Red's Kingdom

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Our last Kick-About together explored the simple proto-cinematic delights of the magic lantern. This week we’re sticking with fantastical sights—the ambulatory beach-bound sculptures of Theo Jansen. Enjoy this latest selection of ‘new works made in a short time’ and for all previous editions of The Kick-About go here.

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Gary Thorne

“A remarkably interesting KA prompt, which oddly enough did not trigger a whirligig. Other action came into play, a result of considering the marks left behind from T. Jansen’s creatures traversing the sand. A few everyday objects suspended and agitated, over good old-fashioned typewriter carbon-paper, produced these freestyle drawings. The videos reveal the simplicity of playtime.“

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linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

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Graeme Daly

“Jansen’s Strandbeests are so analogue yet instinctively alive, and they really inspired me to work with my hands. But this was one of those times where my efforts didn’t quite live up to my imagination. In the end, I mostly settled for some pictures and a video that captured the remnants of what could have been. The video was a last-minute idea, but I think there’s potential to do more with it in the future and build on those remnants.”

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@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

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Jordan Buckner

“Here’s my experiments for the Kickabout this week. I really enjoyed this one. An exploration of the strange movements from Strandbeest – the kinetic uncanny.”

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www.jordanbuckner.co.uk

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Kerfe Roig

“I had a brief thought of building a toothpick sculpture… but luckily I quickly put that aside.  It was difficult enough gluing toothpicks to paper.  You know I always like a mandala, so that’s what I decided on as a form.  I first made a collage ground of sky and sea because I loved that aspect of a lot of the videos–that it was an elemental creature.  Then I started gluing wood skewers and toothpicks in an attempt to emulate some of the forms of the beests.  Last I used wax paper to provide a feeling of some of the cloth coverings.  If only I could figure out a way to make it turn…“

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kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

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James Randall

“Strandbeest was magical. I had started a little landscape that had boring apartments sitting on a hillside behind a new Brisbane River bridge, so I changed the boring blocks into Strandbeest inspired linework. Halfway through the landscape I got stuck and did another pic with cranes in the background—Strandbeest-like structures—then added lots of overlays.“

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Lewis Punton

“‘Strandbeest’ turned out to be a real gem of a prompt for me; the practical animating of these wooden monoliths reminded me (in a somewhat convoluted way) of just how much I love simple, no nonsense, nuts and bolts, 2D animation. Whether it’s a character, environment, or even just a general feeling, I love how simple it can be to bring a set of drawings to life – and the uniform movement of these larger than life insects brought all that rushing back to me. This sting of inspiration, when met with my inability to shake the image of giant, walking hands from my mind, resulted in a series of animations stitched together under the guise of Digit…“

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lewismakesthings.wordpress.com

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Phil Gomm

“This began with producing a quick and dirty 12-frame walk-cycle of a single stick-man – fully deconstructed into its most basic formulation of over-lapping lines. What I always enjoy about The Kick-About is taking one thing – a first draft, a first take, a first go – and then pushing it as far as it will go; in this instance, I just multiplied and layered this single walk-cycle to produce ‘caterpillars’ in a nod to those wonderful, rhythmic Strandbeests. My original intention was just to use this process to produce a series of graphical 2D images; that done, however, I then recompiled all the resulting 2D images back into an animated sequence to produce… whatever jazzy thing this is!”

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philgomm.com

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Charly Skilling

“This prompt has had me scratching my head. I love these sculptures by Theo Jansen, I could watch them for hours and googling them has sent me down many a fascinating rabbit hole.  But however I looked at them and thought about them and talked about them with others, I could not come up with any ideas that I actually had the skills to deliver! So I submit instead a little poem to reflect the pleasure that these sculptures give me.“

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And from the imprints left in the wet sand by Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests (and by Gary Thorne’s kitchen utensils), to the notion of negative space…

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