Sunday 14 April 2013

Gigs in Space Vol 1

As I have mentioned before, I find set building almost as much fun as performing the puppets. I also try to spend as little money as possible because, quite frankly, I don't have a lot of it, and I'm cheap!! Collecting boxes, old packaging, kitchen roll tubes, lids and assorted left overs for a few months, I had some interesting stuff.

One man's junk is another man's potential Spaceship!

We always knew we would write an episode in space, and I really wanted to make a space station style set. Being a child of the 70's and 80's most of our TV viewing was made of space rockets. From Star Fleet and Terrahawks through Pigs In Space, right up to Star Wars and Red Dwarf. I wanted a turn at doing it! For the last episode of this Season 1 of our puppet writing, Martin put together a script that required John to build a shuttle in his shed allowing Mark and Chris to zoom into space for a trip out.

Same junk sprayed up with extra stuff.

It would require a cockpit set for the two guys. A control panel for John in his shed and then an international space station set for a broadcasting conversation with another character. Plenty to do, and I had a garage full of odds and ends to make that happen. Armed with my trusty glue gun, I took a polystyrene panel that was protecting my delivered fridge and began sticking stuff together.

Outside window one - or should that be 2001!

The more tubes and jar lids I glued on, the better it looked. Other gems were mobile phone box packing, and a box of old broken plumbing clips and I can't extoll the virtues of chocolate mousse pots enough! I sprayed them all with a cheap grey primer from my local DIY store and the results were better than I had hoped.

Reverse side of the window for inside.

Due to the slightly different angles I wanted to shoot from, I would need some walls as well for the spaceship. I found a sheet of plywood and sunk an old drum rim into it to create a round window. I finished that off with some more kitchen roll tubing and a few phone carton boxes. Once it was sprayed grey, it was double sided and could be used for several shots.

Rough setup for shooting in Space - where no one can her you scream apparently.

Lastly all I would need was the control panel inside the ship which will be made from more boxes and polystyrene from the fridge packaging. Once I painted a few buttons (or the upside down chocolate box insert) in place the final piece would be done.  Back to the garage to keep building!!

Sunday 7 April 2013

Shameless Booze Puppet Promotion and Products!

Booze Band Boys behind the 12 Bar Blues....

Due to either my artistic nature, or my ultimate overall cheapness, I found myself using the puppets to make gifts. The Christmas just gone, I wanted to make puppet based presents to thank everyone in the band for participating and making it all happen.

Simple staging for the odd month here and there.
 I toyed with the idea of making individual Christmas cards with their puppet on, all the way up to a mug with their own character on. Having done a bit of looking on the web, making 'one off' designs of anything would not be a cheap option. I needed to scale it back. I had a lot of set photos of the puppets, along with a couple of staged pictures I was going to use on our Facebook page. What could I make that would be useful, something everyone would want to keep, and also be a constant reminder of the ongoing project? After a few moments of head scratching I opted for Year Calendars. Fairly cheap, and pretty useful!


 I would only need to get 12 images together and I could make sure that everyones puppet was featured the same amount of times. I went through my photo collection and picked out around 5 good shots, the rest I would have to plan and photograph as I went along. It was really good fun, I got to use the sets and dress them according to

Mug shot - side 1
the months I was using them for. Some were seasonally relevant (Christmas, January Snow, Halloween) others were just scattered with scenes from our filmed episodes. I only ordered 10 of the calendars and gave them out at the Band Christmas Meal, along with a Booze Band Puppet Postcard. Everyone was really chuffed, they came out better than I could have hoped. I have a sinking feeling that they are going to be expecting one every year now!!

Mug shot - side 2
Once I had the graphics made for the front cover of the calendar, it became really easy to adjust the image to fit on other products. I also managed to get a good deal on a set of tea mugs that we used to send out as promotional items and gifts for people who had helped us. I must say they all went pretty quickly!




Calender Cover that also doubled as a promotional postcard.