Talk about being an ideas person… I come up with a lot of them, one thing I really like is puppets, Muppets, and marionettes. Puppetry intrigues me.
“The Muppets” was by far one of my favourite shows as a kid, and Jim Henson’s other works like “Fraggle Rock”, “The Dark Crystal”, and of course “Labyrinth” are works I have loved. They have certainly all driven my love of puppetry.
As a kid I remember stopping at a roadside store near Coffs Harbour and in this store they had some marionette emus. Getting one of my own is a treasured memory, learning how to make it walk convincingly was all-consuming as a young kid.
These days, one of my favourite possessions is my Pinocchio marionette we picked some time ago on our way back from a road trip to Yarra Valley. I can’t remember how much he cost, but I had to have him. The store we stopped at by chance was full of very cool puppets of different varieties. I could have bought a truckload!
The Pinocchio has inspired a few ideas in my brain. He’s made out of some kind of modelling clay, his paint job, clouting and mechanics are divine. I want to make my own, and have wanted to for some time. But I’m more ideas than execution.
One of my ideas for a marionette his to make a bee. I’ve drawn the basics of its workings, and have pretty much been thinking, since this drawing, of how to make the legs and antenna work and how I might changes this rigging to produce natural movement.
Next step is to make some prototypes… one day I’ll get around to it.