This week I have been making numerous modifications to the 'Legs' puppet (above) including lengthening the legs and more recently beginning to steadily lighten the puppet.

In this photo you can see that I have drilled holes in the puppets head to approximate hair as well as refining the shapes of various features and adding ears. I intend to reshape the top of the head and hollow out the inside as best I can to further reduce the weight as this is the heaviest part of him. I also want to rethink the neak as I'm not happy with it. As you can see I have also replaced the knee joints with leather. One of the plastic bottle joints in the knees failed so I did a rethink. I will replace the elbow joints with leather as well. He also has a control handle on his back which I have since reduced in size to better accommodate the 'Arms' puppet which interfaces somewhat humorously with it.

You can see the Arms guy taking shape in this photo from the studio. I've done a bit more work on him now. Hopefully both characters will be somewhat workable by Tuesday night for rehearsals.

This is a little mock up of the island where the Arms guy lives. It is essentially a pile of rocks which form a set of platforms on which the puppet can stand. A washing line stretches between two posts and a buoy.

I mentioned in my last post that we made some videos with the newspaper puppets, here they are:

The newspaper puppets were great to work with, really lightweight and flexible. They wore out pretty quickly though and I was glad of the string I had strung through them. We worked through a couple of little sequences and broke them down into separate little movements. We focused mainly on the Legs puppet and looked at getting up from sitting, getting from the chair to the floor and lunging.

This is a mock up I made on Saturday night, as sadly I wasn't able to retrieve the puppets from the workshop. The baby legs are a bit of a pain when you aren't controlling them directly as they just want to curl towards each other, but I like the head. In fact we are thinking we might smooth it out and use it on the actual puppet, or at least base the puppets head on this sculpt.

Yesterday (Sunday) we tested this guy out, here is the video:

He has a lot of character! I'm not sure if it was the more definite face on this puppet that helped direct the performance or the material construction and articulation, but his character really unfurled during these tests a lot more than it did during the tests with the newspaper version. We devised  a number of little sequences to explore how the puppet could be made to tackle different tasks

before constructing a mock up of his little island and filming a little section of the play that Bee had story boarded. Sadly something went wrong with the camera and the footage is too blurred to read properly.

The development and growth of the characters seems to come along with every rehearsal, in step with my growing confidence  working with the puppets. I look forward to looking through more tests over the coming weeks as we step up the amount of time we spend in rehearsal each week.

Tomorrow, or should I perhaps say later today Bee and I will be back in the workshop where I'll be able to have a proper look through the storyboards she has been working on. We aught to name the characters and the piece soon, I never know how to refer to them!

I also did a puppet workshop at BRAC on thursday, where the children and I made some simple marrionettes from recyclable junk. These were based on construction techniques from Alice Whites brilliant 'Preforming Toys' books released by Mills and Boon in the early seventies. I'll try and get some pictures of those up soon and some more info on the books.

This week I have been at Puppet Place working on the new show. Here's a couple of pictures of the space:

 I spent Monday and Tuesday making newspaper 'sketches' of the two characters, one big set and one smaller set. At lunchtime on the Tuesday I went for lunch with a group of puppet builders from Rusty Squid who have been working on a large interactive display at the Bristol Central Library

Click here for a video of the 'Book Hive' by Rusty Squid, including a short interview with David McGoran explaining how the project was conceived. 

On Tuesday Bee and I did some trial runs with the newspaper puppets, quickly discarding the larger more unwieldy puppets for the smaller scale versions. This scale offers more scope and comfort, as well as avoiding the 'puppets walking on the floor of the stage' issue, which Cris Pirie explained at the workshop on Saturday.  When a puppet walks on the floor much of the action ends up hidden from the audience unless you are sitting in the front row. Working on a raised set will be much easier with smaller puppets. The 'legs' guy measures up at about a foot and a half, and the 'arms' guy about a foot tall (with arms of nearly two and a half feet in length). 

We came out with some lovely bits of movement, and really broke it down on a few things and made strong progress. I'm really happy with how the performance aspect is coming along. Sadly I don't have the videos from the session with me at the moment, but hopefully I will be able to put them up here soon in one form or another. Bee also did some sketches exploring some costume ideas for the puppets:

Working largely from these I sketched a few more designs myself later that evening.

Wednesday was kinda rained off, but I used the opportunity to stock up on materials for making wooden armatures for the puppets and bits and bobs to begin set fabrication. 

On Thursday I was able to stay late at the workshop with Dik Downey of Pickled Image, He and his team are working on some large scale puppets for a show in London and I was able to pitch in and assist them for a while. I made good progress on the Legs puppet over Thursday and Friday, here are some Images of him so far:

 There are a few things that need doing on this puppet still, including perhaps lengthening the shins a little (they do look a little off don't they?) and finishing the head and hands. It sure is lovely to be able to build with wood at a good speed, since leaving John Wright Modelmaking I've missed doing machine work. For Monday and Tuesday next week Bee is coming in so we might get started on some set stuff. Here are some bits and bobs of set stuff I drew out:

 You'll have to pardon the lack of plot exposition as there is a lot to touch on, perhaps when we have a semi final treatment of the play written out I'll put it up.

I've booked the space for another week to give us a bit more time there. More updates soon!

Well its been a while again! But a lot has been happening. I've been waiting to get back the camera which had the puppet tests Bee and I filmed on the 6th of February. We only really ended up with one take as it got late, we were trying some more complex set and lighting stuff. Here it is:

I also have some good/bad news. The bad news is we will have to shelve this show for the time being, the good news is we are shelving it because we have a commission to do a show for a school! It will be my first bit of paid puppetry work so its pretty exciting. They are asking for two 20 minute shows, each for 200 children.

For this one I want two bring in two Japanese folk characters, Ashinaga and Tenaga (or long legs and long arms)

In other news I attended Green Ginger's 'An Introduction to Puppetry Manipulation with Chris Pirie' on Sunday. It was a fabulous workshop and I would recommend attending any of Chris's workshops, having also attended his Trash Hack workshop last year. Tomorrow morning (well at about 10am today) I will be starting my residency at Puppet place where I will be renting studio space till the 18th. I feel honored to be able to work along side Green ginger in the workshop, as well as Rusty Squid and Pickled Image, who are all producers of superb puppets and puppet shows. I'll make sure to keep posting about my experiences there over the next few days.

Over the weekend I have been making some more set pieces for the practice set. My thought here is to use 'quick and cheap' materials to rough out set components, play around with them and get a feel of how they function both aesthetically and functionally alongside the puppets. Successful pieces can then be made from MDF and properly decorated.

 I started out with a page of potential shapes:

 I've started with shapes P and Q. You won't see Q in the photos as it is in the garage drying, I'm trying out a mixture of PVA and woodchip for texturing the surface.

In response to the puppet testing last Thursday I thought it would be interesting to create a set of steps leading to a platform. This would give the comb guy some terrain to navigate. It also allows us to place more buildings in the foreground without obscuring the puppet, so we can build more of a city scape.

Here's where I'm at as of this evening:

I've Also been fixing the puppet up a bit, with thicker cotton for the wrist mechanisms (along with a new kind of knot so see if that helps). I also added some squishy pads on the palms to protect the wrist mechanics when he walks on his hands.

White might also help make the hands more visible during performance.


 I thought it would be interesting to have two figures shaking hands or sat opposite one another at a table. Tiny cities in each of their heads represent their thought process, personality, drives ect. Between them a third city is built up as a kind of 'dialogue' between the two figures. Perhaps this could represent the unspoken communication that might lie underneath a simple gesture like shaking hands. For example if two business partners finalize a deal or two friends part ways. Under the surface a war wages both internally in each figures head and externally in the void separating the two.

(If I turned this into a piece I don't think I would color divide the buildings or space as explicitly, the performance should speak for itself.)

If I merge the current concept for the play with this image I would probably have to start almost from scratch, but at the moment I'm giving it careful thought.

I have my induction at Puppet Place on Tuesday morning, so tomorrow night Bee and I will meet up to discuss the project and nail a few things down in order to come up with a treatment of the project to present to Chris and Rachel at the induction.