A selection of profiles. Potential 'base pieces' for buildings on the set.

I managed to find some large pieces of cardboard and a carrier bag full of newspapers among the neighborhoods recycling boxes. Should prove useful for set building.

I also brought my set of Kapla planks over to play around with. Perhaps they will prove useful for exploring possible set structures.

 

Whew, another busy week. Hence the lack of blog updates. This week I have been continuing to develop the comb puppet and roughing out some set pieces.
Yesterday I had my weekly evening of puppetry with Bee Daws of Effigy Theatre. We roughed out a set and did some practising with the puppet. Here is an edit of some of our test shoots:

Its been great to see everything pulling together and begin to get a feel for what is assembling itself with this project. Each new piece of progress is very exciting and spurs me on to continue to work hard on developing the piece.

Having the opportunity to work alongside an experienced puppeteer is something that I have hoped for for a number of years, it seems the catalyst for the development of my work in the field has arrived and I am now able to take things to a new level. I have virtually no experience at preforming puppetry to a professional level. Because of this I absorb a lot of new stuff with each attempt and these sessions will contribute immeasurably to developing my ability.

Filming little 'sketches' like this is also really helpful for communicating the development of the project to other potential members of the team (including other members of Effigy) who have not yet made the move to Bristol. Already I have received a  wealth of valuable feedback which helps me to further develop the project and ensure a robust growth of the concept.

Speaking of concept, I have some more ground to cover here on the blog. A few days ago I started thinking about set design for the show and these appeared in my sketchbook:

The idea would be to create simple architectural shapes and cover them in abstract patterns. It occurred to to me that this may be an ideal way to begin to explore the connections between the modern first-world metropolitan that we in the west experience, and the more imaginative, spiritual and ritual focussed communities that still exist elsewhere and were once the mainstay of our existence.

A jumble of geometric shapes, decorated with repeating motifs that evoke brickwork, doors, windows, solar panels, satellite dishes. The idea would be to pay homage to the sensibilities of, say, formline art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formline_art) or pursian rugs like this one: http://www.jozan.net/distrikter/bakshaish.asp
These aesthetics are crowded with symbols which, while apparently chaotic to the uninitiated, are in fact loaded with symbolic meaning that references their mother culture and tribal knowledge. My hope would be that these jumbled structures would still 'read' as an urban landscape due to our deep familiarity with the aesthetics of large buildings, floodlit streets and industrial structures.

The comb faced puppet extends this concept by more blatantly blending an 'exotic' cultural artefact (a decorative comb) with architecture to generate a character who is an extension of his environment.

This leap opened the floodgates to an array of little ideas involving turning buildings within a modern city into actors playing out little fables about life, death, humanity. There are so many questions that could be put forward with this palette. How do the things we build convey information about who we are and who we are not, who we want to be or be seen to be and how this changes with time. New buildings replace old buildings, new priorities and aesthetics usurping the old ways on a grand scale.

Here are some rough set pieces I made for the puppet testing. I really must start making a habit of photographing things against plainer fabrics.

 Here are some snaps I took of the arm mechanism. I've painted the arm to look similar to the aesthetic of the set sketches. The fabrics used to flesh out the puppet further enhance the blend between set and character. Although at present there is some concern as to the extent to which this makes the character read clearly, so I may need to downplay this aspect.


So this is where I am. In the next week or so I hope to get a few of the following things done:

• Reinforce wrist mechanism (the cords broke a few times during the tests, I need a new thread, some pads on the palms to protect the mechanism and perhaps some shrink wrap on the cord that runs through the copper tube).
• Some bigger set pieces. The vulnerability of the character seems to be a key aspect, a small outdated building among modern giants begins to create a narrative all by itself. There has also been a call for having the puppet cover a greater distance and move around more in further tests, so some larger set pieces will help.
• Get back my lighting rig (with faders ect) to start looking at lighting more.
• Find a way to make the hand movements read better, perhaps white heat shrink tubing over the fingers. 'Think Michael Jacksons glove' says Ben Jones.
• Have a think about sound and maybe make some soundscapes with foley sound (rubbing bricks together, pourning pebbles on things, recording city sounds/traffic ect)

Another busy week ahead, next practice session is Tuesday.

Hello all, today I have been continuing my overhaul on the little comb puppet. It now has a fun little breathing mechanism that I'm quite happy with.

Its operated with a little ring on the inside and is designed to work in conjunction with the support handle down the spine. The body is a 2 liter milk bottle this time, this allows more flexibility of the shoulders. The upper arms are of a comparatively thicker plastic and so push the little tabs on the milk bottle into the body cavity when the arm is raised. I'm pleased to finally have this shoulder system working properly. The neck also has some changes. The plastic tube has taught elastic running through it. This system holds the head upright when not held by the puppeteer, whilst still allowing it to be moved about freely as required.

Today I have mainly been working on the arm.

When its finished a swiveling paddle on the control handle will allow the puppeteer to remotely pivot the wrist up and down, allowing nicer expression and follow through of arm movement.

This video was most helpful while I was making the arm, my arm is essentially a miniature version of what this lady made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAVCtWOLuDQ

Lastly I have been weathering one of my plastic afro combs for the puppets face.

Sadly these are the only suitable combs I am able to easily find, although I've been checking ebay regularly for cheap carved combs I'm being pretty picky with what I want. I'm hoping that with a little dry-brushing this comb will resemble rough-carved wood.

This evening I will be going and visiting the rehearsal space at KG Doodles with Bee Dawes which should be useful.

I am working on a deal with the owner whereby we can get some free rental of the space to rehearse in exchange for some illustration/promotional design work that I will be doing for her playcenter. Its a great big space and the large mirrored wall should be a useful aid when rehearsing. As I see it at the moment we will probably be looking to use it for rehearsal by late Feb/early March.

I've done a few more sketches of the comb guys exploring various ideas. I've also been working on a 'mark II' of the closing hand. I'll get some images of it up soon.

On Monday I recorded an audioblog about the Phillipe Genty show I saw last Sunday. Unfortunately I have been having problems with my internet connection, so I am not able to put the audioblog up yet (this is also why there have been so few blog entries this week).

Whilst in London I also met up with an old friend, Ben Jones who is hoping to come and spend a few days in Bristol making puppets with me in the near future. He showed me a plan for a puppet with luminous movable eyes which he had devised, the mechanism he came up with was rather ingenious and hopefully we will have a go at realising it.

Thats it for now, more updates soon

 The turnout for the meeting on Thursday wasn't stellar, consisting of myself and Bee, along with (for a period) Joe who is a creative writer. It was nevertheless very worthwhile to touch base and have an experienced puppeteer handle the puppets and give feedback. It was also a pleasure to examine a couple of Bee's puppets, which moved in a very satisfying way and were of quite a different style to the ones I have thus far fabricated.

After Thursdays meeting I have decided to first develop the comb faced puppet. There is a small range of characters tied into this aesthetic and the theme is plastic enough for us to play around with it. The comb puppet in its current 'sketch' form also has the advantage of needing only two puppeteers, and as Bee and myself are hoping to begin meeting more regularly to work towards a project we can get started with it straight away while we await the expansion of the team.

The image we are are working with at the moment is that this little guy is much smaller and scruffier than the other comb characters, who are taller and more elegant and aristocratic. This small ragged character could have more interaction with the audience perhaps crawling up to them begging for scraps or climbing up their legs. The rod style arms, controlled from the elbow, would allow the possibility of some finger movement, which is what I have been having a play with today.

Expect a slowdown of productivity this weekend, as I am in London for much of it, in order to see Phillipe Genty's 'Ne M'Oublie pas'. I'm very much looking forward to the show and hopefully will have something interesting to say about it on Monday!

I took a headless 3 player Bunraku bottle puppet into work on Monday for the children to play with, they had a great time thinking up different sorts of head it could have, and making their own  from lego and card. They even tried making the body itself into a face, using features drawn on masking tape. They had fun having him 'eat' crayons by putting them into the neck hole until his body filled up, and then he would tip over and 'vomit' them all out! We did some more serious focused puppetry looking at breathing, running and jumping. Some requests I got back where glue on the bolts in some key areas to stop them loosening, and a new head. This is what I have been working on this morning.

I've frankensteined on the head from the extending puppet to the body. I think it suits. I put some bottoms on the feet to reinforce them and give them some weight, they were super basic before.

Its rough build, but the idea of this guy is really just to make a 'crash test puppet' for lack of a better term! Throw him in the mill and see what falls off :)

Thats enough for a school night I think. Lower legs need to be a lot tougher hips need raising higher. Should look at control paddles for feet soon. 

The rattly bits are fun, not enough for the audience to hear I shouldn't think, sadly. But they aught to give good feedback to the performer when the performance calls for rhythmic movement. 

I've played about with a bit of cold forging today (hammering eyed screws flat for the hip sections, middle bottom of the photo). This could be implemented elsewhere, I've been enjoying working with metal this week.

in other news my blog seems to be enjoying centering all my text at the moment. I'll let it have its fun.

I did some playing around with the head. I might go for pliers rather than scissors for the jaw mechanism. The way the scissors close means they are very visible when the mouth is open.

The scissors do hold potential though, if you had paper characters attack a puppet with a scissor mouth..

I have attempted to emulate the way I drew the character, with the eyes both on one side like a flounder. I'm keen on this look but it could potentially cause some challenges (how would she look to the left?) perhaps a set of eyes on both sides? It may be possible to make a mechanism to switch the eyes between different sides of the head.

The arms.. I don't like, they don't flow well and I'm not sure this material suits the character. I might see what can be done with foam, but these will do for testing on Thursday, I should focus on getting the legs done instead.

I have a new idea for a puppet show to share today, I've been giving it a lot of thought over the weekend. Hopefully I can tie together a few themes within it.

I'd like to create a story that explores what it is like to be a creative person. To attempt to generate understanding of how it can be hard to focus on everyday routines and responsibilities when there are stimulating distractions everywhere and one is easily carried off by an ideas and images. It would also be interesting to explore the stop-start nature of creative flow and the effect that can have on how you feel and behave.

The story as it stands revolves around a character with exceptional hearing. She is able to detect the tiniest of sounds and will interpret each new sound imaginatively and creatively. Naturally those around her, who hear nothing, dismiss her pondering and try to shift her focus back to more important things like school/ work/ society ect. The things one must learn to engage with in order to live a normal life.

 Later in the story she builds a costume which generates a variety of strange and interesting sounds. This allows her to explore her talents and follow her ideas, but ultimately distances her from those around her, and she is soon lost dancing in the forest by herself.

This morning I recorded an audio blog about the idea which goes into more detail and has a few bits of music I think might help connect the story together.

Here is a link to the audio blog on soundcloud:
http://soundcloud.com/joelcalvert-1/audio-blog-jan12th-2014

I have also done some drawings of the character in her music suit and have begun assembling a puppet to try out some ideas.

I did a few sketches of Westmoreland house today to develop that idea.

 I read around a bit and it turns out there is a chance it might get demolished soon (although people have been saying that for years). All the more reason to do some sort of project relating to it while its still here! It could even be interesting to have a sequence where the house is demolished and the skeleton (Lenny the high roller) and the crocodile rise out of the rubble. The artwork that gives the building its 'face' is by the graffiti collective 'Burning Candy' who's work can be found elsewhere in Bristol and the UK.

I've also been playing around with inflatables a bit this week. Its early days yet but its been interesting. I don't have a hairdryer around at the moment, so this teaser image will have to do..

You know when your brain wont go to sleep at night and you have a bundle of mad unconnected ideas all at once? When that happens to me I do my best to get a sketchbook in front of me and see what happens. Here are some ideas I came up with last night (apologies for the sketchiness of the drawings, I'll do my best to explain whats going on!)

 The first idea is inspired by Christopher Bauder & Robert Henke's performance Atom : Document
(have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_aH10y367I)

LED lights were put in helium filled white balloons which were then raised and lowered with servos and flashed in conjunction with various sound-scapes.

The sketch is pretty basic but I thought you could make a 'snake' or 'dragon' by linking a series of similar LED illuminated balloons with sections of bamboo. An identical parallel chain of bamboo sticks at the bottom of the balloon strings could then be operated by a team of puppeteers. Perhaps they could have battery packs on their belts that feed power up into the balloons. With good choreography an impressive display could be played out on a hillside at night-time. Sadly I think it would be prohibitively expensive to set up in terms of electronics and helium, but could suit a commission for a night time festival procession or similar.

The next idea also involved inflatables (my brains 'theme' for the night it would seem)

The idea with this one is to make an inflatable 3 player bunraku. At the 6 usual control points are small battery operated fans (those little gif shop ones you can buy in the summer). This would allow the puppeteers to inflate and deflate the puppets appendages at will. The movement of such a puppet would probably be quite interesting to watch, a mixture of control and chaos. The right 'pinching' of the form would be key to make it articulate well. Think balloon modelling.

I came upon this video a number of weeks ago and found it pretty inspiring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6xCT2aTSo

This next doodle is a sequence attempting to mesh inflatables with the comb characters:

Hopefully the drawings read well enough for me to explain. I want to start with a tray of sand or earth (1) and have an inflatable character buried underneath that is then inflated from underneath the stage with a hidden fan or hair-dryer. This would hopefully cause the figure to push up through the substrate (2-3). This would be cool because there would be no operators in sight and hopefully would surprise and mystify the audience for a few seconds. Then a puppeteer would bring a sheet of fabric across the front of the figure (4) and wrap it up (5). Meanwhile the inflatable figure would be deflated  out of sight and removed. The fabric would then be used to form a simple 1 player comb character comprised of simple elements that could be concealed behind the cloth.

I didn't sketch out my final idea, I just mused about it so its a bit more formless. On Stokes Croft there is a large abandoned building called Westmoreland House. Most people who have lived in Bristol for a while will be familiar with it, its one of our cultural landmarks.

The combination of collapsing architecture, abstract text and giant characters is sumptuous and appealing, I've had a special affection for the building for a long time. The idea would be to make a model of the building from airbrushed mattress foam around a model board skeleton. The various faces on the building could then be operated by puppeteers, coughing up miniature bags of rubbish and skateboards, eating seagulls or fighting amongst themselves.

A friend of mine is developing an 'anti-pantomime' piece about an artist moving to Bristol on a journey of self discovery, ultimately getting mixed up in the drug scene and losing his way. He asked if I might be able to incorporate a short puppetry interlude during set changes. Perhaps I'll run this idea past him.

Thats all for now, its been a lengthy post so thank you for soldiering through it. As always any feedback on ideas and work is really helpful and greatly appreciated.

Took the Comb Guy to work today for the kids to play with and they loved it! This is going to be a good way for me to watch how my puppets move and function from an audience standpoint, I'll definitely get them testing a few more for me. I was pleased with how durable it was (although I'll look into bolting the control rods into the arms and replacing the internals of the head with wood. Quite a number of the children took turns operating it in pairs and in threes and a lot of spontaneous little sequences sprung up. One group even rehearsed a sequence to show their parents. It involved the puppet pushing a pencil around on a table and accidently dropping it off the edge of the table. Upon cautiously peering over the table a giant (child's) hand sprung up and surprised it, making it fall over backwards. They also experimented with having the puppet move about in inventive ways, such as crawling, jumping and walking on its hands. I'm looking forward to seeing how much further I can integrate puppetry into the sessions, there are certainly some talented little performers getting a lot out of it so far!

I made a mock up for the two player comb face bunraku puppet. It seems to work alright so far, I'm happy with it. Hopefully tomorrow I can grab someone to try it out with.
I'm bidding on some some carved wooden combs on eBay to use for the puppets head.
The hands on the final puppet might end up being wire and latex.
 Hopefully in the week I'll be adding some fabric to it to see how affects the puppets movement.
 I'm anticipating the tricky bit will be covering it all up and still making it possible to access all the nuts and bolts when the puppet needs adjusting.

I did some more drawings for one of the 'Junk and refuse' characters I have been developing recently.

The idea of this guy is that he hides by collapsing his head into his body. I like the idea of having his legs collapse into his body as well, but I think this might be a little over complex to achieve. I thought instead it might be better for him to have very long thin legs instead, so when he collapses his head and folds his arms he looks like a water tower or a strange tree. Avoiding collapsible legs would allow me space in the body cavity to build a breathing mechanism, so he can breathe heavily when he is 'hiding'. In the top right corner of the above image there's a sketch of how this might work. I made a little test breathing mechanism:

It worked reasonably well, i think the foam needs to be more domed so the movement is more obvious. One of the things I need to work hard on is an array of different breathing mechanisms for puppets. I went to a wonderful workshop at the Bristol Festival of Puppetry run by Tom Morris and Tobi Olie (who were both heavily involved with Handspring Puppet Company's 'War Horse'). They emphasized the importance of breath in puppetry performance, both as a subtle movement picked up subconsciously by the audience and as an anchor for helping the coordination of the puppeteers. Later in the festival I had some of my part finished puppets tested out by Bee Daws and Kellie Rickell of Effigy, who suggested I work on some breathing mechanisms. Ive had a few other ideas for ways of doing this that I will perhaps do a post on later.

While I was doing the foam breathing mechanism I also made this blinking eye:

I intended to develop this for the extending puppet so he could have heavy looking, slow blinking eyes, but i worry about how easily it would read and ay opt for eyes that light up instead. This would fit well with the idea of him being some kind of robot.

This is the stage he is at at the moment:

He's been like this for a couple of weeks, I aught to settle on some design decisions soon.

I was doing some research last night into the history of Afro combs, as well as the anthropology of combs in general. The aesthetic of the comb has interested me for a while. Here are some drawings I did a few years back:

I wondered about combining these aesthetics with some of the ideas I had been exploring relating to African mask dancing and possession ceremonies among the Dogon and Yoruba tribes. Within the framework of puppetry of course. So I did some sketches to explore the idea of making some 'comb- face' puppets:

I thought it could be interesting to play around with putting mirrors behind the teeth of the combs or have lights illuminate faces concealed by the combs. It might also be interesting (and perhaps a little creepy) to have something like a curtain made of hair that the characters emerge from by combing their faces through it. In any case the 'comb-face' characters have been knocking around in my head for a while and it would be nice to make something out of it at some point.

 As an interesting side note the image of the comb also resonates with that of the Mbira, an African instrument I have been learning to play over the last few months. I think the sound and character of the music could work for puppetry and I have a few ideas in that vein that I will discuss in more detail in a later post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWmWk8uv-I 

Conker puppets at christmas

While out walking with family over Christmas my cousin collected a bagful of conkers (a little out of season!) upon bringing them back she asked me if we could make something with them so we got out my sketchbook and made up some drawings.

I drew up a little dragon marionette that followed a similar idea to a caterpillar fashioned from egg boxes which I had made earlier that year with some children at a playcenter. She followed my lead and drafted a marionette of a dragonfly. We had a lot of fun thinking about patterns and color and what sort of movements we wanted to achieve.

These are the finished puppets:

For the record, hot glue is not an ideal method for attaching Fimo to conkers... I think superglue with foam or felt would have got us a much more durable result. It was a fun little project though and a nice activity I can adapt for playwork next autumn.

Milk Bottle Puppets

Over the past few years I have made a number of puppets masks and sculptures using plastic milk bottles. The combination of interesting shapes, along with the flexibility and durability of the plastic makes them perfect for making simple puppets.

Recently I have been working towards making a selection of Bunraku style puppets based around plastic packaging, here are a couple of experiments:

To begin a new puppet I first make a set of paper templates, pinning them to a piece of wood to test the motion of joints.

Then I was able to pin the templates to milk bottles using the holes made from this testing process. Once the pieces are cut out these holes serve as a guide for drilling holes for bolts.

This is a Knight puppet I made as a Christmas present. Its not really a fully functional puppet, and is intended more as an ornament. It was useful for refining my technique, and as usual I was able to find some fun ways of combining the natural elements of the bottles!

I was particularly pleased with how the feet turned out. Each is made up of 4 separate plastic elements, spaced with nuts and washers along the bolt to give them a layered armor plating effect.

I have been collecting a number of different plastic bottles and tubs whenever its recycling day, so it wont be long before there are some new characters.