'the end is nigh'

the walls are leaning in.

it's almost go-time.
crunchaway

picture your face!

bearput

I attached the shoulder/body with the arm/claws to the face/head.
There are some difficulties with balance and moving parts.
It is pretty cumbersome and hard to work within.

but it'll work.

I think I'll have to repaint the face, it's taken quite a beating

update reuptake

bear is looking good. need to go get fabrics.

need to start on fingers and fish.

pics will be posted.

holy fish!..t

the bear is coming together nicely. I need to buy fabric for to make its clothes with and a bit of fauxfur. And the arms are a-swinging. I need some small hardware to attach the claws to the wrists.

A new fish design. Need tiny springs, and perhaps little hooks.

HOOK!


...dustin hoffman is a-mazing

progress report: progression of progress

added modeling epoxy to the bear mask helped define it much better. The plaster gauze and the paper-mache hid much deatil in the mask. The paint and gesso are drying shiny. I detached the jaw, I still need to resolve that problem. A second, longer latex tongue was also made.

The fingers are the next step.

I must remember to pick up those springs.

color-ed bear-head

the face is painted, bear colors. It was just like that time I painted faces at the carnival. A child requested to resemble a bear, and it was beautiful... which, even still, I regret. He was shot by hunters later that evening. Therein lies an invaluable lesson: don't go pretending to be something you're not, because someone will shoot you.

The torso is next, and then a costume.

Considering alternate fish designs.

Got springs for the fingers.

Made a sandwich.

Ate it.

alarmed!

I'm sorry if my absence today disrupted the progress of anyone else. If not, then everything's all right. I got a new cell phone, and cell phone guy said to charge it with the phone off, overnight; seeing how cell phone guy knows about cell phones I did it. I use my cell phone's alarm to wake up though, so I used this internet alarm clock page (which evidently does not work when the window is minimized.

So I woke up (naturally) at 11:38. When I oversleep, it usually happens so that I sleep just enough to miss the entirety of class. Damn my unconscious subconscience...

I don't remember... but I was probably dreaming about puppets.

so, that works.

meelee du papier-machee

bear head is all a-skinned with flour paste and bits of a poorly-edited newspaper. It will look splendid in color. With teeth and a tongue. Glassy-eyed, I've decided. The next task is to design the bear mechanism that will allow the puppet to do a bear-like activity; specifically, the swatting motion utilized to stun prized, disguised, upstreaming, spawning-salmon.

I'm excited to get started on the music, too. I'm confident it will be a funtime.

oh yeah... and five people were in class today. my entire group, and elliott (1/4 of puppet-making being known as curvankarilliot).

bear head

plastered up the old bear head today... or, rather, the bear face. I'm very pleased with the results, and think that when it is finally papiermacheed and painted, it will be quite nice.

The bear is skeptical.

The teeth and tongue really add a lot of character and presence to the face, but they are small details and will have to be added later.

phase two: phase two

began initial steps of the fish-making process, but I admit I need to get crackin' on those digits. I'm getting excited about the possibilities, with the music and lighting... should be an adventure.

I also learned that the secret ingredient of flour paste is love... and that you must cook it (stirring continuously as to avoid burning)--but isn't that all love really is?

I also must remember to look up those types of puppets for that types of puppets business we're supposed to do. Don't forget.

fingers, n' monkey, n' bear... oh... MIGHTY PUPPET SHOW HAPPY-FUN SMILE TIME-HOUR!

...that is, of course, one of many different ways this blog would be titled if japan had won the second world war. But thank your lucky Harry S. Trumans that we live in the America that we do, and that this blog is titled appropriately.

To confirm widespread rumour, yes. It's possible that our performance involves fingers, and a monkey, and (god willing) a bear, and... maybe a thing that shoots candy out of it, I don't know. So, see the performance, maybe you'll get a jolly rancher or a small package of m&ms out of it.

maybe.

don't read words that aren't there.

don't reread this.

phase one: phase one

with a glove compartment full of sketches, and having filled the tank to the brim with tolerance (and added just the right amount of indifference to lubricate all moving parts), we embarked today on the road to explore (with a hands-on approach) the magical world of puppet technology and performing objects (from the traditional to the abstract (to cyber-puppets (and beyond)))! Rudimentary diagrams of the finger puppets allowed the construction of a crude prototype made of paint sticks, rubber bands, string, pins, and small hardware. Things may be good. Combined my portion of the performance with Aisha's... so we've moved from the every-man/person-for-hisherself division of the group into two teams; congress and senate, meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, eyes and hot pokers, babies and b-b-q sauce... I think this will yield better results.

you want I should make a puppet?

the plan is coagulating, a lot of work is going to be necessary if things are going to work out and look well. It is difficult to forsee how things will turn out.

coming together and falling apart

"come on!"
- G.O.B.

yesterday we got together in our performance groups... but, quite frankly, I am uncertain of the synergy, or even the synergy potential. Art is Art, but if you try to make it into an grade school skit (maybe some uninspired nonsense you'd write that would have to include all of that week's vocabulary words), it will be just that. Loosen up, have a pop tart.

posting pictures is delightful

symet 2.0

today I began making a tiny bot of my own: utilizing the knowlege gained (or, rather, stealing the intelligence from) the makings of the first symet (an aisha/karin/adam-joint bot). That first bot will be hereafter referred to as "greens" the robot. Robot 2.0 (or ro2.0t, if you can pretend 2's are b's) came together quickly, but still lacks a blinking red LED and a solar cell. What is ironic about the whole thing is that it may be easier to teach a man to "do the robot" than it is to teach electrical components to be a robot. how cruel.

but its solder-welds are strong, and its ambition limitless... the second robot may still prove worthy in battle...

...especially once it combines with the first robot to make an unstoppable, Voltron-flavored ultra-ro-mega-bot (which I have designed both to be capable of).

techNOLOGICal wonders...

there are no signs of improvement...

I will never understand how someone had enough gall to create the Gilligan's Island's character "the Professor"--a man who makes radios out of coconuts. There is little more impossible than a coconut making a sound other than that a coconut would normally make. I have access to soldering irons, packaged motors, LEDs, capacitransresiselectors, and cardboard; and I can't not even not-make a thing... nothing. I could potentially believe a man could leap tall buildings in a single bound (like superman), or... grow and shrink many times his own size (like apache cheif), or... um... talk to fish, man. That one makes the most sense. But a man can't make a walk-in freezer out of palm fronds, sea shells, canned laughter, and monkeypoop. That's preposterous.*

* ludicrous also Ludacris

you can take a rowboat away from a robot, but you can't take the 'robot' out of 'rowboat'

today we started making our simple BEAM robots... or, rather, we started making a robot. Radioshack is truly but a shack. We had to pool our resources and ingenuity in an attempt to magic some poor simulacra of the robot-that-could-have-been, but I am optimistic. You don't learn if you don't need to creatively solve a problem at some point.

however, my optimism ends there... these BEAM robots will offer us little protection when the more capable robots revolt.

NEW blog

the internet is a crazy place... many places to click. Some of those places will get you where you want to go, others will show you... things... terrible things.

blogger.com perplexes me some, I fear I might not be able to keep up with all that is going on.

Mary died of a snake bite today... the trail is treacherous and unyielding. Burt had his doubts about fixing the wagon wheel, but I thought the mixture of molasses and the remains of poor Mary (she would have wanted it this way) would hold the axle cover on, at least to the next town. I was wrong. Lord, was I wrong.

(title)

sample post (not for resale)