As some of you who enjoy my random musings here and on Facebook may have noticed I have been strangely silent through most of April. No new project picture updates, no blog post about the creative process and new statues updates about the team getting together to build for several weeks. "What gives?" you may ask. "did you quiet your dreams and move into a cave?" I will answer all of this as simply as I can. I have been suffering from crippling puppet block! Over the last few weeks I have struggled to build and design. Several big life changes; a new job, a car accident, and the new routine that comes with those things have recently entered into my life and I chalked up my lack of interest to being tired and adjusting to the new schedule. I would get home from work, hang out with my kids, clean a little bit and after I put the kids to bed I would sit down with every intention to build. This was the routine I had for the better part of 2 years. Since the beginning of April I have found every reason under the sun to avoid the last part of my day. I have even gone so far as to stop writing in my journal (a process I have always recommended for artists). Over the last few days I began to realize that I am experiencing something akin to writer's block. I want to work but find no inspiration or interest in the process and therefore don't. As I thought on this I realized that writer's block (or puppet block as I like to call it) is really a form of depression for artists. It is a hard thing to talk about, though I suspect that many of us have experienced a lack of interest in the things we love. It is the empty feeling that comes with the block that makes it feel like depression. I can pin-point the beginning of this; the moment when a key member of THE LETTER Z's production team fell through. It was a set back that was frustrating and made the process a lot slower. Instead of being able to rely on someone else I would have to learn a whole new set of skills and assemble a team of people I had very little knowledge about. it seemed almost impossible to get talented people on board when I knew almost nothing about what skills would be needed. As I spent more and more time learning this new craft the more I felt like my project was not going to happen. This made me really sad, to be quite frank. That feeling, combined with all the other factors, eventually led to a loss of interest in working. This morning all of this finally clicked into place and I understood what I was dealing with. As someone who has experienced mild depression in life I suddenly felt a little better. By naming the thing I began to feel like I could fight back. Artistic endeavors have always come easily to me and I was worried I was losing my ability. The last few weeks I had a recurring dream that I forgot how to perform, I would wake up with this odd sense of dread. It's funny, my insecurity about my project started to bleed into every aspect of my artistic life and cripple any attempt to create. As I sat this morning struggling to find the energy to go clean my shop I realized what had been going on. I wish I could say that this realization opened the creative flood gates and I began building at this moment, striking my head and shouting, "eureka!" It did not, but it did at least lead me over to my computer where I wrote this post...baby steps. I am writing this not only as a way to say what I am feeling but also as a way to help you, my friends. If you have ever lost your creative way or some day you do, realize you are not alone. Find the other creative types in your life and ask them how they battle creative depression. Drink a warm cup of coffee and try to remember why you love to create. Look back at the beauty in the world that inspired you in the first place and try to remember that passion. I can't guarantee anything but it seemed to rekindle the fire a bit for me. -David
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Life has been full of adventures and challenges recently and left little time for blogging! Things are slowly finding their rhythm again, I and the rest of the No Strings Crew will be back in the groove of things in no time. Keep on checking in over here, more meaningful updates about THE LETTER Z and a new life theatrical event are soon to follow. -David Sorry for the late post! This week has been filled with work and meetings. I originally planned on posting another article but after watching Tuesday night's premier of Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge I thought I would talk about that instead.Tuesday night myself and two of the other No Strings Puppetworks builders (Tim and Amy) gathered at my house and watch the show. After the show we were a bit undecided about our feelings and weren't sure what to make of the whole thing. Was it any good? I think this is a multi-layered answer that can't be covered with a simple yes or no. It was fun to watch these very talented artists create some really beautiful puppets in a very short amount of time and it was certainly refreshing to see a show that does not pander to the spectacle like a lot of reality based TV does (Heroes of Cosplay specifically comes to mind). At the same time I had was a bit disheartened to hear multiple contestants say something along the lines of, "this definitely looks like a Henson puppet!" It bothered me because I worried that each of these artists would abandon their sense of style in hopes of creating a "Henson Puppet" to win the show. Each of Jim's productions had its own look and feel to match the project. Big Bird looked nothing like the Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal. It made me happy to see that the puppet that won the challenge didn't really look like a "Henson Puppet." I also really liked the fact that both of the winning designers had very different backgrounds and approaches to puppet building but worked wonderfully together. They took each of their strengths and put them together to make something really cool, which is what we try to do at No Strings. Each of us have an area in which we are strong and we work as a team to make each puppet better. I hoped we would see more of them building their puppets and how they put them together. I always find watching others work to be wonderful inspiration and I hoped to learn a thing or two. I knew that the odds of seeing this part of the process was pretty slim for may reasons, i.e. doesn't make for exciting TV and most puppet builders tend to be pretty secretive about their work. I hope as the show moves into animatronic work we will get a little bit more viewing time. All in all I am hopeful for the show, but will reserve my full opinion until I see a few more episodes. I liked watching the puppets performed at the end of the show. The puppeteers were pretty amazing! For the most part I agreed with the judges and liked how they spoke to the contestants. They showed the contestants a level of respect that is often missing on similar shows. I am excited to watch next week's episode. What did you think of the show, share your thoughts below! -David I started building a new puppet today and like many of the look-a-like puppets I have built over the years, this one started with a lot of research. A friend of mine asked for a generic ewok type puppet, so I spent the last few days looking over hundreds of stills from RETURN OF THE JEDI. Before I can create a puppet that can be recognized as one of my own I have to know the source material inside and out. Once I have a strong sense of what the original thing is I can put my own twist on it. I am always looking to find the right balance of the original concept with my particular style and taste. After what felt like a year of attempts I finally came up with a design and pattern I am happy with and stated cutting fur! (see my final concept art to the left) I have always thought of my final sketch as my road map when building a puppet. I don't often vary from my finalized drawing. For one thing, it can upset the customer if the design they signed off on doesn't match the puppet they receive. Also, once you start building you can get hopelessly lost and end up with a huge mess. Whenever I teach puppet building I always stress to my students the importance of a solid design. You can erase a bad pencil line more easily than you can remove a bad decision on a nearly complete puppet. I have always been amazed by artists who can sit down and just start building and by the end of the process have a fully cohesive piece of art. One of the most amazing artists I have had the pleasure of working with once told me that I just needed more practice and then time and experience would guide my hand. I am pretty sure that I could build puppets for 100 years and never reach that point. If I am building a puppet that looks like someone or something I try to find as many photos as I can. Then I will often draw three to four concept drawings before finding one that I am happy with. It is not just about creating something that looks like the source material, it's also about capturing the essence of the subject. Just like with my look-a-like puppets it was incredibly important for me to create something that strongly resembles the intrinsic nature of Stuart Freeborn's design of the ewoks. Between two other custom jobs and THE LETTER Z build being in full swing it will be several weeks before this little guy gets made. I'll keep you up to date on his progress! Like any other creative process it begins with an idea and a sketch. The image to the left is my first concept drawing of the zombie Lou, who is now the mascot for THE LETTER Z. The basic idea for the show was cemented by this point so I knew stylistically what I was going for. I knew that we wanted this fictional world and its inhabitants to resemble Sesame Street so I started with one of my favorite characters from the show, Guy Smiley. Guy was in the back of my mind as I was designing Lou. I didn't want to make a replica. I wanted to create my own character with his own design and aesthetic but use that iconic shape as a jumping off point. The next thing I had to think about was what would zombie-ism look like on a puppet. At one point I thought it would be fun to have bare foam exposed under any torn puppet flesh. After a few trials and errors I found a combination of exposed foam under torn cloth to be to unclear. It muddied the look of the puppet. I eventually settled on the idea of white fleece to represent the skeletal structure underneath. Another important part of the design to me was finding ways to create negative space on the puppet. I wanted cheek bones and eye sockets to look hollow and ribs to seem like flesh was barely covering them, so I began experimenting with layering the underlying structure. This proved to be a delicate balancing act. I wanted to add depth without adding too much bulk to the body and head. I eventually found a method that allowed that to work and began construction. The image to the right was a really exciting point in the construction of the puppet as well as for THE LETTER Z production in general. As I stood back and look at what I had, I began to feel confident that we would be able to design and build the monsters we would need to make this project visually striking. I was searching to find the right balance of cute puppet with terrifying monster. I know that it sounds silly, but a lot of the success of the show would ride on whether or not we could create something that could be legitimately scary, and this early point in the build made me feel like it was possible. I also was beginning to build the arms and hands. Something that I was excited about was trying to recreate the stilted movement of the zombies in movies. I eventually found that if I used really stiff materials with very lose joints I could get the erratic movement that I was looking for. It would also make the work easier for the puppeteers. Something I think a lot of builders forget about is what we are making will be used by someone and we need to make it as easy as possible for them to work with. The image to the left is a "close to final" version of Lou the Zombie. I am happy with the final project and I think it turned out close to how I envisioned it from the concept phase. He is a relatively straightforward puppet in comparison to some of the other pieces we use on THE LETTER Z. The project took roughly 35 to 40 hours, including design work and testing concepts. Stay tuned for updates on the design and execution process for THE LETTER Z on this blog in the category called The Road to Z. I plan to cover everything from building to shooting the show on this blog. I hope you join us going forward. - David (Originally Written on Sept. 27,2013)
I was 5 years old the first time I saw The Muppets and I was enthralled. The movie was Follow That Bird, it was the story of Big Bird's journey to find a family that looked and acted like himself. I was amazed at what I saw, fantastical creatures that seemed to live and breathe on their own, each showing the signs of real feeling and life. As Big Bird found himself in one tight spot after another the people of Sesame Street grew worried about him and decided to leave their home to find him and bring him home. As I sat laughing at Super Grover, Bert and Ernie, and Cookie Monster a small but important lesson began to form in my young mind, a lesson that I still hold fast to this day. Love is not a thing that appears out of nowhere, it is not a thing that is there because someone told us it is. Love is gained and grown through shared experiences with one another. For the first time in my life, my little 5 year old brain began to understand a much deeper concept than it ever had before. I remember feeling a deep sorrow, moved to the point of tears, in a scene were Big Bird sits, caught and alone in a giant cage with a blue light overhead. He had just run away from his adopted family of other big birds and had trusted a stranger to help him who then turned around and sold him to a circus. Big Bird realized as he sat in the dark tent that his real family was the people on Sesame Street who loved and cared for him. It was the first time in my life that I realized why I loved my family. I loved them not because they were my parents and grandparents but because they loved me and took care of me. It was the shared experience of our lives that made us a family and made us love one another. The Muppets were so much more than just a bunch of chickens, frogs, pigs, and what-nots, they were a family. They helped each other and knew that the journey was the most important part of the trip. In Follow That Bird each person on Sesame St. knew that part of their family was in trouble and it was there job to help. Looking back, I now see that in the act of leaving Sesame Street and looking for Big Bird they were also deepening their love for one another as well. It seems to be a pretty heavy concept to lay down in a kids movie, but then again, Jim Henson never talked down to children. The next time I saw a Henson film was in The Muppet Movie, the story of how the muppets met and became a team. I remember loving that Kermit and Fozzie got in their Studebaker and just drove. The Muppet Movie was another example that love was something so much deeper than just words. It taught me that a running gag or an inside joke over time could lead to a truly undying love for another person because it was a shared reminder of the past. When those characters looked at each other and they sang the Rainbow Connection at the end of the film they saw a shared history with one another and an understanding that each of those characters would do anything for each other. Film after film and TV show after TV show the Jim Henson Company made kept coming back to the idea that love was a journey shared with those who came along with us. I found it comforting to know that love was not like in the Disney cartoons, found in the eyes of some stranger and that there was no princess that would sweep me off my feet. Love was work, you had to share the good times and the bad with someone to build this love. If you shared the journey you would have someone to hold you close when the trip came to an end. In the years to come some of my favorite memories would be the times my then girlfriend (now wife) and future brother-in-law would go on road trips just like Kermit and Fozzie did. We had all kinds of adventures on those trips and over time those shenanigans became part of the reason I love my wife and brother-in-law. Almost 15 years have passed since we went on one of those adventures but each time my brother-in-law, wife and I see each other we laugh about something that happened on one of those trips. Those shared experiences became part of our collective past and made the bond between us stronger. I think it is because of these lessons that the Muppets taught me that I am writing about them right now as I sit on a plane flying home from my Grandfather's funeral. About a week ago I got a call from my Mother telling me that he had passed away and that I should come home for the funeral. Almost every moment since then I have been reliving moments I shared with him. I spent a lot of time with my Grandpa when I was little. So much time in fact that I think he had a huge impact on the man I am today. I shared so many moments and experiences with that man that they shaped and changed me. He taught me a lot about a lot of things and I loved every minute of it. I think the reason it hurts so much when someone we love dies is because in some way we realize that we can no longer share new moments together. Not only that, but maybe more tragically, the only person we can relive those memories with is no longer here. So the memories stay trapped in us and have nowhere to go and grow. Jim Henson once said, “My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there” and I know my Grandfather felt that way too. He was a kind man that did his part to create a lot of memories for a lot of people. At his viewing two people who didn't know his name showed up because they saw his picture in the paper and recognized him as the kind, older man they had spoken to every morning as he went on his seven mile walk for close to twenty years. My Grandfather understood that love was about sharing yourself with others and he did that every chance he could. "Why are there some many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?", Kermit asks in the song The Rainbow Connection as if to say, who cares about what's at the end of the road. It's the journey that gets us there that matters. My Grandfather knew this without learning it from a TV show and helped me to understand it as I grew up. He was a good man and my life was so much better for having known him. I will always miss him. |
David Mort
These are the stories of my journey as a puppet builder. Some will be about my life and the role puppets have played in it and some will be about a project I am working on. I hope you enjoy my musing about life, love and puppets! Archives
May 2014
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