Just when you think the earthquake’s over, the city bursts into flames.  Isn’t that right, Mr. Gilliam?

When it comes to puppetry, many hands makes light work.  Just the two hands makes work more or less like a black hole, sucking in time and enthusiasm like light and matter.  Since Andy hightailed it out east I’m down to just the two.  But fret not, puppet pals.  Things don’t always go as planned, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still go.  We’re exploring with new methods to make this thing a reality.  Namely, photographing the puppets from every angle and animating them digitally, a nifty method we picked up from the astonishingly creative folks over at Tiny Inventions.

First thing’s first.  Since we already blew our budget on AV gear, I knocked together some umbrella lights the old fashioned way: with spray paint and umbrellas.  And some $10 work lights from the hardware store.

Here’s Andy’s arm dressing and posing the kids in front of a neutral white background.  It’s like school photo day if kindergartners required assembling.

And here I am in the garage giving Geer his moment under the spotlight.

Then Andy arduously Photoshopped the photo assets and put together  this test animation: look mom, no hands.

We’re feeling pretty good about the look of it, but also exploring other options.  I’ve been doing some tests performing the puppets one at a time in front of a green screen and then compositing them together.  There’s a world of possibility for how we can still pull this off, and we’re excited to devise the best way to do it.  Quite likely we’ll end up with a hulking hybrid of some sort, utilizing whatever techniques are most effective on a shot by shot basis.  If you ask me, that sort of curious amalgam would suit our show just fine.

So stick with us and we’ll walk this winding road together.  There’ll be some pitfalls and an awful lot of backtracking, but the best adventures happen when nothing goes as planned.  This is an adventure.

Well folks, we gotta cut corners somewhere, so rather than pouring the same inordinate amount of time into our storyboards as we have into all the other aspects of this protracted production, we’ve opted to bang them out quick and sloppy, like the war in Iraq.  What?  The war’s still going on… well, that certainly doesn’t bode well.  For a lot of things.

Like so many of the most profound and enduring films of our generation, Frown Town opens on a closeup of a pile of garbage and a squirell puppet very nearly getting set on fire.  Submitted for your consideration, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A little later, we meet our hero — James Rumsey — who is promptly hit in the head with a rock.  So it goes in Frown Town.

Here’s rather an extended sequence in which the bullies steal James’ suitcase, hurl some fairly creative American Indian epitets at him and then chase him through a hole in the fence.  It’s a battle of strong beliefs and little sense.  Once again, the similarities to Iraq abound.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. We beg you, internet, forgive us for our prolonged absence from the sublime world of bloggery. We have cool stuff to show you. We here at Frown Town HQ realize that this blog has now undergone a distressingly long period of laying fallow. The reason ain’t for lack of dedication to the project, but merely the crushing inevitability of summer. I went to Senegal for three weeks to visit my recently-relocated-to-Dakar-girlfriend, Steve lost track of himself amidst some fog-induced psychological breakdowns, and the wheels of Frown Town turned slowly. But we’re back in action! We’ve been fine-tuning the script, story boarding and starting to do preliminary voice recording. For our Kickstarter funders, we’ve been arduously photographing and composing the puppets for the super sweet poster that’s heading your way soon. Here’s the final result:

Piling up a puppet pyramid is one of those feats best achievable through modern technology (Photoshop), so we posed each tier of puppets individually against a black background with plans to stack them digitally.

Then we broke out the tripod and Steve lovingly photographed them with our new Canon 7D.  Thanks, Kickbros!

Judy, Trey and Patches, given the way they splayed out from the center, needed to be arduously arranged and photographed individually.

Countless hours of scrupulous Photoshopping later and we had the basic composition. The existing logo (at the top of this blog), worked great to anchor the webpage, but was too complicated for smaller compositions. We wanted something that could be more versatile, and not always stand out as the dominant design element. Since Henson’s basically a demi-god to us, I took inspiration from Fraggle Rock’s awesomely cartoonish branding and came up with this:

Steve aged the heck out of it and integrated it into the poster. The final product looks nothing short of awesome.

I’ve also been working on another bit of swag for our Kickstarter folks, a Frown Town t-shirt featuring Phauntleroy Rumsey. In many ways, he’s the real heart of the show:

We’re about to send these guys out to the poster and t-shirt printers, and we’ll mail them out as soon as we get ‘em back.

Frown Town is a patchwork quilt of secondhand garbage.  Not only are the puppets physically constructed from used gear, but the characters and ideas that underpin it all are cobbled together from quirks and fragments collected elsewhere.  Does that paint us as a pair of pernicious plagiarists?  That depends on your poetics.  T.S. Elliot, for one, has got our back: “The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”  True for poets, true for puppeteers.

When we started spinning a world around James we knew he’d need a gang, and every so briefly we planned to base them on The Beatles.  James was John and we’d go from there.  That idea sort of fell apart on account of George didn’t light animals on fire and Paul didn’t live in a jar, but from it we got Orly’s personality: the happy puppy dog with the heart of gold who doesn’t want any trouble from anybody, really.  He’s just happy to be along for the ride.  We knew he’d be sickly so we based his stringy hair and runny nose on Let the Right One In’s bullied protagonist, Oskar.  For added visual interest, as well as to amp up those giant baby animal eyes, we stole the coke bottle glasses from Trailer Park Boys‘ moral center, Bubbles.

The puppets’ names are also often laced with references no one’s really meant to get.  Judy’s taxonomy sprang from three prominent puppets:  Judy — of Punch and Judy, the 16th century Italian wife-beating double act — as well as Miss Piggy (Swine-) and Kermit the Frog (-hopper).  Kermit and Piggy are, much like Punch and Judy, a romantic due prone to bouts of furious violence.  So even Henson was borrowing from what came before, only he had the lady hit the man.  Hippie.

Trey Awesome’s face, hair, headband, shades and style are all derived from MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, or the most syrupy distillation of hipsterdom available at the time of his inception.  There’s also a bit of Arrested Development’s Rita in there, too.  However, instead of good looks and an English accent causing people to overlook her intelligence issues, Trey relies on his cool quotient, which is ample.

Magic is real, unicorns exist, and the internet believes in puppets. This past Friday we not only successfully met our Kickstarter funding goal, but exceeded it. After a year of uncertain labor on an insanely outlandish project in a room with no windows, it feels incredible to finally wander out into the light and find that we are loved.

We can’t thank our beneficent backers enough for their support, moral and monetary. Every iota of encouragement helps keep us from acknowledging the absurdity of spending so much time toiling away at this nonsense. Of course we love puppets, we’re batshit weirdos, but to find that you good people love them too means more than we can say.

We’ve got huge amounts of gratitude directed at the good folks of Kickstarter, too. It’s a great organization and an incredible tool for connecting with Patrons of the Internet Arts. Without them taking an interest in us and featuring Frown Town in their newsletter and on their front page, this couldn’t have gotten further than our garage.

It’s for you, the internet, it’s all for you.

Always.

Apologies for the long delay between our last post and this one.  We’ve been tackling some fundamental issues concerning the execution of the show, reconsidering the underpinning of the entire production.  Ok.  Mostly we’ve just been watching entirely too much of The Wire.  That show shoulda been called Frown Town, for real.  Now, here’s some work we did detailing the sets. 

Here I am painting in the line wok to give our sets that cartoon edge that originated in Andy’s concept work.  As always, the details make all the difference.

Because the cardboard’s all a bit wonky, we had to weigh each piece down while the glue dried.  Fortunately I’ve a large collection of over-sized art books.  Thanks, Friends of the Library Book Sale/Dad.

Once the individual elements were all glued down, we cut through the window panes to clear the way for Plexiglas.

As it came second hand from a junkyard, the Plexiglas was in perfectly terrible shape to begin with.  Andy then spent the better part of an hour scraping flaky fake tinting off of it before we could glue it in place.  This doubly ensured it was just the morass of scratches and cracks we needed.

Here’s a shot of how the stoop is shaping up.  We couldn’t be happier with how the cartoon style’s been executed with 3d elements, but we’re begining to reconsider the viablity of our setup.  These set pieces are taking longer than expected and physical limitations are begining to make themselves known.  But don’t frown just yet — we’re scheming up a new system that could solve the sets, reinvigorate the show and get the puppets walking, talking and blinking in ways previously thought impossible.  Stay tuned.

Being one of 6 to 9 young adults cohabiting in a huge ramshackle house has its ups and downs.  The dishes don’t get done and someone keeps shattering the wineglasses, but at least we’ve got a whole spare room to make puppets in.

Albeit the shittiest room ever.  There she blows — there on the left — with a Zissou stencil guarding the door.  Knocked together by previous halfwit tenants in the corner of the garage, broken windows with a scenic view of the laundry machine, low ceilings, no light; our Puppet Room is little more than a dingy cave.  But it’s our dingy cave, dagnabbit, and you’d best believe we filled it with awesome.

Here’s the main work station.  This old elementary school teacher’s desk is the first thing I bought when I moved to SF.  It’s simply massive and it’s got a super sturdy pop-up typewriter/sewing table secreted behind false drawers on the right side.

We made the shelf the puppets live on from scrap materials floating around our garage.  It’s nice to have them lord over us like that, vacant eyed task masters, staring down at us as if to say, “Back to work now, hipsters.  You’ll see your friends again when you’re dead.”

I keep their legs in a cupboard.  From left to right: Patches, James & Orly.

Swinehopper and Awesome would be the best of friends.  Complimentary color sense, complimentary nonsense.

Please excuse my portrait of Patrick Wolf (collaged out of glitter and glue glossed fabric), I’ve still got to polish off his unicorn heart.  Also, please note: In olden times even Gangy and Pop Pop were down with snuff.  Lorillard’s Snuff, getting your grandparents giggly since before you was born.

On the other side of the workshop, we’ve got our auxiliary workspace (under my portrait of John “The Coleopterist’s Delight” Lennon) and a shelving unit made out of free planters from Craigslist screwed onto the wall.  Note also the head of the James prototype mounted to the wall and the golden curtain leading to my bedroom, where wait wonders untold.

The 2nd work desk doubles as bulk storage for myriad types of paint, colored pencils, modeling clay, plaster, silk screens, A/V gear and my sewing machine, Betsy.

Close up on the planter shelf, where we’ve got oil paints and metallic pigments as well as miniature paper set models and Andy’s prototype puppet heads from all those many long months ago.

From these careful models, our children came to be.

Finally, blocking out one of those useless windows to the garage, is an incredibly poorly constructed cabinet, which some prior residents perminantly installed.  We’ve got it stocked with our overstock of the fleece, felt and fabric that made our puppets so lively and dapper.

Sunday ain’t no kinda day of rest when puppets are involved. We broke that Sabbath, we broke it good.

We’re doing a big push on the stoop set piece right now. We started out painting the molding in the garage. The sun was out, unseasonable for a San Francisco summer, and our Vitamin D deficiencies demanded that we move our workspace to the garden out back.

Freed from our concrete prison, surrounded by beautiful flowers and edible greens, working our little fingers to the bone.

The windows, doors and molding are being painted separately from the walls, and attached later to give the set pieces some 3D elements. There will also be window panes of horribly scratched secondhand plexiglass and real doorknobs, offsetting the cartoonishness of the cardboard sets with a real-looking grunginess. Here, Steve’s painting the panels of the door.

All suns must set, and we migrated back to the living room as the winds of the nightly death-fog kicked up and threatened to snatch away our precious pieces of cardboard. Here, I’m finishing up applying wood grain to a board for the broken window.

The boards are done, and with a couple more rounds of shading over the cardboard and some plexi panes, the window will be too.

Orly’s always pretty psyched to see you. Check back as we continue to polish off the rest of the stoop set and gloriously march on, like Napoleon in Russia, into the rest of the vacant lot.  Let us hope the winter is mild.

Times is tough all over.  It’s not like the old days when any schlub in a smock could pick up a foam injection mold making rig for a sawbuck.  High-voltage electric flocking fields don’t grow on trees, and an animatronics workshop can’t be scrounged off Craigslist for a fiver.  That’s why our puppets are made of Mission.

Behold, the Mission, rife with raw materials.  And also crime.  And scabies.  Gotsta watch out for those scabies.

As we’ve mentioned, it all starts with street couches.  Can’t you see the child inside that foam begging to be let out.  “Father…  hear me…  make me live…”  Does anyone else get that?

When it came to cladding the puppet lads (and lady) we went straight to Thrift Town on the corner of 17th and Mission.  This place is the Valhalla of 2nd hand goods.  Not only were the puppets almost entirely clothed off their racks, but I’ve also bought any number of desks, chairs, lamps and other studio essentials from their hallowed halls.

When Thrift Town just didn’t have that special something to make the Internet’s head turn, we headed one door down to Fabric Outlet.  Everything in this store is pretty much always half off, and they’ve got more — and more varied — fake fur than a Furry convention.  Almost makes me wish I was into yiffing.  Almost.

Right across the street is my favorite Dollar Store.  None of that “dollar and up” hucksterism that’s dragged the noble name of the dollar store through the muck lately.  We got all sorts of odds and ends here, from Orly’s magnifying glasses to Judy’s scrunchies.  They also have a wide array of mummified off-brand food products.

Salvation Army on the corner of 26th and Valencia also came through with some children’s clothes.  While worlds better than any of the Good Wills I’ve been to in town, it lacks the general air of radness that emanates from Thrift Town and it’s a bit pricier.

Valencia Cyclery, between 22nd and Hill Street, was goodly enough to give us all the bicycle boxes we could use for set building.

Puppets are not made from foam alone.  I can’t begin to calculate the amount of cult television we’ve consumed while building the various pieces of Frown Town.  We’ve watched the entirety of Twin Peaks, Carnivàle, Peep Show, Wonder Showzen, The Wire, The Venture Bros, The Mighty Boosh, Arrested Development and countless others, all rented from Lost Weekend Video, between 21st and Hill on Valencia.  Dig those half-priced Wednesdays.

This well-muraled Arts and Crafts Liquidator lives under the freeway, at about 1603 13th Street.  It’s open on some Saturdays and doesn’t seem to have a name, or a Yelp listing.  The stock is a retro mishmash of all sorts of arty odds and ends, beads, feathers, 70’s faux-wood graining kits, etc.  If you’re ever hanging round under the overpass, be sure to check it out.  They need your money more than you do.

Dolores Park hasn’t provided any physical material for the show, but without its rolling hills, ever abloom with the brightly-colored, multifarious blossoms of hipsterdom, we never would have come up with Trey Awesome. photo by Andrew Elkin, Flickr

Trey Awesome, whose name I am very seriously considering changing to Pabst Tecate.  That’s right, Pabst Tecate, but his friends call him “Fixie.”

Our shoes have run out of string, help us fund the freaky puppet show that haunts our dreams.

Now that the little urchins are finished, a couple things have become clear.

1). The camera we have is crap and we need a new one.

2). Materials for sets are crazy expensive and not as easily scrounged as couch cushions from the mission.

As such, we’ve decided to swallow our pride and begin begging for cold cash in earnest. We’ve set up a fundraising page with the amazing people from Kickstarter.com and put the goal at $3,750. With that kind of green in the bank, we can get a new camera, produce the first episode and get the jump on the rest of the series. There are pretty sweet backing awards like having your name graffitied on the walls of the sets, hand screened t-shirts and posters.

Look into those desperate eyes.  Won’t you please fund a frown?