Pondering curves & joints

Today I have been working on the side elevation, as shown, and trying to ensure that the shapes reflect the various monkey postures as closely as possible:

At the moment the design is too small and will need to be scaled up.  I was originally going to make the female 18" in height, and the male 21" in height, which are the average heights respectively for rhesus macaques.  However, I have been thinking that it would be as well to make each a few inches taller, since monkeys rarely stand at their full height, and for the purposes of sight lines in the theatre it will be as well to err on the taller side.  The only limitation is the weight of a marionette, which increases with size, but I think that 20" for the female and 23" for the male will be fine.  The late John Wright recommended not exceeding 24" for an all-wood marionette in his book Your Puppetry.

I will refine the contours further, but am quite happy at this stage with the view from the side.

The next challenge of course will be to work on the design from the front.  

The other thing I have been pondering today is the neck joint, whether it should be in the head or in the body, plus whether to have joints in the feet and a waist joint.  Hmmm.  I have been playing with clay and plaster.

Time to get my hands dirty

I've had enough of photos and videos and sketching.  I want to grab some clay and get a feel for what the carved three dimensional shapes might look like.  It's easier to see how it will all fit together this way.

Of course any joints I make will be all sticky until the clay dries out, so its more useful for visualising the main shapes than the intricacies of the joints.  Having said this, it was useful to try out a possible neck joint in three dimensions.

Safe arrival of lime & jelutong!

Just arrived home and am relieved to see my wood safely delivered to my studio!  Thanks to whoever opened the door and lugged that lot indoors for me :o)

Out of curiousity, I decided to weigh the wood to see if it was really as heavy as it seemed:

The jelutong (on left) is 4 inches thick, 8.5 inches wide, 6 foot 1 inch long, and weighs 26kg.

The lime (on right) is 4 inches thick, 6.5 inches wide, 4 foot 2 inches long, and weighs 12kg.

So in total I have 38kg of wood.

Trip to Hammersmith for wood

I had already phoned up Moss & Co. to check the availability of 4" lime and jelutong, only to be told that they did not have any 4" jelutong in stock, and were finding it hard to get hold of.  Panic!  Puppet makers need this thickness of wood for carving so I'm not sure what will happen if it becomes unavailable.

Somewhat optimistically, I borrowed a sack trolley and set off on the tube.

Fortunately for me, there was one piece of 4" jelutong left, so I snapped that up and chose a nice piece of lime.

It was clear that there was no way I could manoeuvre these two very solid planks on a small trolley through the hoards of Christmas shoppers in Hammersmith and down to the Piccadilly line, so I arranged for delivery instead.  Luckily for me, tomorrow was the last day they were delivering before closing for Christmas right through to the new year.

What do monkeys look like with no skin?

It's really helpful to see what the underlying structure is beneath all that fur!

Getting used to monkey shapes

Now that I have decided to go with rhesus macaques for my marionette design, I have found many more images of this particular species in various positions: squatting on haunches, on all fours, standing, etc.  My visual research includes some sketches to familiarise myself with the shape of this kind of monkey, as well as surrounding my desk with lots of photos.

Monkey wallah research

My next step was to find photos or video footage of monkey wallahs with their performing monkeys.  This was to figure out if there is one particular species that tends to be used.

Here are just a few examples:

Monkey Street Show (video)
Monkey Street Show - India (video)
The Monkey Wallah came to our neighbourhood (photo)
Monkey Wallah (photo)
The Monkey Wallah (photo)

These monkeys look to me like rhesus macaques, as do most of the others I've seen.

A traditional monkey wallah

I guess this may be due to the fact that they are common and not at all shy.  In fact they are known for being rather aggressive.

I've also been watching the original film Shakespeare Wallah and there too the monkeys seem to be closest to rhesus macaques.

I've decided to go with the rhesus macaque for the basis of my marionette design.

Indian monkey research

The first thing I wanted to find out was which kind of monkey should I use as a visual reference when designing the marionettes?

I discovered that there are eight main species of monkey in India: the langurs and the macaques:

Rhesus Macaque

Bonnet Macaques

Liontailed Macaque

Assamese Macaques

Common Langur

Capped Langurs

Nilgiri Langurs

Golden Langur