Sorry I haven't posted in while! been busy, busy, busy! You'll hear more about that later. For now, you have to settle for this. This week, I started the process on building and designing this little guy! I literally just finished him twenty minutes ago! I've been trying to document my building process for a while now, so here's how it went:
I patterned some foam int the shape on the design. The mouth plate is flexible. Works like a dream.
After I was happy with the foam guide, I patterned, stitched, and glued on his fleece skin for his face and head. Then came his neck (below)
God is good... The perfect material was left lying around for his shell,
and it was leftover from a replica I built a while back! The plastic
lid to a hamper was the PERFECT fit. I just glued on some foam pieces
for the undulations that I wanted on his back... I stretched some tie-dye green fleece over the shelleton and glued it into the cracks between the bumps. Then I sewed the front piece to the back. Let me tell ya, folks, sewing an edge around plastic ain't easy...
Here is the shell with the edges half-stitched... Ugh.
The finished product! YESSS.
This sleeve thing is a nifty little trick... I'm gonna have to use it more often..
I recently got the wonderful opportunity to sit down for an interview with FOX 4 News about my skills in puppetry. It was an excellent experience and it turned out greater than I could have imagined it would. Phil Witt is a real professional and God is still awesome! You can check out the piece and watch it here:
My good friend Bop Bop Dinosaur recently got the
opportunity to perform at the Kauffman Center in Kansas City and I was
along for the ride! I brought him to life for a concert performed with
the Kansas City Symphony on April 22! (a bit of a late post, I know) The
rush of excitement was amazing and the space we performed in was
incredible. An in the round theater with an audience of more than 1,600
people! What a wonderful opportunity. Bop Bop was very happy!
Also, I recently got a call and FOX 4 news will be shooting and airing a piece about my puppetry skills! Keep an eye out!
The run of Little Shop is over! It has been for a while now, I just haven't posted about it... It went excellent. Every night was packed all the way out even after adding some fold-up chairs. There were countless amounts of people coming up to me in tears over the show. It was crazy! God is good! We shot a full video of it one night. Enjoy this clip of the song "Feed Me.":
Audrey II puppeteers: Cedwan Hooks (head), Forest Kinsey (asst.), Hunter Hawkins (asst.) Audrey II voice: Danny Moore Seymour: Dakota Jafferis Audrey: Elizabeth Nicholette Orin: Ben Johnson
Also, I've got quite an exciting gig coming up. Keep an eye out for another post about that!
Little Shop has opened and the public is reacting as if they'd seen an exact replica of the movie in person! The excitement from last night is still ringing in the casts' ears and well as everyone who's heard about it! My phone was ringing well until eleven at night with people's gracious compliments. Opening night could not have gone better.
The show has managed such a success that my puppet crew and I were featured on our district home page. God is good!
Here's a look into the organized chaos that I've created. Above is a press photo recently taken of me and my puppet crew working on the Audrey IIs. Rehearsals have started, and we've spent half of our time building, and the other half rehearsing our performance. In the auditioning stage, I auditioned puppeteers by teaching them a song and testing their abilities in puppeteering lip-synch. I had a lot of people to choose from, but I wanted my crew to be relatively small so that they were easier to work with. I really like a calm work environment. The girl working on Pod #3 is our costumes crewhead, and she has been kind enough to lend a hand in the building process. These puppets feature a tone of surprisingly lifelike features that will awe the crowds, but you will have to wait until later to hear about those!
