Jungle Book …

Three clips from my version of Jungle Book. Part of a series of seven made for another Instagram Story Book challenge in 2023. The music was selected from Pixabay – which has a good range of South Asian royalty free music, a music style that I really wanted to use for this project.

I have mixed feelings about the success of this series. I had decided to use paper as part of the puppet construct (wasn’t easy) and I vowed to try using an animation rig for “free” movement of the puppets (see Monkey scene). However the subject includes a lot of animals and my ability to move them well was ….. not good. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. I think.

Just to explain “animation rig”. This is a jointed rod contraption on a stand. The puppet fits onto it via a deliberately made “rig point” in the puppet. (Usually a sized piece of brass tubing incorporated into the puppet construction.) In place, the puppet can appear to jump, fly, walk, dance, etc because it is supported by the movable rig. Most animators use a rig in conjunction with digital software which enables them to delete the rig from the image; or “green screening” and imposing their own digital background onto the scene. I don’t have the relevant software for these effects so I am learning from base one and relying on “hiding” the rig from the camera. With me – what you see is what you get – apart from fades and transitions made with standard video editing software.