make them both big enough to fit over my thumb, so that I could wear Mr. Punch on either hand.<br />
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After some trial and error, I successfully made a pattern for his hat by draping a paper towel over the banana and trimming.<br />
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I based the pattern for his body on the puppet's original body, purposefully making the neck, sleeves, and "skirt" longer than necessary in order to fit my hand, reasoning that I could always trim them back.<br />
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The shape of Punch's extremely stylized hump was based on a couple of different sources, and the fabric pattern was built around a piece of corrugated cardboard to give it the two-dimensional look seen in the Cruikshank illustrations.<br />
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I attached the head and hands to the body by tightly sewing the fabric around their narrowest points. The hump was attached by simply sewing it onto the back of the body, and the hat was glued into place at a few spots along its base.<br />
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His collar was made by sewing a piece of lace to a piece of white fabric along their edges, cutting into an appropriate shape (roughly along the dotted line seen above), and then sewing it around his neck. This had the added advantage of disguising the messy attachment point of Punch's head to his body. <br />
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The tassel on his hat came from a bookmark, and lining the base of his hat with gold trim was an idea taken from <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpkt4_jan-svankmajer-punch-and-judy_creation">Jan Svankmajer's <i>Punch and Judy</i> film</a>. Additional trim was sewn around his sleeves, around the base of his hump, and in two parallel lines down his front. The baubles on his hump were again based on Cruikshank, and were simple dollar-store gemstone stickers, three on each side.<br />
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And that's it! Now I've got my own Mr. Punch to show to the kids at my workshops. Comparing this picture to the one at the top of the page, they don't even look like the same puppet.<br />
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Moss admires a portrait of his great-great-grandfather.</div>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-26267539100159474662015-06-07T16:37:00.001-04:002015-06-07T16:37:29.065-04:00Curse of the Puppet's TombMy friends <a href="http://matandvicproductions.com/">Mat Kelly and Vic Thepmontry</a> just posted their latest retro puppet movie, <i>Curse of the Puppet's Tomb</i>.<br />
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That's me as the mummy Amon Ra, doing my bad Orson Welles/Vincent Price impression.<br />
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We shot the movie last summer at <a href="http://www.spookywagonride.com/">Cannamore Orchard</a>, a farm outside Ottawa that hosts a spooky wagon ride at Halloween. The Egyptian tomb set is part of their "House of Terror".<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Photo by Elise Tarrant</i></span></div>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-41375922951513578452015-05-01T21:52:00.001-04:002015-05-27T09:58:51.435-04:00 A New Technique for Shooting the Legs of a Puppet (2011)<i>I'll be taking down my old website soon, so I'm converting some of my old pages into blog posts so they don't vanish from the internet forever. This is one of them.</i><br />
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<b>A New Technique for Shooting the Legs of a Puppet</b></div>
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By Grant Harding</div>
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Published in the Summer 2011 <i>OPAL</i>, newsletter of the <a href="http://www.onpuppet.ca/">Ontario Puppetry Association</a></div>
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Films and television shows that feature hand puppets will occasionally enhance the realism of the characters by cutting to a shot of a puppet's feet walking along the ground. The classic example is the shot of Kermit the Frog's feet, clad in cowboy boots, as he walks out to confront the villain at the climax of <i>The Muppet Movie</i>.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kermit the Frog. Source: <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/File:Kermit_feet_tmm.png">Muppet Wiki</a></span></i>.</div>
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I have never found these shots to be convincing. For one thing, the movement of the legs is unrealistic, mostly because the knees do not bend. This leaves the legs locked in one position and only able to move from the hips. A second problem is that the movement of the legs does not match the movement of the puppet as it is seen in other shots. Hand puppets have a distinctive way of walking, with a considerable amount of bobbing and swaying; shots of the legs do not reflect this, making the cut from one to the other extremely jarring.<br />
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Other techniques, like switching to a shot of the puppet controlled as a marionette or manipulated bunraku-style, solve the first problem but not the second; the walk is more realistic, but the style of movement remains fundamentally different.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczxSqklmJlpTzQLkp_BVqPHhsh_p5wIvZgx65tQv4mtpWUeSy9AbDnqfCyEzeaNLEM1LyHuCg2Rry0bRukOyTKnihlOAeFvzo_fti_dwP5XbC-K1kaFTL4-muqQnaLSYGAGaJukUpeXgy/s1600/figure1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjczxSqklmJlpTzQLkp_BVqPHhsh_p5wIvZgx65tQv4mtpWUeSy9AbDnqfCyEzeaNLEM1LyHuCg2Rry0bRukOyTKnihlOAeFvzo_fti_dwP5XbC-K1kaFTL4-muqQnaLSYGAGaJukUpeXgy/s1600/figure1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Figure 1</i></span></div>
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Here I describe a new technique that eliminates both problems. In this setup (Figure 1), one puppeteer controls the puppet's feet from below, using rods that extend through two long parallel slits in the wooden "ground". (This idea was based on the Sy Snootles puppet in the original <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, whose dancing feet were controlled this way in full-figure shots.) Meanwhile, a second puppeteer holds onto the puppet's hips, supporting the legs from above and imparting the necessary bobbing and swaying motion. The legs are jointed not just at the hips, but also at the knees, so that they bend when the feet are raised.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYysm_Ln_hXWt2Pny-EqR0l-OprFUduDkzBdDYTel5l4Z1Ld0Zj8zYEqbmvEIKAD4y2rIJkB3fN8gPMoG62kLeMYYFF70x73DMuj30ZN8ZEsbQ_iACBeAIqmy8M7NG4DI_devulvcdP53C/s1600/syguy7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYysm_Ln_hXWt2Pny-EqR0l-OprFUduDkzBdDYTel5l4Z1Ld0Zj8zYEqbmvEIKAD4y2rIJkB3fN8gPMoG62kLeMYYFF70x73DMuj30ZN8ZEsbQ_iACBeAIqmy8M7NG4DI_devulvcdP53C/s1600/syguy7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sy Snootles. Source: <a href="http://www.blueharvest.net/images/barge.shtml">BlueHarvest.net</a></span></i>.</div>
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The slits in the ground are hidden because the ground is covered with fuzzy carpeting (an idea inspired by Arthur Ganson's kinetic sculpture <i>Inchworms</i>). At the correct camera angle, shooting over the head of the first puppeteer, the rods that control the feet are hidden by the feet themselves.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSurtXWpBP7L9i_joLgO0oEjkUwHCEMSTZzWfQF0nb8AKIU-zWSD6HgmiSz46H90jWlMhw8kIlcmNeeJDy493lcdPxPsGZB8_J84sxTElSIh0fZtJajCyMIjyvifbdFu9_cY4DPCNJDOd8/s1600/Worms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSurtXWpBP7L9i_joLgO0oEjkUwHCEMSTZzWfQF0nb8AKIU-zWSD6HgmiSz46H90jWlMhw8kIlcmNeeJDy493lcdPxPsGZB8_J84sxTElSIh0fZtJajCyMIjyvifbdFu9_cY4DPCNJDOd8/s1600/Worms.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inchworms. Source: <a href="http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/sculpture%20image%20pages/Inchworms%20page.html">Arthur Ganson's Machines</a></span></i>.</div>
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I designed removable foot controls, each consisting of a popsicle stick glued at a right angle to a piece of balsa wood (Figure 2). The popsicle stick served as the rod to control the foot; it was thin enough to pass easily through the slit in the ground, and broad enough to always keep the foot in its proper orientation. The balsa wood, attached to the sole of the foot with two pins that extended up into the puppet's leg and held tightly in place by a piece of rolled-up duct tape at its front edge, reinforced the foot and kept it from bending or twisting; the toes were unsupported by wood and thus able to bend. The popsicle stick was attached to the balsa wood on the far side of each foot so that it would always be hidden from the camera.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Figure 2 </i></span></div>
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It was essential that my puppet's walk be both realistic, and consistent with established movement. I consulted biomechanical references, including the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, and took observations and measurements of the puppet's own usual style of movement. This would have to be repeated for any other puppet.<br />
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Hand puppets often lean to the left and right as they walk, and this is an exaggeration of a natural human movement: our upper body tilts <i>down</i> toward the foot that is being placed on the ground. At the same time, our hips swing <i>up</i> to the opposite side, the side of the leg we are lifting. Thus, as the first puppeteer moved the feet, the second puppeteer swung the hips in a smile-shaped arc away from the foot that was on the ground.<br />
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I determined the puppet's stride length -- the distance between two successive placements of the same foot -- by putting the puppet on my arm over a piece of Bristol board, "walking" it forward, and marking where its left foot fell at each step. I found that a hand puppet, with its side-to-side swaying, is actually taking very small steps, its stride length only slightly longer than the length of its foot. This stride length was adhered to by the puppeteer who manipulated the feet.<br />
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I plugged the puppet's stride length and leg length into an <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=kji6fde5g-gC&lpg=PA108&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false">equation</a> that palaeontologists use to estimate an animal's speed from its footprints. This yielded a step frequency of two steps per second, which agreed with previously shot footage of the puppet. A metronome was used when shooting the legs to ensure that the pace remained constant.<br />
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Taking small steps means that the feet do not have to be lifted very high. Scaling the numbers in my references down to puppet size revealed that when the heel is at its maximum height, the toe should be barely off the ground, and vice versa. In the middle of the foot's forward kick, the whole foot should barely clear the ground.<br />
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My references indicated that the puppet's feet should be shoulder width apart, which in turn dictated how far apart the slits in the ground should be. The slits themselves were five millimetres wide, small enough to be easily hidden by the carpet. The whole carpeted area was about eight square feet, but only about half of it appeared on camera.<br />
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The final shot can be viewed above. I welcome anyone who wishes to build on this technique to do so. Special thanks are due to Gordon and Suzanne Harding, <a href="http://juliecruikshank.wix.com/jmcruikshank">Julie Cruikshank</a>, and Frederick Blichert. Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-88811648993496803132015-04-10T12:11:00.000-04:002015-04-10T16:50:29.718-04:00Birds at the Museum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigSZ2AkPzPfFRmlJgvCIVE7ft83Wlb43VL7__jaBceEFgvsXrHRsCn4Xlnt5t5ycaPyw_uh1e3AjRYZUwjTqw5DFYU-XDu-tStE1WGA9B5tEr7VaY6ytoOi2-DlvxP2SlWk7vqJxTHkCy0/s1600/IMG_0040_.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigSZ2AkPzPfFRmlJgvCIVE7ft83Wlb43VL7__jaBceEFgvsXrHRsCn4Xlnt5t5ycaPyw_uh1e3AjRYZUwjTqw5DFYU-XDu-tStE1WGA9B5tEr7VaY6ytoOi2-DlvxP2SlWk7vqJxTHkCy0/s1600/IMG_0040_.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cousins reunited. Photo by Xander Stobbs.</span></div>
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My <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-bouquet-of-blackbirds.html">paper bird puppets</a> started out as a project for my wedding, but they've turned into an activity that I can take to places. I provide the bird cutouts, and people can assemble them and decorate them any way they like.<br />
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After a successful test run at last year's <a href="http://chinatownremixed.ca/">Chinatown Remixed</a> festival, I was keen to take the activity to a museum. The Canadian Museum of Nature holds a monthly nighttime party called <a href="http://nature.ca/en/plan-your-visit/nature-nocturne">Nature Nocturne</a>, where adults can eat, drink, dance, and wander the exhibits child-free. Chinatown Remixed was in charge of running the Nature Nocturne on January 23, around the Lunar New Year. They included me and my birds as one of the activities.<br />
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They put me in the dinosaur hall, which made sense to me -- after all, birds are dinosaurs! My table was right at the front of the exhibit, under the watchful eye of <i>Daspletosaurus</i> and <i>Chasmosaurus</i> skeletons. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrebtZzJlxBh4VPc5BsuJ0gxEGGHoh27Mgd94F92ybV61_qhsy8UVsbITqEitX6h3Ut_loAISbsyJFje3fUEp94j8H5QfkuQ_bSqAt-BSqoaFr9bCYbCer9TlNDhRgBs0Qb8mcG2yRpJm4/s1600/don+IMG_0047.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrebtZzJlxBh4VPc5BsuJ0gxEGGHoh27Mgd94F92ybV61_qhsy8UVsbITqEitX6h3Ut_loAISbsyJFje3fUEp94j8H5QfkuQ_bSqAt-BSqoaFr9bCYbCer9TlNDhRgBs0Qb8mcG2yRpJm4/s1600/don+IMG_0047.JPG" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Don Kwan</span></div>
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I'd made a few modifications to the design since the last time I'd done this. In addition to the original blackbird shape (which also works as anything from a thrush to a finch), I made an eagle shape, a duck shape, a cardinal/bluejay shape, and (most popularly) a heron/crane shape.<br />
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To simplify things, I also replaced the metal coathanger, which I'd been using as a control rod, with a popsicle stick. This eliminated the need for a glue gun and for time-consuming rod straightening.<br />
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I'd planned to use a laser cutter to cut out the birds; I created vector files for all the shapes and got certified to use the cutter at the <a href="http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/ImagineSpace">Makerspace at the Nepean Centrepointe library</a>. Unfortunately, by the time I got the go-ahead from the museum, the laser cutter was all booked up, so I ended up cutting out all seventy birds by hand. Next time, I guess!<br />
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It was a great success. People loved it, all the birds I made got used up, and I had a big grin on my face the whole time. This is clearly the kind of thing I was meant to do. I also took plenty of notes, so I can do it even better next time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRyX6ciW1NZ3diNoNWJ27tmqoNDIlDuvOCf1K3oMVMS34Wniy9CHW0fgehr77ELzfHE-r7IAM3KvGd6jYvd3p-JI5VP2ZNmlZdq-KcKMnwefQ-DZFFn0vRvpG7fngLovUg2eWNKiAEp9pS/s1600/don+IMG_0096.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRyX6ciW1NZ3diNoNWJ27tmqoNDIlDuvOCf1K3oMVMS34Wniy9CHW0fgehr77ELzfHE-r7IAM3KvGd6jYvd3p-JI5VP2ZNmlZdq-KcKMnwefQ-DZFFn0vRvpG7fngLovUg2eWNKiAEp9pS/s1600/don+IMG_0096.JPG" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Don Kwan</span></div>
Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-20136154993994529842015-04-09T13:39:00.000-04:002016-10-22T16:17:52.408-04:00Joan TrailerMy friend <a href="http://artengine.ca/pixiecram/">Pixie Cram</a> has uploaded a trailer for her latest film, <i>Joan</i>. It's an impressionistic seven-minute retelling of the story of Joan of Arc, done using stop-motion animation -- including pixillation, or stop-motion with live actors.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/122930282" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/122930282">Joan Trailer</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user1080913">Pixie Cram</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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I helped out on some of the shots, and I actually appear a couple of times in the film as well.<br />
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<i>Joan</i> has had a couple of screenings in Ottawa already, and I'm sure there are more to come. Check out <a href="http://artengine.ca/pixiecram/news/">Pixie's website</a> for information on where you can see it. In the meantime, <a href="http://ottawaindiefest.com/five-questions-with-pixie-cram/">here's a really cool interview</a> that Pixie did about the film.<br />
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<b>Update, October 2016:</b> The film is now online! <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2016/10/joan.html">Check it out!</a> Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-55420271865117887822014-11-25T17:00:00.000-05:002014-12-29T19:22:55.343-05:00Ten Years!Today is the ten-year anniversary of the first puppet video I ever put online. "Static and Josh" was completed and uploaded in the wee hours of <a href="http://forums.delphiforums.com/toughpigs/messages?msg=6508.1">November 25, 2004</a>.<br />
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It was my second year at Mount Allison University; my friend Josh VanMeerveld and I shot the video in my dorm room with a borrowed digital camera.<br />
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Static was the ancestor of Moss. He was a "Knuckle-Bopper" practice puppet made by <a href="http://www.tleeper.com/">Trish Leeper</a> that I dressed up in a Hawaiian shirt I'd gotten off a dollar-store toucan puppet. I bought a pair of baby pants and tailored them to be half their size, then made a pair of foam legs and stuck the toucan's feet on the ends. (A couple of years later, when I decided to only use puppets that I'd built myself, I kept the shirt, pants, and legs I'd added and rebuilt the rest from scratch.)<br />
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When I made this video, YouTube didn't exist yet. In those crazy days, if you wanted to put a video on the internet, you had to upload the file itself to your webspace and try to persuade people to download it to their computers in order to watch it.<br />
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The video and audio quality are poor, and the attempts at "comedy" are just embarrassing. The real point of the video was to use a split-screen effect to hide the puppeteer. We shot the video with me fully visible, crouching behind the music stand. Then, without moving the camera, we shot the music stand with nothing behind it. The bottom left quarter of the screen was then replaced with footage from that second pass.<br />
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A lot has changed in the last ten years. Since this video first went up, I've done over eighty puppet workshops for children, I've studied at Mermaid Theatre, I've met a ton of people in the puppetry community, and I've built more and better puppets and made more and better films. I can't wait to see what the next ten years have in store.<br />
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By an incredible coincidence, since I hadn't even met her yet, today is also my wife Julie's birthday. In fact, we're on our honeymoon in New York City right now. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take her out to dinner.Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-43222495841559949662014-11-01T22:17:00.000-04:002014-11-07T17:27:24.738-05:00Just Married (a month ago)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Kristin Ireland of <a href="http://www.mondayswithmacphotography.com/">Mondays With Mac Photography</a></span></div>
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On September 20, 2014, <a href="http://juliecruikshank.wix.com/jmcruikshank">Julie</a> and I tied the knot. The wedding went beautifully, and the <a href="http://theabstractions.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-bouquet-of-blackbirds.html">blackbird puppets</a> turned out great.</div>
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In the end, we made 104 of them, with a lot of help from our friends.</div>
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-75596169851285893352014-10-06T13:57:00.000-04:002014-12-29T19:25:01.730-05:00Two puppets at onceA short test of how I'll be able to perform Moss riding on Atlatl's back.<br />
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The song is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O9GoqsvuA8">"Sunshine" by Matt Costa</a>.<br />
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Clearly needs a lot of work, but I think it looks pretty neat.<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-90262546683058834942014-09-08T19:22:00.002-04:002014-12-29T19:26:40.826-05:00Atlatl progressPuppetry projects are on hiatus as wedding preparation kicks into high gear, but here's what Atlatl looks like now, covered in white broadcloth.<br />
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Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8595983348708166887.post-75799753760473862052014-07-26T14:34:00.000-04:002016-01-27T17:43:51.931-05:00Cave Painting Bear PuppetTwo theatre people in Ottawa, Jake Smith and <a href="http://www.onceuponakingdom.com/">Katya Vetrova</a>, are developing a play that will involve some puppetry, and they've brought me in as a collaborator. I don't want to give too much away, but it's about bears.<br />
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One of our sources of visual inspiration is cave paintings. I recently built a mockup of a puppet that's designed to look like a cave painting come to life. I based it on a real painting of a bear in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave">Chauvet Cave</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtpWjOaChvwyG7KioAjnEJUH7SmFZADFZuBiXIdIJ7veqrgyfy_jqhOaoadlI5KQhYcxfRAX_-m-m5s3VnlYdLh-iPWIJVBZTYV8fUKhbWyXXPg1gFVBJ3pz-C0vc9m9l1neQxhiaqioOO/s1600/chauvet+ice+wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtpWjOaChvwyG7KioAjnEJUH7SmFZADFZuBiXIdIJ7veqrgyfy_jqhOaoadlI5KQhYcxfRAX_-m-m5s3VnlYdLh-iPWIJVBZTYV8fUKhbWyXXPg1gFVBJ3pz-C0vc9m9l1neQxhiaqioOO/s1600/chauvet+ice+wall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Image yoinked from <a href="http://arthistoryworlds.org/ice-wall-paintings/">here</a>.</span></div>
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The substructure is made of cardboard and brass fasteners and controlled with three small rods. But the outline -- the part you'll actually see -- is made of one continuous piece of string. It's only glued down in a few areas, so that no matter how the bear moves, it will still have one uninterrupted outline.<br />
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For the full effect, imagine that it's much larger, that the cardboard is black, that it's in front of a black background, and that the outline is made of electroluminescent wire. <br />
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Who knows if this puppet will actually make it into the play... The story and format are still quite nebulous, and change a lot with each meeting!Granthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12583224487723669907noreply@blogger.com0