30/10/2018 - EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD - EXHIBITION PROPOSAL

My proposal for the exhibition by Louisa Marriott:

24/10/2018 - DRAWING WORKSHOP

This workshop was a bit of a weird one for me as I felt it lacked direction. On all the other previous workshops on the course, there was a brief which I felt galvinised the group into producing outcomes which were thought provoking and challenging. This however felt more like a nostalgic reminder on the existance of simple drawing techniques which, for me in my practice personally, had never been forgotten in the first place.

ONGOING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE - MOOSEY ART

My duties at Moosey are slowly scaling up in responsibility and requirements as I get involved in larger areas of professional practice in the business. I have also been trying to streamline our practice and make it more inkeeping with my personal views as we go. I convinced Frazer to change over to biodegradable potato starch packing peanuts from the expanded polymer foam type we were using previously. Even small changes like this can have a big impact as corporate contributions to climate change and plastic waste are in fact the most detrimental of all, far far far outweighing any contribution achievable in the habits of a single person. This makes implementations like this of the most paramount importance, and also makes me feel like I am following my ethos in as many areas of my creative practice as possible.

As well as this, part of my work with Moosey involves creative problem solving and negotiation to achieve the high standards we strive for whilst also working to a intensive and constantly evolving program of artists, prints and exhibitions.

11/10/2018 - LARGER VELOCIRAPTOR PUPPET

So after my experimentation with puppetmaking and a visit to the puppet theatre I wanted to try and get a bit more creative with my design. The particular thing I was interested in, was the seperate control bar feature in allowing precise control of head and body movements. I also felt intruiged by Molly's use of felt feathers in Rainbow Goose as a way of increasing surface texture and realism, and a Velociraptor felt like a good place to explore feathers from within the dinosaur kingdom.

In this puppet I also wanted to dramatically increase the parts and complexity, segmenting the form to allow for extra flexibility and movement. Working as before to sculpt the head before anything else, and embed the string foremost to increase strength, I also used the flexibility of plastecine and felt to simply embed each feather one by one along the scalp. 

I split the neck into 3 parts to allow it to flex and bend more easily much like a true velociraptor's, which would be particularly effective when the head is also mounted on a control bar of it's own. I was reffering back to my t-rex puppet at points to look at exactly where each thread enterred and left each piece, but also knew when the time came to the legs, I would have to create them differently to represent the unique shape of velociraptor.

Looking at reference images, I realised the leg was made of 3 sections which could flex in quite a variety of unique ways to run and jump, aswell as tear at food, attack and slash, with the largest muscular part the thigh to power the long jumping strides, and the thinner, strong boney lower sections, scalier and full of sinews and tendons for bolt like effectiveness.

The only thing that I knew would be more problematic with these puppets was leg action, as without a control mechanism running from the bottom of the foot,they would be prone to spinning and losing control. To counteract this I extra-weighted them with metal bolts in each foot and also a strip of felt on the lower knee joint to hopefully lessen spinning.

Before connecting the legs to the body I was able to test the movement of the main torso by holding them in the air, allowing me to look at the neck and head proportion and check the puppet puppet had character.

The next step was to add a tail, which I had also fletched in felt, and was segmented from the rest of the body, and the legs. It had almost entirely taken shape by this point.

All I had left to do was add arms and fletch them, and in this picture you can see the two different control bars between the body and head a bit more clearly.  After that the puppet was complete. Leg operation was a bit clunky and problematic during the walk cycle, however when stood still the puppet could bounce up and down on the spot, and looked very effective.

What also had worked incredibly well was the implementation of soft sections and different colours and tones to increase the lifelikeness. As well as the comprehension of movement along the tail, neck and head, giving additional life the dancing bobbing motions in the video at the pottom of this post. I think if I can perfect the leg locomotion, this could be a very convincing puppet indeed.

 Please scroll to the bottom for a video

6/10/2018 - PUPPET THEATRE VISIT

After working through the initial possibilities for puppet formation in plastecine, tinfoil and fabric, as we live in Norwich we decided the next logical step was to go for a look around the Norwich Puppet Theater. The only Puppet Theatre in the UK, and one of just three operational facilities around the entirety of Europe! We were so well placed with this rare institution, so we knew we had to make a point of going along!

Initially when we arrived it seemed as if nobody was home, and we were then picking up a leaflet and turning to leave when a man appeared and offered to give us a tour.

We explained to him about our plans for the project and he seemed very enthusiastic. We discussed a bit about puppetry in modern times, and how peoples perception of puppetry has developed over time, from a greatly celebrated historical artform, until the last decade puppetry decreased in popularity and was mainly relegated to seafront Punch and Judy and the occasional niche aspect of theatre. However currently there is a new focus on puppetry in modern media such as festival and carnival as well as for special effects, for example in the new Star Wars franchise where CGI was mainly forsaken in favour of physical puppetry and makeup techniques (to a much more convincing end).

Around the room was a massive display of hung puppets, which were already inspiring new thoughts for our own efforts, such as a pair of ostrich puppets above the door which had a control bar that split into two sections to allow the body & head to be operated seperately to the legs, thus allowing the head to look of it's own accord, and the legs act more convincingly.

 Our guide was visibly excited by our enthusiasm for the topic, and after giving us a brief tour of the venue, he then introduced us Zara Goodfellow, the creative outreach coordinator for the theatre. With this our visual tour became a lot more hands on as she began to take puppets of interest down from the walls around of us and allow us to have a go and fully explore their operation.

First we were introduced to a small human puppet which was interesting because of the different possibilities of movement. A central axel ran up the middle of the body which allowed the head and body to rotate seperately, allowing the neck to turn without an actual seperation between the two parts. As well as this the legs and arms were double hinged with structured slots which operated differently to my string hinges in allowing movement to only occur across a particular arch of mobility, as opposed to my dinosaurs where their string joints allowed the legs to swing and flex in almost any direction. These limitations on movement gave this puppet a better sense of realism and weight, and is something that would be interesting to explore in my own prototypes.

The next puppet we had a go with was a very minimalistic but incredibly effective wolf puppet. It was so interesting to see the different methods used to achieve a variety of effects for different characters. This wolf had no legs and consisted mainly of only three parts, the head, chest and back/tail, however was still very convincing and lifelike. In doing this it was easy to suppose that someone had observed the wolf, and through a process of reduction, distilled it to its most essential forms whilst still maintaining believability. And it was certainly highly believable.

As well as moving along it's central body, the wolf mouth was also controllable which heightened it's relatablity, allowing it to emote to a watcher more easily. As well as this, the body really interested me, as it was actually a hollow wire form threaded through all over with rag fabrics to give it the appearence of being solid. This greatly decreased the overall weight, and also produced a soft surface finish like Molly explored in her rainbow bird. This puppet was on sticks instead of strings, which also allowed for much more concise and purposeful movements.  I think for our intentions, sticks would also be much hardier when transported and used at festivals, and prevent tangling and breakage.

Finally we were allowed to try the beautiful, antique and incredibly crafted horse puppet from a glass display cabinet in the workshop room. This piece was amazingly functional, utilizing both strings and sticks for a broad spectrum of movement, as well as a detatching head pole to allow the horse to look independently of it's body, with a magnet set into it's mouth to allow it to pick up and hold objects such as it's very own rose.

The way this puppet used legs was also of great interest, it's feet were well weighted which meant you could very easily feel when they were properly connecting with the floor, which helped in operation. Even though it was much more complicated than any of the other puppets we had tried, due to it's craftsmanship, I feel like with practice it could be mastered. However it was very heavy, which is where I believed aspects of the hollow wolf puppet could also be employed to reduce the stamina required for lengthy puppetry.

Our visit to the puppet theatre had given us so much food for thought about further ways we could develop our experiments! We stopped to chat some more with Zara before we left, and she told us about Tin House, a Norwich based community arts organisation specialising in street theatre including the large freestanding elephant puppets at the Lord Mayors Procession this year. I thought these people might be perfect to contact.

5/10/2018 - FOUR LEGGED MARIONETTE

As a further experiment onto the puppets I had already created, I wanted to explore a four legged form. At this stage I didn't really have any expectations for functionality at this early stage, but simply wanted to make the first step towards multiple moving parts.

Still working with my simple crossbar controls, however this time with two crosses instead of one, I decided once again to use a dinosaur form of a Styractosaurus for it's recognisable shape.

I strung the legs together in much the same way as the other prototypes, however to give extra strength to each component dispite the growing complexity I also started to embed extra supports into each section to prevent the string from slipping through, as had become a bit of a problem in the other prototypes.






I really liked the movement possible with a greater number of animate parts, as it seemed to give the puppet a crawling gait which, although was quite unlike the movements of a dinosaur, definitely had a dynamism of it's own. Myself and my housemates immediately remarked on the alien nature of this movement as we made the little creature slink and clamber around the living room.

Once again though I found myself fascinated by the subtleties in movement from one puppet to another. Already my housemates said how this one had an entirely different character to the other two legged ones I had previously created. But the four legged design definitely needed a lot of fine tuning and was going to be more complicated to perfect. 

However operating each of the legs individually on a double cross frame was very complex as it was difficult to get each leg moving independently and convincingly, so I knew that to get multiple leg mechanisms a different control technique would need to be used.

As this was collaboratory experimentation with Molly Taylor, she was also working on forms in plasticine, however quickly became frustrated with the medium. We decided she should then try making a fabric based puppet, as this is the material she is most comfortable with working with, and we were interested to see how fabric would change the properties and possibilities of the puppets.

So she created Rainbow Goose from felt and calico with weighted plasticine feet. The softer materials gave another element of believability to the puppets movement and also effectively represented a more naturalistic form in a step away from dinosaurs. Layering felt feathers also give the piece a bit more visual depth. I think the greatest strengths could come from combining elements of fabric and solid material to allow manoeuvrability as well as rigidity of form.

3/10/2018 - TWO LEGGED MARIONETTES

With a view to getting into simple puppet formation, I purchased a simple 'Baby Bird Marionette' to study its workings and generally get a working idea of how to create one myself.