Here it is, the long awaited sequel to “Life of an Artist”. One year on, L’Artiste is still saddened that his art wasn’t perceived that well last time. Remember he threw his tunic in an act of despair at the end of the original film? Obviously, Skeleton picked it up and kept it for him in her closet all this time. Now she thought it was about time for L’Artiste to snap out of it. Surprisingly, once he slipped back into his tunic, he regained his confidence (I wish I had a magic tunic like this :) But what am I saying to you… watch the film.
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Finally I got round to attend to my Dedes and I made good progress on the sequel to “Life of an Artist”. I can tell you as much: Skeleton felt sorry for poor L’Artiste who was still stitting in the corner crying. She brought him his tunic back and convinced him to have another go. For the rest of the story you have to wait… I hope I will have the film finished by tomorrow.
It is Easter again. It is around this time of the year it’s most noticeable to me that I have moved from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. The weather is pretty much the same in both countries, but Germany is now moving towards the warm summer months and Easter marks the end of the cold, while here in New Zealand we start to batten down the hatches for winter. Last year at Easter I made my first stop motion film with the Dedes. It was a spur of the moment piece about the life of an artist. I have been wondering for a while if it is time for a remake. Nothing much has changed. A year, though, is not long enough really to justify a remake, or is it? Maybe I’ll make a sequel!
Here is the original.
Looking back even further, two years ago I created this sequence of images for the blog. Not a film yet, but it is clearly pointing towards film making :)
Everything is back to normal. The conference is over and my friend Avril has gone back home to Australia. The picture shows Avril next the poster with our star, Lizzie. We had brilliant feedback about the film from the people who watched it at the conference. Personally, I know more about Lipoedema now than I ever wanted to know :), but I guess this is why I like to get involved in such projects.
Most people were surprised that we did the film without funding. Avril and I had talked about whether we should seek funding for the project in the beginning, but it was in the too hard basket for both of us, particularly as we were working in different countries. I myself have no experience with funding agencies and I believe seeking funding would have slowed the whole thing down and made the process more cumbersome.
Would I do it again? Most certainly! Though I would rethink my view on seeking funding first…
Today I am quite down. I slept very poorly after yesterday. The interview didn’t go as I expected and I have the feeling I didn’t handle my latest project very well. Now that it is finished and I have had a bit of a breather, I realise that I was once again steaming ahead on a totally different track from all the others involved. Ah well, I guess that is the reason why I will stay a poor artist forever. In the meantime I have placed my busking penguin permanently in the corner of our staircase, hoping he will collect some change. Surprisingly he has… all those loose coins are from when we do the washing. Of course the corner of our steps is not a very public place so there is not much traffic for donations. Wrong decision again! Maybe I should place him at the garden gate, next to the letter box. But then, we live in suburbia… I don’t think it will make much of a difference.
Life is pretty frantic at the moment. On Thursday the sponge puppet film will be released. Finally I am all set, the poster is printed… But you know how it is, in the end there are always a million things to attend to. This afternoon, a reporter comes round to interview me about the story… On a different note, the photographer of Artstation must have been really taken by Court Jester, as he immediately posted a picture on their facebook page . Obviously Court Jester did a good job, he made the puppeteer laugh really hard.
In the meantime, I continue stabbing wool tuffs to turn them into little sculptures. This one here is called Keith, as a tribute Keith Haring. If he had felted, I am pretty sure his figures would have looked somewhat like this.
Last Saturday we had another Dede Workshop where we created an impromptu film. Impromputu in the sense that the people who attended had to come up with a story. The only hint they have are the puppets I select prior to the participants arriving. No Devil this time! He is on his well-deserved holiday. Instead we had a pretty classic Punch & Judy cast, bar Punch and Judy. Without Devil it took the participants a while to come up with the story, but once they started acting it out, the storyline got fast and furious. If you can’t follow it entirely… don’t worry, you can trust me, there was a happy ending. Nasty Cool Cat has been imprisoned by Bobby the policeman and King and Chamber Maid live to this day.
Unlike the previous films, this one needed a little explanation at the beginning. My friend Cath and I are now wondering if we should adapt the story for a live puppet show.
Hope you enjoy it.
Witch was cursing and swearing today. Not because her cooking didn’t work out, but because the sky was over cast. She made pita bread for lunch and usually, there is no problem to take the photo right there in the kitchen. The sun shines brightly on the kitchen bench an illuminates the product as in the images on the previous days. Not today… The sun has gone on holiday, and while the pita bread puffed up nicely, the photograph looks flat. Tomorrow we will have a storm and Witch already decided that on a cold windy day she has to make flakey pastry and a yummi pie. I wonder what she will do for a photograph…. Meanwhile all the dedes are happy that she will have to cook pita bread again to take new photos. :)
Right, Foreign Correspondent, delivered his questions to Witch last night. Needless to say, Witch ignored them. She left three photographs at the bottom of the stairs, as proof that she can’t be bothered with answering questions at the moment.
These are her latest concoctions:Â Crumpets, No egg pasta and Water wafers.
Last Friday I finished Lizzie’s film (Lizzie is the pink one in the middle). It is now awaiting music and a last edit from the script writer. This is a project I started last year together with an Australian therapist, who I met at a puppet workshop in Melbourne. The film is to raise awareness of Lipoedema, a condition that is present in 11% of the female population, and it will premiere at a conference in Auckland in three weeks. I will show it in due course on the blog.
Now that one major project is finished, I asked what we should do next and it turns out that two puppets are already working on new projects. L’Artiste has to create a set of new puppets for a nutritional blog that Garden Guru Dee Pigneguy has just started. If all goes to plan, L’Artiste’s puppets will be present at the launch of Dee’s new book in the Takapuna Library next month. He has shown me his ideas on paper and I love them. L’Artiste is a very quiet worker and an extremely reliable guy, so I am pretty sure we will see his creations soon.
Witch, who is into nutrition as well had an idea of her own. She has always been a strong believer in cooking everything from scratch. She doesn’t buy bread or spaghgetti from the shop. She makes it herself and along the way she experiments with all sorts of ingredients, like buckwheat grouts or teff flour. Most of the time she can’t repeat what she cooked, as it is all chucked together, but anything she cooks is a treat. I can’t ever remember her presenting us with something ineditable. The weirder the better. Unfortunately the Dede household is pretty strapped for cash at the moment, so fancy ingredients are off the menu for a while. Instead of moping and complaining that she can’t fulfill her job description as the supplier of nutritional food, she decided to turn the shortcomings into a challenge. She is working on a recipe book with the working title “The artist’s survial cook book – 101 meals made from flour and water“. We discussed her draft yesterday, and while I have to admit she is cheating a little, (she uses, in fact, a handful of ingredients in different combinations) I am totally amazed at how many different things she can conjure up with those few really basic ingredients. On top of it, none of them seem to be very time consuming. (Oh sorry, yes, flakey pastry does take a bit of time, that’s why we only get it on very special occasions.)
The books starts off with the basic of all basics: Bread buns, which she is baking for lunch today. I asked her to take photographs and maybe we can have the recipe on the blog as a teaser tomorrow.
dedepuppets 