Archives for category: Stop Motion

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Not surprisingly, Top Dog’s confidence was renewed by the support of the two puppets. Yesterday he came out shouting “Vote for me, vote for me. I have the balls” and to proof it he rolled two juggling balls into the room. Mouse was not impressed and asked whether we shouldn’t be worried about what is going on. At least she is. She is very scared indeed!  Though the majority of Dedes still don’t seem to take Top Dog seriously. I wonder if they all think he is simply a nutcase. The fronts are getting more defined though and both camps want more supporters.

It happened that it was very stormy yesterday, so the Dedes sent me into the studio to make a new puppet. I recorded a film to show how I do it. Okay, I cheated a little and I had the shape of the head prepared earlier, but you see how I put the skin on. Of course, I am not working that fast. To be honest, I am extremely slow.

(PS: Please don’t ask me what the cocoa powder is doing in the middle of the work bench. That is just dada.)

Even before the newbie had his final protective coat on he ran into trouble. He went to Devil and said “I need a gun.”

“What for?” asked Devil.

“To protect myself from all these weird Dedes!” was the answer

“But you are a Dede yourself!”

“But I am not weird!” he said adamantly.

Devil shook his head, put his hand on the new puppet’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “oh boy, what you need is an open mind and a brain.”

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On a different note, can anyone suggest a name for the new puppet?

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I was right! Devil didn’t last very long on his new diet. Yesterday afternoon I heard something rustling in the corner of the living room. When I investigated I found Devil sitting there facing the wall trying to open a little packet. I asked him what he was doing and he looked at me very guiltily. Then I saw he was trying to open a chocolate bar. He said he deserved it because their Dede Instagram following has reached triple figures. I have no idea what this has to do with him. I guess he was just looking for an excuse.

The Dedes are indeed very proud of their achievement and to celebrate the event they have made a 4 second film. The film is only available on instagram

 

Drum roll for the new film. I have to admit, the Dedes are much better cooks than singers :) . This time they made flatbread, the recipe from the Artist’s Survival Cookbook on page 22. You can fill the bread with grated vegetables and cheese. Yummmmyyy.

For this film Devil wanted to be the director because it is his recipe in the book. He finally let me know what his gripe is with the rest of the Dedes. He finds them far too unprofessional and in his mind they have to seriously up their game. For this reason Mouse didn’t show him the final version before she uploaded it to Youtube. She wanted to avoid the scathing remarks he will no doubt air as soon as he sees the film. That would have been too much for her yesterday.

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Mouse is extremely annoyed with Devil at the moment, though she will not admit it. They used to be such good friends and worked together brilliantly. Honestly, they were a fabulous team.  Devil has the big ideas and Mouse ties up all the loose ends he leaves along the way. But lately he is too negative for her  liking and naturally she keeps a wide berth from him. She desperately wants to have her old mate back and really would love to tell him to snap out of it. But she has no idea how. Any suggestions? She is not a particularly straight talker but rather a quiet worker.  The best therapy for her is immersing herself in work. Naturally she held her hand up to edit the film they did on the 10th day. I have to admit it wasn’t the best idea. Repeatedly watching the footage over and over made her even more angry with Devil. He so wanted to be the director, but then he just sat in his director’s chair and did nothing much except nod from time to time. It starts to chew Mouse up and this is truly dangerous.  We all know that it gets too much for her at regular intervals and then she screams at everyone because she feels all the work is just dumped on her. It might be coming soon!

…my true love brought to me twelve fat ones singing.

The saying goes “it’s not over till the fat lady sings”. Now, as we are gender neutral we just have 12 fat ones. If I look carefully they are not even fat. But they are singing and they are singing badly. I was dreading all along that they will perform their new song at the end. With many other things you can say it’s so bad that it’s good. But no way can you find anything good in this video. But thanks anyway for supporting the Dedes.

Last Sunday I grabbed two of my puppets and together we made the best bun recipe from page 32. Just to prove that it is that simple. I hope you like it, it would be great if you could share. It is such a great Christmas present. Buy a bag of flour, a wooden spoon and the Artist’s Survival Cookbook and you can make someone a really happy kitchen god(ess).

Last week my sister-in-law, Kelly, organised a fundraiser to help her finance her PhD studies. As a poet she invited her artist friends to interpret one of her poem visually. It was a fantastic evening, very well organised and I believe also very successful.

My contribution was of course a stop-motion film depicting her poem “Get more reads on your poetry”. I think it is very selfexplanatory :)

Yesterday I had a workshop with kids at the Michael Park School in Auckland as part of their Art in Action event. The kids were absolutely fabulous. I am always amazed about the creativity and how they turn simple things into effective props.

My PledgeMe campaign isn’t going too well. Over 2800 views of the little movie, but only 7 pledges.Thank you so much Tony and Mike for your pledges!

No idea what else I could do. I do like the little film and Cash Cow really fainted.

Last weekend I have been working on a film for my crowdfunding campaign. Now that it is finished, I have second thoughts and won’t be using it for it’s intended purpose. When I was riding the bus this morning, I had a more suitable idea. Guess I will be making another film next weekend.

But since I’ve made this one, I might as well show it :)

 

Well, well, Devil is angry with me again. He’s the one who always reminds me I should look after the Dedes. After all, he was the spokesperson for the Dedes for a long time and knows how important it is to keep in people’s minds. Mind you, in the end he got sacked because he did a poor job. To be honest, he is not very well connected and all he did was jog me along, rather than opening up new avenues. Sadly, this is exactly the one trait Devil and I have in common… we are not very public.

Now, Devil didn’t need to remind me of my obligations to the Dedes. Believe you me, I have constantly been thinking about them. I just didn’t have time to write my blog or continue on the Artist’s survival cookbook. Real life devils have their demands on me as well – Real life still wins, every time!

Devil got particularly angry when I took some time last week to make a non-Dede related stop-motion film with Son. Son is a Vietnamese student who is currently staying with us. He wanted to bake a birthday cake for his ex-girlfriend who is living in Australia. The story was complicated enough to grab my attention. So, on a rainy Sunday we went to the supermarket, got all the ingredients and spent the afternoon having fun making the cake. He uploaded the finished work to youtube and promised me the link to put up on my blog. By the way the cake tasted delicious. But, I’m still waiting for the link.  I reminded Son at least four times about the link. Finally it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t get the desired reaction and deleted it off youtube. So I stripped all the lovely messages for the girlfriend out and here is my version of it.

Why am I showing this film of unreciprocated love? My involvement in the film wasn’t entirely selfless. At the moment I am pondering how I can promote the Artist’s survival cookbook. One of my ideas is to put a “Pledge me” campaign together. Pledge me is a New Zealand crowd-funding platform and I think a book is perfectly suited to crowd funding. In fact it’s not much more than pre-selling the book, is it? To create a campaign I have to make a new movie. I wanted to explore what baking looks like in stop-motion. I quite liked the result of the cake, now I only have to add the Dedes somehow. The little buggers don’t want to get their mittens dirty.

The central problem remains: I am not well-connected and if the campaign flops, will I do more damage to the Dedes than good? What do you think?