Chocolate and Unicorn
Two weekends ago a couple of friends and I decided to go to the chocolate festival on Southbank. Southbank is a lovely place. It is probably my best hangout. It has the waters, the view of the other side and lots of festivity be it Summer or Winter. So we turned up there and got sucked into the Christmas market and its crowds. After a while we realised we were supposed to be elsewhere. So we went looking for the chocolate festival and then we ran into the Theatre of Animation. It's absolutely awesome if you are a child and if you are not, well you can still have a lot of fun.
They had puppets that stand next to you with strings to pull at your level (and when I say your I mean a 6 year old). They had peepshows where you can watch animation that you run, like you being a monster scaring an entire city or you simply turning a knob to make your horse cycle around the countryside. They had a scared dog that would shiver everytime you clap. They had a doll that would laugh everytime you walk past it. They had a unicorn that you could puppet around and move its limbs, tail and head, only thing is it looked more like a donkey with a horn rather than a horse.
Here is my favourite. There was projector with 3 or 4 shots of a running horse and a horseman. The projector was placed on a rotating disc. So the projector kept showing the few static shots of the running horse with its horseman fast enough and rotating on its axis. So it looks like your horse and the horseman were running around the room in circles. Very well executed.
Then we did eventually go to the chocolate festival but it was quite boring compared to animation. There was nothing animated about chocolate. You go around stalls and taste chocolate but can't really make out any difference and wonder why you have to pay a premium when its not better than Dairy Milk or Lindt. So just get a Belgium Dark Chocolate Crepe and go :)
And then we walked across the Waterloo Bridge for a beautiful view of Thames with St Pauls and the moon looker over it; it was also lunar eclipse in other parts of the world.
I have a picture but mind you it is from my mobile phone.
They had puppets that stand next to you with strings to pull at your level (and when I say your I mean a 6 year old). They had peepshows where you can watch animation that you run, like you being a monster scaring an entire city or you simply turning a knob to make your horse cycle around the countryside. They had a scared dog that would shiver everytime you clap. They had a doll that would laugh everytime you walk past it. They had a unicorn that you could puppet around and move its limbs, tail and head, only thing is it looked more like a donkey with a horn rather than a horse.
Here is my favourite. There was projector with 3 or 4 shots of a running horse and a horseman. The projector was placed on a rotating disc. So the projector kept showing the few static shots of the running horse with its horseman fast enough and rotating on its axis. So it looks like your horse and the horseman were running around the room in circles. Very well executed.
Then we did eventually go to the chocolate festival but it was quite boring compared to animation. There was nothing animated about chocolate. You go around stalls and taste chocolate but can't really make out any difference and wonder why you have to pay a premium when its not better than Dairy Milk or Lindt. So just get a Belgium Dark Chocolate Crepe and go :)
And then we walked across the Waterloo Bridge for a beautiful view of Thames with St Pauls and the moon looker over it; it was also lunar eclipse in other parts of the world.
I have a picture but mind you it is from my mobile phone.
rotating projector sounds interesting! btw, there was a total eclipse here when you were taking the picture of St.Pauls from the Waterloo bridge. I have taken a couple of shots, but it looked good when I watched it through naked eyes than through a lens.
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