Course Materials and Links
This print out will give you some ideas on how to use a craft knife and strategies to make paper cuts.
- Concept and Sketching
We will be using overhead projectors as our performance area. The area is about 10 inches x 10 inches so generally, our puppets are small. They will be projected on a large screen, so that the audience sees these as 4 feet by 4 feet.
We will work on cinematic concepts that use wide angles and closeups and transitioning between scenes.
We will develop a story that is about 5-10 minutes long for each participant. The narrative can be loose and surreal or follow a literal narrative. You may come with your own ideas, or, if you’re having trouble of thinking of ideas, we will look toward mythology and fairy tales to borrow from. An example is looking at the work of Hans Christian Anderson. He even has a story about Shadows!
Your puppet short may have voiceover/narration, or music, or none if you prefer.
If you have your idea, you can write your narrative, and storyboard. Here is an example of one that I did for a 3 Act performance in 2019.
It is not fancy, in fact it is pretty sketchy, but it lets me get my ideas from my head to paper to free my mind to work on cutting referencing my rough composition.
The Wikipedia entry on Java shadow theater and its many branches and expressions.
Karagöz is a Turkish shadow theater in which puppets of characters and objects made of camel or ox skin are held up to a light with sticks to project their silhouettes onto a cotton cloth.
The Wikipedia entry that briefly talks about the traditional shadow theater of Turkey.
The best example to talk about animation using cutout paper silhouettes and shadows is Lotte Reiniger.
This German artist was a pioneer of animation in the early and mid-20th century. Lotte used resources from the traditional shadow theater of the East and combined it with the openwork silhouettes of Europe.
“Lotte Reinigers silhouettenfilm: Die Geschichte des Prinzen Achmed”
Booklet of the premiere of The Adventures of Prince Achmed .
Beautiful short film from the 50’s that uses silhouette animation to tell a popular Christmas story.
Another magnificent short film from the 50’s in which you will be able to appreciate the talent and originality of Lotte Reiniger.
“The Art of Lotte Reiniger, 1970 | From the Vaults”
A short documentary where she is seen working on her works.
“The Adventures of Prince Achmed”
The Wikipedia entry for The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Shadow Puppets, Shadow Theaters and Shadow Films | Lotte Reiniger
This is an unmissable book by Lotte Reiniger where she explains in detail all the resources of shadow theatre, from minimal scale to her own shadow animations. It was published in 1975 and a digitized version can be borrowed at Archive.org.
This company has been producing shadow theater in San Francisco since 1972. Here you can see images of some of their productions.
This is the first professional modern shadow theater troupe in Japan and has produced several plays that bring people into the world of theater, inventing original dramatic styles that modernize shadow play. I share an interview with Shuichi Iida so you can learn more about this Japanese shadow theater company.
Interview with Karl Johnson, a contemporary silhouette portrait artist.
A book about the history of shadow silhouettes by Emma Rutherford.
An incredible shadow theater production that combines actors, silhouettes and projections on a large-scale tableau. In this video they show many details behind the scenes.
A small production by the brilliant company A la sombrita that uses the space in front of the altarpiece and leaves the actors visible.
The review of an installation of light bubbles on which shadows were projected devised by Lucion Media. This is another creative use of projection space.
A brief review of the work of Christian Boltansky that refers to the traditional resources of shadow theater.
A theater group out of Chicago, but that performs across the world, using many of the same methods we use in this course and for our performance.
I received a text message in March from my good friend Chris Rand‘s wife, Tamara alerting me to a surprise 40th birthday for Chris. She also asked if I could make a piece for him since he and I always appreciated each other’s work. I easily agreed, and since one mantra of Chris and mine during undergrad was “go big or go home”, I decided to honor him by making the largest etching I had done to date.
This was good timing, as I was just tossing around ideas in my head about a new body of work to coincide with my Faerie (working title) series. I wanted to expand upon this idea with imagery of landscapes in this fantasy setting; Whereas the Faerie series is from a natural historians documentation, these new, larger prints would a tableau including narrative elements. This is all inspired by my, almost, daily walks in the woods behind my house, where I find myself getting elegaic for the similar setting of my childhood, which included many similar walks. If I had to zoom way out, I would explain this work as a sense of place and a search for identity. I’ll get into more of that in another post.
Having all these ideas and sketches, I decided to go as large as I thought I could for my current studio using a copper etching. I was to use a 22×30 inch Rives BFK but also have this fit in a horizontal acid bath I would fashion out of photography chemical tray. I decided on 16 x24 inches for the copper plate. This let me work on the sketches at that size and I followed my usual workflow.
The main problems came with the acid. Using a horizontal tank without the right supplies to dunk and lift the plate was treacherous. I also had to use spray paint aquatint because rigging up an rosin box big enough didn’t seem worth it. With a few mis-steps in the aquatint I still believe the plate came out nice and the final print made me happy. Let me know what you think.
The title of this print is “Disenchanted Forest I: Christopher Renegotiates the Social Contract”, which again is a title which honors interests that overlap between me and Chris. I debuted this print at his birthday party, which was a dress-up costume party, since it was the day before Halloween. To honor the interesting person Chris is, I decided to “go big” on my costume as well. Let this photo show the evidence.
Things I am interested in:
carnival, circus, Victorian, Steampunk
industrialization (Industrial Revolution ie steam)
modernity
Kafka
Kafka-esque
ennui
nostalgia
chagrin
absurd
cute
creepy
stitches
existentialism
characters
animals
anthropomorphic
fairy tales
folklore
menagerie
farm
machinery
farm machinery
mechanization
gears
clockwork
inventions
exploration
The Enlightenment
robots
airships
Victorian fashion
gas light
steam power
hat box
antiques
whirligigs
whimsical
wheels
Grammaphone
gauges
boats/ships
submersibles
dirigibles
Turn-of-the-century science
protoscience
typewriter
wood type
freak show
navigational instruments
maps
telescopes
astronomy
alchemy
phrenology
occult
chiromancy
pseudo-science
Nikola Tesla
Tesla coil
oscilloscope
optical devices
optics
diving gear
laboratory
organ grinder
rivets/screws/texture
goggles
cabinet of curiosities
trapeze
balancing
tight rope
brass
port hole
grotesque
magic lantern
cibachrome print lightbox
post-WWII mores
capitalism
socialism
economics
traditional family values
evolutionary biology
rabbits
petticoat
frock coat and tails
bowler hat
top hat
bio-mechanical
farmland
barn
farm animals
Alice in Wonderland
Arthur Rackham
John Tenniel
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
J.R.R Tolkien
coal power
iron
Columbia World Fair
Crystal Palace
Jack the Ripper
Sherlock Holmes
Charles Dickens
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Dr. David Livingstone
paleontology
wunderkammer
woodworking
cabinets
paper craft
paper engineering
stage craft
tubes
glass vessels
spy glass
helm wheel (ship’s wheel)
nautical apparatuses
pop-up books
book binding
bird cages
wire forms
dress forms
Victorian wallpaper
numerology
harlequin pattern
stripe pattern
hexagons
chains
old tools
collecting
bric-a-brac
bricolage
detritus
astrology
sun dial
astrolabe
sextant
armillary
surveillance
corporate culture
banality
Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss)
18th-century illustration
natural history
Abraham Cahan
dinosaurs
blue whale
technomancy
reflective globes
shadow puppets
miniature theaters
computer games
phantasmagoria
dioramas
naturalia
mirabilia
artefacta
scientifica
antiquites
exotica
Aldrovandi
memento mori
Four Deuces (Scar Face)
reliquaries
projectors
camera
thaumatrope
zoetrope
panopticon