hollymoortonpuppetry

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FINAL FILM! Alistair Phillibuster!

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the final threeeee

my final puppets, aren’t they colourful!!! i have to say this has been the most fun experience, i am so glad i got a chance to create and make in a completely new way, i am over the moon with my puppets and glad i now have this skill under my belt and would love more than anything to continue making puppets! especially for my future film projects. 

these are my complete puppets, i am still working on the thin foam head but these are the three i completed and am extremely happy with, creating these characters with my film in mind has been an exciting and stressful journey, i am so happy with the end results and am so happy to have a nice little puppet family.

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my current story board for alistair phillibuster, there is a lot of shots in it, it is quite fast paced but it is looking goooood

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Here is my Alistair Phillibuster scripts, a story originally written by my brother in which we found together and then completed and perfected it together, I have a voice recording of him telling the story dramatically which I would love to include as a voice over for the story, all i need to do now is storyboard!!

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Alistair Phillibuster 

so i have this story written by my brother, it’s a story i’ve always been drawn to, it’s so simple, i just love it, we found it together and then decided to complete it and perfect it, he then went on to do this..

This a dramatic reading/perfomance my brother did for me, it is perfect, very theatrical, it is performed in a very comedic way which is why I would love to somehow incorporate and include this video in my piece.

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this was a completely random story i wrote during my last film project (for my course moving image), i never actually pursued this story, however, i did go further and based my projects around periods, i created animations in which i uploaded to instagram.. anyways.. that’s not important, i felt this story was worth posting, i have a very casual/informal writing style and feel it fits in perfectly with my childlike aesthetic of work. 

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Alice (1988) Jan Švankmajer

“Tim Burton's Alice has nothing on Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer's Alice, a 1988 adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." Wildly weird and inventively low-tech, this movie was created in the spirit of the original novel.”

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But Milk is Important (2012) Anna Mantzaris and Eirik Grønmo Bjørnsen

A man with social phobia gets followed by a naive and clumsy creature..

a very very loosely related piece, i just felt i had to include this, it was of good inspiration to me, focusing on the whole narrative story side to it and showing/presenting a story in a different way.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race (Season 6) 

I recently just finished watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 6, in one of the last episodes they did a puppetry challenge, where they had to do impressions of each other using a puppet, it was really fun to watch. I thought it was worth posting as it shocked me when coming across it in the programme, it shows the relevance of puppetry today and how much joy and laughter it brings people! 

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Meet Julia (2017) Sesame Street

I’m not going to lie, I absolutely love Sesame Street, the introduction of this new character Julia, who has autism was really exciting, I think it’s so incredibly important to teach children important subject matters and i believe puppetry is one of the best ways to do so, especially with such a brightly coloured happy character. 

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Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2011) beckie and joe

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a short viral video that’s about a sketchbook coming to life in order to teach three more puppets a lesson in being creative. This video also spawned four sequels, and is generally well-known on the Internet.

It uses bright colours and funny characters and upbeat music to create the vibe of a children’s show, however towards the end takes a horrible dark turn to something that is DEFINITELY not for children

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Avenue Q (2003) Jeff Whitty                          a musical

Avenue Q is an American musical in two acts, conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who together, wrote the music and lyrics. The book was written by Jeff Whitty and the show was directed by Jason Moore.

The musical involving sesame street like puppets and visible puppeteers and actors, the musical is very cheeky and slightly ‘rude.’ It is an “autobiographical and biographical” coming-of-age parable, addressing and satirizing the issues and anxieties associated with entering adulthood. Its characters lament that as children, they were assured by their parents, and by children’s television programs such as PBS’s Sesame Street, that they were “special” and “could do anything”; but as adults, they have discovered to their surprise and dismay that in the real world their options are limited, and they are no more “special” than anyone else.

I actually was lucky enough to see this show when i went to New York a few years ago, it was incredible, it was a strange experience at first being able to see the actors on stage with the puppets but after a while they sort of blend into each other.. As a huge lover of musical theatre this was an entirely new experience and i am so happy i got to see it!

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thin foam net puppet

week six

this for me was one of the most difficult ones but i decided to give it a good go, this puppet consisted of a lot of cardboard and a lot of foam and a lot of patience! 

WHAT YOU NEED 

thin foam

scissors

cardboard

thin cardboard

masking tape

large paper

you have to begin by creating a head shape slotting two pieces of cardboard together, the trick is to keep it simple and small, i kept it simple but for some reason went quite big! however, keeping the features simple did help me in the long run, they didn’t get lost in the net making.

you have to create a sort of cardboard cage (seen in the photos above) by covering it with thin strips of cardboard, creating a solid head shape, then using the paper covering one half to create a net shape which can then be folded together and recreated off of the head shape, this can be achieved by cutting into the paper to create folds that connect together. 

taking the net and placing it on the thin foam, cut it out twice and then begin by taping each fold together, this is extremely fiddly and i felt i lost a lot of shape through doing this, it wasn’t as round as i would’ve liked. 

to finish it off i cut a mouth in the front and a hole in the back, placing a cardboard mouth opening inside, i would definitely like to cover this foam head to create  character, i sort of pushed in the cheeks to give it a bit more shape and i am slowly coming up with a concept/character idea for this head. 

this took me a long time to make but i am glad i attempted it, i should definitely try this again to get a better head shape. 

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here are the process pictures for the wood arm joint, i would definitely attempt this again, i found it difficult because the wood is so soft and easy to carve i would cut away too much and get a bit too carried away, it still works as a functioning joint for an arm but it could definitely be smoother, i think for a first attempt it’s pretty good. 

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week five

this week was a little different, following on from the rod puppet wire elbow joints, we created elbow joints using balsa wood, this being a very soft wood we carved into it using a a scalpel, using a 2p coin we drew circles onto the end to mark the parts that we connect together...

the two bits connect together and then bend and create an elbow joint, we had to drill a hole straight through with a dremmel drill, which was quite scary and difficult!! you have to get it pretty much dead in the centre for it to then work as a joint, afterwards you place a piece of wire through the hole to hold the two together and then twist and bend like an arm.

i found this quite challenging but i’m glad i managed to make a successful joint, i found carving the wood quite satisfying as it was so soft and easy to carve, but it was getting the circles perfect that was the difficult part, when i drilled the hole i had to then carve the wood some more to enable the joints to smoothly fit together. 

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