Caricatures.
I’m working on a design for a new puppet (for a couple, actually), with one hopefully getting made over the weekend in an atypically rush-rush kind of manner. I’m going to see how little sleep I can manage with, how quickly I can build the thing, and how little I can skimp on the quality. This puppet — which I can not yet talk about, sadly — will be for web video only, so there’s a certain leeway there, but not terribly much, as web video today can mean anything from a 320×240 video all the way up to true 720p/1080i/1080p HD video.
The reason I’m mentioning this at all right now is because this new puppet is based on an existing person. More than that, it’s based on an incredible famous and well-known person (even moreso than Stephen Colbert). As such, I’m working off an existing visual, which is to say, this person’s actual appearance. Which is to say … I’m making a caricature of him. Now, in some ways, many of the dotBoom puppets, based loosely on real people (who have largely forgiven me), were all caricatures, but that seems like a bit of a stretch, to be honest. And with the Stephen Colbert puppet, there was the attempt to make it look very much like Colbert, and despite the fact that you need to caricature because you need to pick out and exaggerate the key features so that it makes the resemblance between puppet and person completely obvious, it was and it is a very good-natured endeavor.
This new puppet, though? It’s a shot across the bow. It’s a project I’m doing with a friend of mine, and while some other people he talks about, and some other people we nearly lampooned, are people that he and I like, I have no personal feelings toward this person, and my friend somewhat actively dislikes him. There are apparently good reasons for this, but I’ve never put that much thought into it. Now, before anyone wonders or worries: no, this isn’t a simple attack piece. I’d never do this. There’s a good angle on what we’re doing, and, as with most of the stuff I do, it’s funny. It’ll be a good gag, simple as that. When it’s done I think it’ll be pretty great — my friend’s writing the script, and he’s very funny, and I’ll be doing the puppet-building and puppetry, with the possible help of my friend Nicholas Lemon — so there’s no worry to be had about my suddenly going all-attack, and no-wit.
Back to the caricature: I spent a chunk of yesterday working on the design for this new puppet, figuring out the physical elements to highlight and accentuate, and what aspects of the puppet’s caricature they would be representative of. I think I’ve got a good design done, which will look like the person it’s supposed to, and also be exaggerated in all the right ways. If the build goes as planned (assuming nothing falls through) I should be starting on it tomorrow afternoon, and in theory I should have photos of the design and puppet progress up in the next few days.
Part of the reason I mentioned this at all, aside from a desire to update this blog more frequently, and get back to that “pulling back the curtain” kind of thing, is because I came across this very cool designer’s site (via drawn.ca), and I wanted to pass along the link. His name is Kyle T. Webster, and his work is great. He does some nice logo work, and illustration, but I mention him here because he does dynamite caricature work. You should definitely check him out.
Tags: bono, building, caricature, designing, kyle webster, puppet, puppet design, puppetry, u2
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 5:34 am and is filed under Designs, Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.