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Puppet Vision August 2010.
Kiwi Ken is our first full scale mascot and is about to launch. He has been quite a learning curve, but we can now create full mascots using various protocols. We will partner with Kiwi Ken as "friends of Kiwi Ken" in some upcoming productions, including a number of songs that Todd Kinsella (Kinsella studios) has written, especially in conjunction with the upcoming World Rugby Cup. Todd has a number of contacts that we pray will lead to further opportunities in TV and video work as well as live shows at various locations. This is another string to our production bow, as well as our performance pot. Road Safety shows are still going strong with two additions (pictures above). Rotorua commissioned us to make a Ruru (Morepork owl) puppet as their mascot for Travel Safe and I will be spending a couple of weeks over there doing shows in the schools using him. They may want a Full Scale Mascott as well in the future but are happy with the puppet for the time being. Road safety shows have been re-written to include Ruru. I will be doing the shows on my own at the moment, but hope we can get the team involved in the future to do a better presentation. Road Safety for Pre-school and New Entrants. Next to the Ruru above is a thumbnail of Scraggly the caterpillar (who turns into a butterfly) and Fossack the hedgehog who learns to cross roads with a mature grown up. This was commissioned by Tauranga Travel Safe and is part of the Caterpillar feet and Feet First initiative to encourage kids and parents to walk to school instead of taking the car all the time. I guess that is beneficial for the environment as well as reducing the obesity problem developing within our children, as well as giving us the opportunity to encourage kids to be careful by the roads.
Invercargill trip was very successful where I participated in the ILT Festival. They were booked to capacity (that's 1800 tickets a day for 6 days). Kids get to choose from 165 activities to participate in each day during the festival. I was making puppets and performing. Te Riu Ngaro - We have produced our first DVD with Korowai Kiwi, but it needs some more work on it before we can roll it out. Some of the footage is great, but other parts of it need to be reworked. I am looking forward to getting the sets fully functional, but still having trouble with lighting. We are now having to compete with High Definition and 3D animation which makes the whole process a lot more complicated and challenging. Please pray for a new initiative coming up to work with a new supermarket chain which is very family friendly. New characters in the shop will engage kids in the shopping experience, and this may lead to greater opportunities to increase the size of Puppet Vision. I would love to see at least one more full time puppeteer on board with Puppet vision. It would need to be someone versatile enough to work on the production as well as the performance side of things, as that is at least half of what we do. Thank you God for supplying us the work we need to earn the money to survive and even to grow and develop the Trust. Thank you to the team of puppeteers who work so hard to make sure the "Shows go on". Thank you to our board of trustees, and especially Athol who keeps us in the black with his Accounting Talents (and growling at me when I spend money). They are all a blessing, and an encouragement when things seem to be turning to custard sometimes. My greatest thanks goes to Glenda who puts up with Puppet Vision in her back yard and even into our home and lives at often the most inconvenient times. Every Blessing. Dan Martin |
