beats shadow puppets

I was emailed these very cool pictures today at work and as you know I love shadow puppets. But this was an email of 5 pictures so how am I supposed to share these gems with you. Yes I could publish a small thumbnail to my blog but I really wanted to share the files with you. Oh I have no idea who made them and if I am infringing on anyones copyright I apologise and will take them down. If I knew who did them I would just link to their site. But here's an idea. Box.net make a widget from which you can share files with each other. So you get a great preview of what I am going on about in the form of an image viewer. How cool is that. Check out my other half's way of sharing music over at his blog My Stuff and Cr*p

pilobolus

So to keep on the Oscars theme for a little bit longer, Sunday night saw interspersed between Oscars shenanegans with the incredible shadow puppeteers/ dance troupe Pilobolus. They entertained us with their interpretation of various Oscar nominated movies to quite incredible effect. I just love anything like this. You are suddenly given not only 2D but monochrome as your medium. Your pallette is your limbs and body and the canvas is the projection you make. The music used really accentuated the movement. This was definitely an Oscars highlight for me :)

shadow play

This is exactly how car adverts should be. Simple and elegant. A poignant message with a simple strapline "Isn't it beautiful what hands can do?". Shadow puppetry has always been an interesting medium to me. It relies heavily on the imagination to work. No colour and no sound. Just shapes and suggestion. There is a great scene in Hideous Kinky where the two girls are acting out a shadow puppet scene called the 'dark hand'. It reminds me of what it is like to be a child where everything is full of wonder and excitement. I think this Volkswagon ad captures that moment.