Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:53:08 -0400
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
From: Hobey Ford <hobeyone-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: [Puptcrit] steel meets paper mache: Joe Cashore and Chas Llewellyn.


Joe and Wilma Cashore passed through Asheville this week and I was
happy to introduce them to Chas Llewellyn. I had previously enjoyed
witnessing the meeting of John Payne and Phillip Huber.   Chas is one
of two apprentices to late John Payne, maker of huge steel
marionettes.  It was fascinating to watch Joe and Chas meet.  They
are, I discovered from the same planet.  Engineers and artists, one
working with ultra-light marionettes with subtle  counter weight
balancing and one using the heaviest possible material: steel.  Chas,
like his mentor John, works in steel and engineers his puppets to
perform subtle movements through computer animation and steel
enginnered puppets to create his final product.  Chas first showed
Joe,  John's amazing ten minute animatronic  8' tall steel Raven
marionette with every feather jointed to perfection in an animated
display with John's original live performance recorded into the memory
chip of a game station. and replayed through servos and chips with
sound and lighting cues including strobes and thunder.  Then Chas
shared his own work creating a laser guided computer operated tripod
which he is designing for stop animation steel junk yard bunraku
operated puppets. filming  outside.  He can pan down from 30 ft if
needed in a controlled repeatable motion while moving forward.  The
route of the travelling animation tripod is controlled in a similar
fashion to a surveyor's laser guided work.  The puppeteer who will
later be edited out frame by frame in adobe after aftects, can see the
view of the camera with a wireless video eye piece.  The pupppeteer
can even take a break and get back into perfect sync by matching
current video with a ghost image of the last frame shot. The tripod is
run by an onboard custom built laptop with dual prossesors which
advances the HD courtroom robotic video camera, while sending the
compositive shot back to the puppeteer's wireless eyepiece. He created
a harness and alternate dolly system to carry the weight of his often
very heavy Marionettes.
Joe then displayed his relatively weightless marionettes.  Both were
intrigued with the other's, well,  almost obsessvive attention to
engineering detail.  Both had a feature in common.  Each creates
controls which are works of art in themselves
Chas' current youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjMvbLCqLw

coming soon Chas' website where you can see some of the controls he
creates and some of his othe animations.:
www.zenotopia.com


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