Chips, meet Piss...

Things have been quiet in Rubber Balls Towers of late. We had planned a Christmas Sketch but my dear old dad died shortly before Christmas, which rather took the wind out of my sails. Quite frankly, I lost my mojo and felt no enthusiasm for doing anything much.

Also, doubts about the very basis of Rubber Balls had been setting in anyway, as I don't feel that people are really that interested in satirical sketch type humour - there are now so many outlets, such as topical comedy panel shows on TV, radio shows, and a torrent of stuff on the internet. I mean, how can one compete with, say, a snappy Photoshopped gag on Twitter or Facebook?

And then, just as I started getting back to work on another (related) project, ITV announced Newzoids, a new '...puppet show [which] promises a “biting look at the world of politics and celebrity”, nearly 20 years after the end of Spitting Image.' Thank you very fucking much, ITV, for pissing all over Rubber Balls's chips. That said, I do really hope that Newzoids is a massive hit as, with luck, that will stimulate interest in all things puppety...

Meanwhile, to feel like I'm getting somewhere, I've just finished painting the Benjamin Netanyahu puppet head - whether it gets used or not is another thing...

Dad would have loved it - he hated Netanyahu...

Nigel's Calypso!

For the first time ever, we went out on location with a puppet! And broke out into song! We spent an enjoyable afternoon freaking shoppers out, and making small children piss themselves laughing, on Walthamstow High Street as we filmed Nigel's Calypso!



Here we penetrate the veil concealing the magic of Rubber Balls...

Virtual Props

Whilst Jon shoulders the burden of post-production duties and I deal with making puppets and performing them, I have also provided some doctored images used as background plates for greenscreen shots and what I suppose could be termed 'virtual props', that is to say, for example, the various products stocked by Ukip Poundland. The first few appeared in all their glory but, sadly, to improve the tempo of the sketch, the later items moved across the screen and so couldn't be seen at all clearly. As there were a couple of gags I quite liked, I shall indulge myself by displaying them here...

Behind the Balls!

As mentioned earlier, Jon's blog has ace coverage of the filming of our first video, so rather than repeat it here, I thought I'd first of all chuck in a few photos of the sculpting process and some behind-the-scenes images that amused me, and then explain a bit about the construction process afterwards, so as not to bore the casual browser...

Right, that's the pretty pictures done with, now for the boring bit which you can conveniently skip if you like...

As ever, the puppet starts off as a clay sculpture, using bog-standard (and cheap) water-based clay. From this, a plaster mould is then made, much the same as with the Nick Griffin head. However, when it came to casting, rather than a thin latex skin filled with soft polyurethane foam, I tried a different approach. With Nick, I found that filling the head completely with (even soft) foam made it stiff and difficult to manipulate, so for Nigel I made a thick rubber skin, formed by leaving the latex in the mould for six hours to build up a skin around an eighth of an inch thick, with the intention of leaving the moving parts (the mouth) empty and retaining their shape solely by virtue of the thickness of the rubber skin.

As such, I just filled the inside of the top of the head with foam, leaving the mouth downwards empty. Inside the upper and lower jaws I glued 'mouth plates', rigid plates made from 3mm thick styrene sheet with elastic fabric straps attached into which the puppeteer slips their fingers (upper jaw) and thumb (lower jaw). A few chunks of furniture foam were cut to shape and inserted to provide more support for the puppeteer's hand and voila! A puppet head was born!

The body was cobbled together from plumbers' plastic pipe, furniture foam and a pillow(!), with a couple of ropes looped out of the neck. These were then placed over the puppeteer's hand (between thumb and fingers) so that the puppet torso hung from the head at the right level. This proved knackering, and a great strain on the puppeteer (me), because the one hand and arm have to support (and manipulate) not only the head but the body too, so a better arrangement will be made for future use. Some sort of harness to be worn about the puppeteer's body will be needed to support the puppet torso's lower edge, thus taking most of the weight, whilst the ropes at the neck will be replaced with some kind of fabric webbing.

And that's about it for now.

Rubber Balls!

Bloody hell, yet again a massive gap since the last post! And nobody gave a shit! Well fuck you, I'm going to post again anyway...

Being a massive (aka fat) fan of Spitting Image, I wondered if it was possible to create something in that spirit for our jaded online age, and to that end I decided to see if I could round up some like-minded people, as I lack many of the skills required to attempt such a project, and I need someone to kick me up the arse now and then when my energy/interest flags.

So thanks to the Twitter, I hooked up with mega-talented short film maker* extraordinaire Jon Rist, aka Jonofthesouth, and hot-shot up-&-coming improv comedy wizard Nick Brown.

But being aware of logistical limitations, in particular the length of time it takes to make a puppet, what to do? Without spending many months first making puppets, there was no way we could even hope to mount some kind of ensemble production like Spitting Image, or even the much cheaper (and admirable) Aussie puppet show, Rubbery Figures (well worth checking out on YouTube, BTW).

So what single figure could we take the piss out of? Aha, we thought, 22 May is Euro Election time! And who is flavour of the month and never off the bloody telly? Nigel Farage... That might give us time to make perhaps two puppets (if we were lucky), or (as it transpired) one.

So, allied with my old Nick Griffin puppet (to provide a foil for Nige), we decided to take the plunge, writing a script which incorporated the most feasibly filmable material we'd dreamt up.

But what to call this venture? Well, the puppets are rubber, and it's mostly going to be a load of old balls, so how about... Rubber Balls? Ace!

And this is the final result, Rubber Balls Presents Nigel Farage TV:



So how was it made? I don't hear you ask... Well you'll have to wait for another post to find that out. Or just look here.


*As in he's normal height, his films are short, rather than he's a short-arsed maker of films (regardless of length). Got that? Good.

B3tatastic!

B3ta (pronounced 'beta') is a marvellous website for wastrels (like me!) to post silly stories, anecdotes and craft daft photoshopped (and other) images and animations. My first foray as an adult into sculpting caricatures was actually for a b3ta competition, when I made my Patrick Moore bust (detailed in an early bolg post after I'd upgraded the eyes).

Recently, they had an Amazing Projects thread, to which I contributed a picture of Puppet Nick Griffin, and thereby got a mention in their newsletter! Not by name but by project: b3ta Newsletter 506

Which was nice!

And as a special treat, here's a bigger version of the b3ta image, with Puppet Nick looking suitably patriotic, the twat...


I'm also on the verge of completing a caricature bust of a friend's dad, from which I'll be making a mould and then a resin-bronze casting, to give the effect of a quality cast bronze piece. More on that later...