Spooky Shorts for Halloween

To help get in the mood for the haunting season, here are some of my favorite spooky shorts. Enjoy!

First, Tim Burton's brilliant stop-motion film Vincent (1982), made while he was an animator with Disney, and his original (and in my opinion superior) live-action version of Frankenweenie from 1984:




Next, the musical puppet short Graveyard Jamboree with Mysterious Mose (1999) by the wildly talented Screen Novelties:




This Oscar nominated short, The Sandman (1991) by Paul Berry, an animator for Cosgrove Hall and later The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, was based on a tale by E.T.A. Hoffman:




The nightmarish short The Cat With Hands (2001) by Robert Morgan (for those interested, there's also an earlier animated pilot version):




Lastly, The Listening Dead (2006) by Phil Mucci. Check out the "making-of" video to see more on the scale model and puppet shots:



Happy haunting!

Jim Henson Shorts

Jim Henson would have turned 77 last week. On what would have been his birthday, the Henson Company released "Drums West," a recently discovered short animated film made by Jim in 1961. I love the brief footage at the end of Jim at his paper-covered work table in the midst of making the film. Here are more of my favorite Jim Henson film experiments:

"Time Piece"

Made in 1964-65, Jim wrote, directed and starred in this surreal 9 minute short which was nominated for an Academy Award.

"Idea Man"

An experimental short from 1966, animated and narrated by Jim Henson.

Test footage for The Dark Crystal:
Early tests for the Podling puppets.


Tests for a rock puppet made by Cheryl Henson in 1979.


Testing early Gelfling puppets, Mystics and other forest creatures at Jim Henson's home in New York, 1978.

Finally, one of my favorite shorts from Sesame Street, produced in 1970 by Jim Henson and directed by Frank Oz, who also built the amazing contraption:
Another version with an alternate ending is here.

The Steam Powered Man

One of my best friends and a proper gentleman, Max Humphries, was on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday as part of Antony Gormley's One & Other project. A different person will stand on the plinth every hour, 24 hours a day for 100 days to make a "living portrait" of the UK.


In case you might have missed it (as I did because I was traveling) you can watch Max's full hour on the plinth dressed as a steam powered robot on the One & Other site.




See more pictures and find out about the design and construction process over on the Brass Goggles Steampunk Forum.




...and there are more pictures over on Ms. Steele's Flickr account.

I'm so proud!

puppets and knitting

Today some friends and I went to see a puppet version of The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre. My friend Max helped build several bits of the set, and the audience was full of excited kids and happy adults. We had a great time; the performers seemed to be having a wonderful time, too. The Little Angel has been going for more than 50 years, but recently the Arts Council of England cut its funding. Earlier this month the British Theatre Guide published an article on the reasons (*cough* Olympics *cough*) and effects of this cut, which can be read here. Despite funding cuts and recent economic worries it's heartening to see a theatre manage to keep going through donations and fundraising.

In knitting news, today I was given a flier for my friend Fi's knitting festival, Unravel, which will be held in The Farnham Maltings in February. Fi is a fantastic knitter and designer, and I can't wait to see what she's put together. Today I also swung by Loop to pick up the right size circular needle so I can knit a hat with the yarn I bough in Maryland this summer:


The color makes me very happy!

To round out my puppetry/knitting day, I've been watching Wool 100%, a Japanese film about two elderly sisters who take in a feral, obsessively knitting girl. It features wild knitting, puppets, an accordion and a very fetching pair of silver Louise Brooks haircuts.

catching up...

I've gotten out of the habit of writing here even though I have had things to say. Last week I celebrated my birthday (I'm as old as Star Wars in case anyone wonders), and spent the day at Mudchute City Farm. We saw cows, sheep, llamas, pigs of varying sizes and breeds, happy free range chickens, horses, feisty big goats and feisty little goats. We also had a worrying run-in with a psychotic squirrel, but we didn't let him spoil our day. It was lovely and strange to find fields and woodland and animals right in the middle of the city.

The farm also has a very tasty cafe, which was serving still-warm freshly baked carrot cake when we were visiting. Mmmmmmmmm.

On the way home we ran into this Halloweeny fellow:

I also received a wonderful home made dark chocolate and Marsala cake for my birthday, making it a two-cake day. Not too shabby.

Today I had the amazing opportunity to tour the sets and workshops for Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation film Fantastic Mr. Fox. Having signed a confidentiality agreement I am not allowed to say anything about what I've seen, but suffice to say the people working on it are very, very talented and the tour was incredible for a design/modelmaking/puppetry geek like me. What we were allowed to see was fantastic indeed and I cannot wait until it comes out.

strange creatures

With the combination of one of my housemates arriving home late and noisy every night this week and the workmen across the street starting too early, I've not been sleeping well. Last night I had a very disturbing dream about a group of cat-sized rodents nesting in my bedroom. They had humps like camels, tails like water rats and clawed, webbed feet. I wonder what the humps were for?


(image - Matthew Robins)

Tonight I'm going to watch Matthew Robins perform his "science fiction opera" The Death of Flyboy at the National Theatre, with shadow puppets projected on the fly-tower and live musical accompaniment. Listen to some of Matthew's music here. If you're in London you should come along.

red letter days

For the past two weeks or so I've been reworking my portfolio, traveling, stressing out and interviewing (as well as getting to see friends I don't see often). The result is that I found out on Tuesday I've been awarded a place on a professional development program for puppetry and puppetry-related disciplines. It's being run by the fantastic Green Ginger company in collaboration with the Puppet Centre Trust and several other theatre companies and arts groups. Funding was provided by the Leverhulme Trust, which is funded, among other things, by sales of Marmite.



mmmm..Marmite. Tasty and good for puppetry!

On the very same day my best friend found out he has been given an allotment. This may not seem like a big deal to those of you not living in London, but in the city waiting lists for allotments can be up to five years long, and he got his in less than five days. He is now the proud tender of a plot of land the size of a tennis court. I'm happy because it's near some wild blackberry bushes, and Ben makes fantastic jam. I've almost eaten the last batch he made me and I've had the jar less than a week. Yummy!

dancing pigs in charity shops

A few days ago I found the most wonderful book in my local Oxfam about the 1971 ballet film Tales of Beatrix Potter. It contains a script for the film as well as background on the development of the production. My favorite part details the creation of the costumes, which were co-designed by Christine Edzard, who also directed The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream, and artist Rotislav Doboujinsky, who designed and built the stunning animal masks. I love this quote on Doboujinsky's working practice:

"Doboujinsky works at his own pace - and to his own standard of perfection. 'Now and again I have found no good solution to a problem,' he says. 'Then I renounce,' - renounce not compromise. He must almost have renounced Hunca Munca; thirteen times that winter he made her mask and it was not until February 1970 that, with the fourteenth attempt he was satisfied."

The characters were all performed by dancers from the Royal Ballet. Below are pictures of Jeremy Fisher, who has the most fantastic stripy-stockinged legs, Mrs. Tittlemouse and Johnny Town-Mouse, several waltzing mice, the foxy "sandy-whiskered gentleman", Pigling Bland and friends on a picnic, and a group of extra tails.










Construction materials included:

"60 yards of paper for tails
5 lbs pig bristles - half white - prepared solid, product of Poland
Gallons of various glues
Bags and bags of feathers - marabou, duck feathers, swan feathers
12 pairs of artificial hands (hired) on which to fit paws
Marbles: ping-pong balls : sugar basins"

..and a Van de Graaff generator for affixing animal hair to glue-covered masks!

Isn't it delightful?

Pirat

..a short Czech animation by Jan Bubeníček and Bretislav Pojar. I'm such a sucker for pirates. And puppet films. A pirate puppet film, ahhh...

Part one:


Part two:


Apologies for being quiet, but it's been so sunny and I've been up to my elbows in pulp and wire and epoxy.

(note: the videos seem to be down, but check out clips from Pirat here and here, and Jan Bubeníček's lovely director's reel here!)

noodleheads, nincompoops, mooncalfs, ninnyhammers & fools

"The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly."
-Erasmus

When I was little one of my favorite books was an edition of The Wise Men of Gotham, retold and illustrated by Malcolm Carrick. The people of Gotham were said to have feigned foolishness to keep King John from staying in their village in the 13th century. The stories recount villagers drowning eels, sending rent away tied to a hare, failing to trap a cuckoo in a hedge and other misadventures.

The book is silly and wonderful and had an incredible smell the way some books do, a bit like a mature cheese. When I was very small I somehow thought this was because one of the tales was about a man rolling his cheeses down a hill in the belief they would take themselves to market. This and other Gotham tales can be read on Project Gutenberg.

Another story about a fool who is not entirely foolish is the Russian fairy tale The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. It is about a simple young man who wins the hand of the Tsar's daughter with a flying ship and the help of a strange band of travelers. Here is the first part of a 1990 stop motion puppet version by Cosgrove Hall:

A full version of the story can be read here.

Happy April Fool's Day to you!

puppet-o-rama

I'm in the process of cooking paper pulp to sculpt some figures. While it's boiling I'm trying to make some armatures, which would be easier to do if my studio wasn't shaking from the building opposite being torn down. They seem to be keeping the facade, which is good, but replacing artists' studios with trendy housing is a dreadful shame.

I found this virtual tour of puppeteer Ronnie Burkett's studio the other day. It's fantastic! I'm not a fan of marionettes, but he is an incredible maker. His heads are beautiful..


from Ronnie Burkett's 10 Days on Earth

I also learned that Sesame Workshop has launched a video site on which you can watch hundreds of clips from Sesame Street. Hooray!

whiffle bats

I got the rage this afternoon after trying for several painful hours to fix my computer. I spoke to an unhelpful tech-type person who did nothing but make me want to beat him and others of his ilk senseless with a whiffle bat. I ended up spending the afternoon watching Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief in defeat. This evening, however, I went to see Faulty Optic's Dead Wedding at the Barbican with music by Mira Calix.. it was wonderful.


Orpheus, from Dead Wedding

day old kelp

Omar's Mother, a great short puppet film by Puppet Heap:

Also check out their shadow puppet short Ye Ballade of Ivan Petrofsky Skevar. Really wonderful stuff.

Thursday

(illus. by Edward Gorey, 1994)

(my new old 1920s kimono)

We're deep into the post-Christmas lazy days here. Today I'm going to a screening of Jim Henson's fantastic puppet film Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas at the arts center and then to a VIP tour of the Jim Henson exhibition. I got lots of knee socks for Christmas.. I know it sounds boring, but I'm really excited about them.

boring boring boring

I finally got to leave the house today after spending days in bed feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. Being stuck in bed is boring, and not having the energy to sit up for very long is even more boring. My brain feels like mush. Boring boring boring. I missed a talk about about the puppet construction for War Horse this week as well as meeting up for coffee with a fellow puppet designer. I did get to have a very nice lunch out today, and got to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D... doesn't make up for days in bed, but it's a start.

more on War Horse

Michael Billington has written a very positive review in the Guardian of War Horse at the National, along with a series of pictures on the Guardian website. They're lovely, but what's really stunning about the puppets is the way they move.. you can see some small snippets in a video on this site.

puppets and squeezeboxes

I was lucky enough to get to see a preview performance of War Horse at the National last night, which was staged in association with the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa, who created life-sized horse puppets, as well as a number of smaller animals, human figures and shadow puppets for the show. The horses are some of the most stunning puppets I have ever seen, and their movement was so beautiful it made me cry. The show also features choral singing, a melodeon and a bicycle on stage (one of my favorite things). It was one of the best pieces of theatre I've seen in a long while, and well worth seeing if you can.

Images from past Handspring shows:

Tooth and Nail


Ubu and the Truth Commission

(more images from Handspring shows can be found here)

In celebrity-spotting news, we sat next to Harish Patel at the theatre last night, and Ben saw Colin Meloy of the Decemberists busking with his accordion on the South Bank this morning.

How Siegfired Slayed the Dragon

Much too sleepy to sort through pictures from my parents' visit, so you'll have to make do with some footage from Fritz Lang's 1924 film version of Die Nibelungen

is this a squirrel I see before me?

This arrived in the post yesterday. Yes, that is a bomb, and yes, he is wearing a little black cape.. dastardly! Max made him for me as a belated moving in present, and he is making himself at home in my studio alongside Captain Bundle (also made by Max) who can be seen relaxing below.

Now I have to decide what to name him...

Muppet newsflash.. this just in

I somehow managed to arrive at this ripe old age without seeing the Muppets parodying Bergman in Silent Strawberries, an oversight I plan to rectify as soon as humanly possible.



(thanks to Ben for the tipoff)