This Is 'BITZ'- My recently completed short film.
'Corky' (the old man puppet made from old wine corks) awakes from under his newspapers and diligently sets off towards his destination- All the while ignored by the shadows of busy folk heading the other way. However, his creaking joints make his progress slow but he shuffles on regardless. Undeterred by the sad loss of his favourite cap and newspaper he makes a replacement origami hat... And a paper plane. These give him an ingenious idea! In the words of Vera Lynn, 'If I Only Had Wings...' The wonderful score is composed and arranged (and sang) by Danny Ryan dannyryansound.com
This is BITZ (version 2). The Bitz (version 1) was the first puppet I built... Using my pet whippets as inspiration I set myself the challenge to build a functional stop-motion puppet using ONLY the random junk I had in my toolbox. There was no design or drawing before I started- her creation was an exploration into the balance between style and function. She was very difficult to animate, so I revisited this project a couple of years later with the same ethos and restrictions but with more experience. This is the result.
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After Bitz, I made a shorter sequel (introducing Bobz, a friend for Bitz). I experimanted with 2 puppets at once, and with pixilation. This is something I'd like to take further in my next project.
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