I am really struggling to get my new shadow puppet video done. At first I was having issues with getting the screen to work; then the camera(s); now I’ve broken my shadow puppet!

The lighting effect looked good but it makes things hard to manipulate, since I am adding extra weight to the rods (via attaching torches… yeah, that’s the ‘big’ effect) and it unbalances everything. On top of which the extra weight makes it harder to learn the weaknesses of the parts, making things get stuck, not move correctly, or simply be impossible to move fluidly.

I’d even sorted out the storyline problem, since I can’t come up with anything remotely good. I have some very nice scenery - although one part of the storyline is now cut, since I don’t have 3 hands and a prop keeps tipping over when I lean it against the screen - so I’m sticking to ’simple and oh-so-small-storyline you wouldn’t know it’s there’… But yeah, after 3 hours of fiddling around, the whole thing snapped. Literally.

Lucky for me the puppet itself is fine, although there was a hairy moment when I was afraid removing a rod would kill the rod attachment (I had closed the rod up fairly tight around the attachment with some pliers). There is now sitting on my table, a puppet with no arm. And of course, the arm is on the other side of the table, with its rod/torch still attached. Poor thing 

All I need to do is replace the string joint, a 15 minute task, but I got so frustrated that I had to give the whole thing up for a bit. So yeah, a bit more time spent on it I think.

In actual fact, I have been tempted simply to scrap the whole puppet, not thinking that the manipulation was good enough to produce any decent puppetry. But on looking at the very short video of the last attempt, I’m going to try again and hope for the best. If it really can’t be done in one more attempt, then I will put it to the side and move on to the next puppet. … Sigh…

In other news, I am very pleased to report that at the end of this week I will begin the transfer of the new site design for UNIMA Australia. I’m very happy, because if things stay on schedule, there will be a soft launch in a few weeks, and the public launch in early June. I’m tidying up a few things - mainly IE issues now - over the week, and I can tell you, I will be glad when it’s all up and running. And I’ll be especially glad to show you all what I’ve been working on for… well, practically a whole year now! (Man, and I said I’d have it launched in 6 weeks! :crazy