old wonky notes from ha's house

research macchu picchu for structural knowledge.

deeyewhy universe - patchwork campground?

mount buildmore - bottom - peublos, cliffhouses, up to treehouses, failling water, igloos

transiency - see in the background wherever we are for a while, then finally stop and ask them, Whaaaat are you doing??? take away: snails

structure - choose either macchu picchu or cathedrals to visit

Notes from 2/6

 In hindsight this is pretty obvious, but it turns out we definitely need to storyboard these episodes and add more detail before Kirsten can start a script. We started doing that a little with the Literature episode, but it need much more work, and some thumbnails wouldn't hurt.

We also need to do more research about these authors/characters/artists before we can teach anyone about them - most of the subjects we're including are things we know enough about for the general outline, but we need to research more on each subject before we can write it out.

Literature: 

Don Quixote – [Background: The novel is a parody of the chivalric code of honor – Cervantes points out that it’s ridiculous in the real world to be so idealistic by applying that code to a 'real' person (based off of himself). At the same time he creates a new code of honor that’s more applicable in the real world. He bases the real world off of his own experiences. Another important separation from other concurrent works is that he wrote it in the common language.]

Walking through the woods to find don quixote – come across several knight who each acts typical, talks about questing, and maybe says something chivalrous to Lucy. They are Suspiciously Identical. Oscar keeps thinking that each new one is the great knight that Lucy’s talking about and leading them to, but then they walk out into the field and see Don Quixote, who says something similar to the other knights, but is obviously very different. We only talk to him for a second before he goes off into the background to do something (fighting windmills etc). We talk to Sancho Panza about him, and he mentions that he likes Don Quixote because he’s more real, down to earth, speaks normally. Oscar is not convinced that Don Quixote’s so great, and Lucy explains – segway to shadow puppet explanation of Cervantes' process. 

 ~~~

Explanation winds down, S.P. and D.Q. take us to the LitCity. 

{we are considering replacing Poe with Mark Twain because he is more pertinent to our problem - storytelling.}

Mark twain – tavern wigwam with other storytellers. OR crazy steamboat with passengers going up the river (sans litcity)

Walk into the room and someone finishes their story. Mark Twain clears his throat and everyone listens. We hear him tell one of his stories, then we talk to him about how he did it.

Story style– flat and simple like Lucy’s history lesson, but more colorful.

Vegetables

Oedipus

Like veggie tales, but sort of disturbing?

This uses characters with minimal movement and no expressions to convey a dramatic story. The vegetable puppets move with a sense of weight that's really nice, especially in the fight scene and the tavern place. The lighting in the tavern is really nice, too!

Puppet Materials?

We need to decide what to make our first puppets out of. Ideally they will be a puppet-building practice exercise for our real main-character puppets, so we should make them out of whatever we plan on making Lucy and Oscar out of. 

consider: http://www.axtell.com/manip.html

Jonathan, Kirsten, and I were thinking about the pros and cons of felt vs. wire frame with paper mache, and hand puppets vs. stick puppets. 

Felt: we don't know a lot about it, but it seems like a cool material, and could end up being really nice looking and sturdy. Where do we get the wool? How hard is it to do? Could we have easily moveable joints?

Wire frame + paper mache: Jonathan made a wire-frame prototype for Don Quixote that has really well-functioning joints and looks good. The paper mache would be the questionable part regarding appearance, and possibly durability/good motion.

Hand Puppets: Easily moveable mouth, but that would use up one whole hand, and would also possibly make the puppets really big. If we used just one finger to move the bottom jaw, the size issue might be remedied. Do we need a moveable mouth?

Stick Puppets: No moveable mouth, but we could probs move two arms instead of one arm and a mouth. 

We would like to start building our self-puppets on Friday at Kirsten's dad's office at 10:00am (there's a Ben Franklin very nearby, so we could tromp over and make our first materials purchase there), so spare a couple thoughts for the material and design questions here before Friday.