the Birds (Rhyme of the Ancient Merino)

It's been a long time between updates on The Rhyme of The Ancient Merino, been a bit distracted just lately with the making of the Highly Strung giant puppet.

Anyway, here is a clip "making of" clip of sorts with a few shots on the birds, a mix of raw green-screen shots and some with the green keyed out.


The landing on the fence post shot I actually filmed in reverse....starting with the bird propped on the fence and then flying him back out from there. And somewhere in the middle of the shot (and at about 2 in the morning) one of the wings fell off. Distaster! There's a reason why rusty metal is not the animation material of choice for stop-motion. After a few high-stress minutes of cussing, soul-searching and consideration of the awful possibility that the entire shot might need to be redone, I managed to re-attach the wing with a discrete splint, get the bird back in position, finish off the shot and go to bed. Hot glue saves the day....again. See if you can work out which frame this all happened on.

Highly Strung-Silos Show is Go!

Exciting times! The Funding is in (thank you Festivals Australia and Arts Victoria) and its looking very much like there's going to be another big silo show at this year's Nati Frinj Festival (28th-30th Oct).

The new show will feature animation I made with the local Natimuk school kids projected onto the front of a 12-meter puppet. The animation is mostly done and looking great and I'm just now starting to get my head around the construction and operation of a puppet that's 12 meters tall.

Here's some concept art cobbled together variously from tea-towels, bed-sheets, projectors, silos, maya, photoshop, etc.

The actual puppet will most likely NOT look like any of these but I'll be sure to post some actual real photos once the R&D gets a little further down the track and Ive got something more impressive to show than a back veranda waist deep in fabric and broken poles.