For the last week I have been making puppets out of inanimate objects. I first started with shadow puppets. While doing this I did some research into shadow puppetry history and modern day use. I watched a recent short film called 'Our Man in Nirvana' by Jan Koester. It is a story about a man who dies whilst playing a rock concert and goes to Nirvana, a surreal heaven-like place, but when it comes to judgement the judge decides that he has not acted well in his life so he cannot stay in Nirvana and has to go back to life. I like the film as it begins with traditional black and yellow light shadow puppets animated by metal rods, but Nirvana is made by computer animation in full colour but moves in the same way as the puppets and the character image is made up of solid colour layers reflecting the more traditional techniques. I started taking pictures of objects and their shadows and then recreated the shape and look of the objects but stylised a like 'Our Man in Nirvana'. I will post images of them when finished cutting on the laser cutter. This is one of the images that I think shows signs of personality, it looks like the toothbrush is talking to it's shadow.
During my research I have also come across a German animator in the 1920's called Lotte Reinger. She was most famous for the feature length silhouette film 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed' in 1926. She made all the scenes and characters by hand "holding the scissors still in her right hand, and manipulating the paper at lightning speed with her left hand so that the cut always went in the right direction.' 1
When I have created some object puppets I would like to create a narrative relevant to the context of why and how I have created them. I think this would be a good medium to communicate the personality of the objects.
