The Puppet Press - April News

Amanda Palmer visited the set when she was here in Australia, and got to meet our lovely heroine Cora.

Exciting New Developments

Press Kit
We have a press kit! It is fancy, and if you are a member of the press, or just someone who likes lots of information, you can download the press kit HERE.

Animation Research
We've been doing lots of research on animation techniques, reaching out to professional animators in the field and we have received some very exciting responses.

Jamie Caliri is an Emmy award winning animator responsible for several projects that have inspired us, including:  the title sequence for the Lemony Snicket film, several United airlines commercials using animate paper puppets, and the opening credits to 'The United States of Tara'.

Jamie generously offered to help answer any questions we had about the technical challenges of paper animations, and even put us in touch with the master paper puppet maker, Morgan Hay (who was an assistant art director on Coraline, among other things). Morgan has been helping us make our puppets stronger by sending us secret puppet diagrams. Soon we will rule the universe!

Paper puppets might look simple, but they're quite tricky to build. They have to be moveable and pose-able, but with parts that don't wilt, bend, or collapse - the Doctor's head has a tendency to fall off at the most inconvenient moments. So this week is puppet laboratory week! Inspired by Morgan's expert advice, we'll be printing out new puppets, trailing improved materials, and figuring out new ways to build them better and stronger.

In the not-so-exciting-but-still-necessary category of developments, we have bought hard drives for all the project data, upgraded RAM in the shooting laptop, and come up with workflow and production schedules. So many notebooks… Whee!

The Next Phase

First up will be a lot of time in Photoshop. We'll be taking scans of Molly's hand drawn art and using them to create the elements that make up a scene. These are then printed, cut out, and turned into the scenery.

To give you and idea of how much work this can be, here's an example of how we make a plant:

Molly draws some foliage.

We then duplicate and print a whole page of leaves.

Each one is carefully cut out...

...and glued together to make the complete plant!

The finished plant can be glimpsed in the background of our kickstarter trailer. Each element of the film is constructed in this way. There is a good chance we will go mad, and may need to get some crafty assistants to join us in our insanity... more on this soon.

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To wrap up our news bulletin, here is a stunning paper animation that Jamie Caliri and Morgan Hay worked on:

New Kickstarter Rewards!

We are really excited that the fundraising is going so well. Halfway into our month long Kickstarter and we've already reached $10,000. 

Now we're going for $14,000. A few weeks ago we released a new reward, a limited edition art booklet with portraits of all the characters, available for anyone increasing their pledge by $20. 

But having reached the 10k mark, we now happy to announce THE BEST REWARDS EVER!

PUPPET PORTRAIT & CUSTOM ANIMATION

A custom puppet of YOU, and chance to meet the cast in their own animated world.

If you pledge $1000, we will make a custom puppet of you, then your puppet-self will get to meet the cast and ask them questions. Molly will draw your portrait, then Jim will make a custom puppet and animation of you meeting the characters. You can submit one question to ask each character, these will be done as title cards like silent film. The sequence will be around ten seconds long.

This reward will be limited to one lucky backer, so get in quick.

As an added incentive for everyone who backs the project we have this exciting possibility:

A NEW KIM BOEKBINDER SONG

A companion song to 'The Organ Donor's March'.

If we reach our next funding goal of $14,000, Kim Boekbinder will write and record a new song about one of the characters in the animation. Think of it as a companion song to 'The Organ Donor's March'. The song will be given as a download to every backer of the film, as a thank you to everyone for helping us reach our goal.

Where Will Additional Money Go?

It's true that we reached our initial funding goal very fast, and we can actually make the film with what has been pledged so far. But that goal was based on our minimum budget, and more money will equal better equipment, faster animating, and an earlier completion date for the film.

Upgraded Computer - This will help speed up the photoshop work that needs to be done, as well the rotoscoping and painting out of rigs that takes up so much time in post-production.

Improved Camera Rigs - There are a few keys pieces of equipment that will give us better ways of moving the camera around, which will both speed up the production and allow us to do much smoother and more amazing shots.

Lights - New and improved lights will help us make everything even sexier than before.

Printer - Purchasing our own professional quality printer would speed up production, and give us more room to experiment. At present we have to take everything to the printer's, and the turn around time on that often slows things down.

Record New Song - If we reach $14,000 then Kim will write a new song to accompany the 'The Organ Donor's March'. Some of the money will go toward recording and mastering this song professionally.

Application Fees - We want to share this animation with as many people as possible, and will be entering it into film festivals around the world. Application fees and postage only range from $25-$100 at a time, but if you're applying to even 20 festivals it adds up fast! 

So please keep sharing the film and the Kickstarter link around - we're shooting for $14,000 by April 25th.

Link to the Kickstarter: http://kck.st/eckqme