December

Seasons greetings and best wishes for the new year. Thanks to all those groups, organisations, individuals, collaborators, friends and supporters that helped make 2011 the creative year it was!

November

This month has involved commissions for stage props, (a large origami trick bird for Hocus-Pocus Theatre) lots of acting work (from the various agencies whos books I'm on) and I'm also starting to plan a stop motion animation I've been commissioned to make in time for Christmas.

October

Two more dates for my popular fossil making workshop this month, in Lakenham primary and Little Plumstead. The primary school aged participants made some excellent work, and really enjoyed experimenting with the different shapes and patterns from "Col.Vipers Patented Fossil Making Kit" That I brought along with me. A gig on behalf of Cultureworks and Broadland Council.

October

October is the "Big Draw" month, and thanks to The Campaign for Drawing and Breckland Council I have the opportunity to run an event at Great Hockham Primary.

The children, aged 5-11, created a list of things the school squirrel mascot could be daydreaming about. Each pupil then drew a picture of their suggestion. The idea was for them to then turn their drawing into thier nieghbours drawing by...yes you guessed it, drawing some more!

the 100's of pictures they produced were then captured using animation software, and with some of my own animation and editing skills, turned into the film you can see here or in the player to the left.

August/September

Conegliano, Italy.

I've been running a two week long animation course in Italy on behalf of The English Experience. It was provided for the two senior classes at the summer camp held at the F.Grava School, Conegliano, a city approximately 40miles (67km) north of Venice.

Students teamed off and formed six different animation companies in order to create their short films. assigning roles of director, producer, researcher, script writer and designer amongst themselves.

The final stop motion films the students produced were excellent and included gory plasticine tales of the true story of Henry VIII wives, a tradgic spaghetti-western and a comedy horror whereby teen guests to a party are unwittingly bumped-off thanks to their unfortunate allergies.

They are available to watch on my Vimeo channel here. Or in the player to the left.

Thanks to all those involved in making the course such a success, staff, students and co-ordinators. Special thanks to Max Dovey for his assistance in delivering the course

July

Carnival and Festivals galore this month, projects have included...

Children and Young Persons Carniv-isle working alongside Pat Howe from Spirit of Carnival and residents of Norwich YMCA to produce a number of Ancient Greek warrior costumes inspired by the Spartans in the film "300". These were then paraded through the city the evening before as well as the larger procession on the saturday. Spartans ended up escorting the Mayoress and entourage!

I've also been finishing off the work on the giant spider puppet in time for the Norwich Lord Mayors Clebrations 2011. The 5 metre (16ft) spider was eventually carrried through the streets by 10 fearlesss volunteers, making onlookers gasp in awe!

Another fun project with Culture Works East, this time at the Latitude Festival, in Henham, Suffolk. I provided animation workshops over the weekend for the new "Inbetweeners" area. Some great short films were made by participants all carried out in a large tent, on the side of a wooded hill, in the rain!

Links to the films will hopefully be coming soon!

June

Summer term is here and with it a flurry of projects and workshops for Culture Works East, a creative agency providing a wide range of multimedia and craft workshops to local community organisations.

Dig it! Saw me dressed up in best fossil hunter gear in the hall of Bignold Primary School, enthusing the young participants into creating their very own paleontological wonders!

A giant puppet making workshop was run over two days for the Hewett school cluster, "Base". Under my supervision a giant spider puppet from willow (withy) and tissue paper emerged. Looking forward to seeing it finished in time for the Lord Mayors Procession in Norwich next month!

representing Norwich Puppet Theatre again, running bouncing bug workshops at a charity cricket match in the cathedral grounds. Jude Orange and I amusingly made the society pages of the Norfolk Magazine!

April/May 2011

I had the pleasure of visiting Greensward Academy in Rochford, Essex this month, demonstrating my sculptural work to Y10 pupils and helping them to create their own faux-fossils. Some of the excellent pieces included a fossil angel and a fossil unicorn produced by the students! The workshop was provided on behalf of Creative Partnerships Essex and The Royal Opera House.

I've also been working on a number of side projects including creating dancer and performer Kayla St Claire's Website.

March/April 2011

Spring is in the air and I have been working in collaboration with entertainer and performer Bob Percy's latest incarnation, Whydini, Purveyor Of Wonder.

Working together to devise the visual persona of his show, I was commissioned to create a custom design for his Dutch Filibus bicycle and convert a simple wooden crate into a brassy and gloss cabinet of wonder.

I've had to wear a whole range of hats for this one, designer, carpenter/joiner, painter and sign writer amongst others, and the finished result will be out on the streets in time for this years Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

More pictures can be found here

March 2011

Phones, Pixels and Plasmas

This month I coordinated the creation of a 9ft high sculpture out of scaffolding, old TVs, Video players and computers with the help of students from City College Norwich created in situ outside the Forum in a week, and left to guard Millenium plain throughout technology month.

The giant head came out looking like some kind of evil Transformer robot (Decepticon to those who know!) and was affectionately named "Junkotron"

The local BBC made a short time-lapse film of the event the you can see on YouTube here or embedded in the player to the left.

See the Facebook Group here for more pictures and info.

February 2011

Some very quick work reauthoring the multimedia used in the Indefinite Articles / Norwich Puppet Theatre new show "The Chalk Giants" which also meant I had the chance to finally get around to checking out the production, with its interesting use of recorded projections, simple animations and live video footage incorporated with more traditional techniques of shadow puppetry, paper theatre and story telling.

February 2011

Steam Mardling!

Ive been out at Holt in North Norfolk, working with the folk from the excellent Media Projects East, Martin Sercombe and Britta Pollmuller, bringing another film and animation workshop to teens and young adults.

With the help of appropriately named storyteller and historian Neil Story to inspire the participants, Steam Mardling brought a diverse group of young people together from around North Norfolk to create films and videos of ghost stories of the local railway lines.

Mardling from Coast to Broad link.

More details of a screening in the summer coming soon!

February 2011

It's been a thoroughly action packed week this week, working on "Dragon's Lairs and Homes of Mayors" a cross curricular school project incorporating science, history and art.

All thanks to the lovely folk at Dragon Hall (Sarah Power & Stephanie Potts) Strangers Hall (Bethan Holdridge) Norwich Castle Museum (Dave Waterhouse) Belgian artist Frank Gryffroy, and the staff and pupils of West Earlham and Mattishall Primary schools.

Frank and I helped to bring the children's ideas to life, creating two huge dragon sculptures in their different habitats as well as facilitating them to create a selection of treasures in the form of delfware tiles and silver trenchers.

Thanks to funding from Norwich HEART's Shaping 24 project

February 2011

The Wyrm exhibition has been installed in Norwich Playhouse and runs for the rest of the month, as part of the Norwich Dragon Festival.

All work is available to purchase please contact me here if you wish to make an inquiry.

If you can't afford to buy a dragon head there are a selection of cryptozoological delights, including postcards in 5 different designs (4 illustrations from Col Vipers field notes and one of the dragon fossils) and limited edition framed and numbered casts of the 5 different fossil designs (3 Dragons, a Fairy and a Mermaid)

All will be available in the etsy shop soon.

Exhibition website here. The Wyrm Pages.

February 2011

I returned to Myers Grove School in Sheffield this month, to catch up on the puppet work produced by the students following my consultation with them last year.

I spent the day talking to a class of year 10 students about the variety of work I produce, and discussing their own puppet ideas for their creative diploma. Here's a picture of some of the excellent mouth puppets the students have created. Thanks again to teacher Tom Helliwell, and the funding support from SERO consulting, Sheffield.

"Can I say again how much the group enjoyed the session. It is fantastic for them to hear direct feedback from a professional about their own design ideas and we were all impressed with your range and repertoire...Hope to work with you again in the future."

January 2011

I've been locked up in the studio all month working on the pieces for display in my exhibition in February, entitled WYRM, the name derived from the old english word for a type of dragon.

The exhibition is based on the exploits of my great-great-great grandfather, a victorian gentleman and explorer, by the name of Colonel Augustus Viper, a fearless man who traversed the world marvelling at exotic creatures before taking the liberty of shooting them, and adding them to his collection of taxidermy.*

Having recently inherited this collection of antiquities it only seemed pertinent that they were displayed to the public once more, and what better an opportunity than the 2011 Norwich Dragon Festival.

See the WYRM pages for more details, images and links...