Everybody loves Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets. Jim started off as a young teenager when he acquired his first job as a puppeteer. His first job was to write/puppeteer/voice act/ and draw storyboards for Wilkinss Instants Coffee...
We all know the rest: he went on to create Sesame Street, The Muppets and other great projects. What I did not know until recently, was that he was a Stop Motion animatior also. "Alexander the Grape" is a cutout animation by Jim in the 60's but it was lost in time until now since it was never completed.
It was posted by the Jim Henson Company on YouTube about two years ago.
A still from Two Balloons featuring the character of Elba. Photo courtesy of Mark Smith. As I sit, listening to Peter Broderick’s moving composition for piano More Of A Composition , I close my eyes and envisage an enormous funnel cloud skimming across the crystalline face of an ocean – the skies are murky and unusually dark, lightning crackles, spider-webbing across the darkened skies before then vanishing, and still, after its gone, an electricity continues to hum in the air and I simply know that it’s going to soon strike again. And as the scene presents itself to me, I suddenly feel something similar to what director Mark C. Smith felt when he saw the same image as he sailed to a small island called Grenada along with his wife in a timeworn sailboat. For him, in that moment inspiration struck, and the idea suddenly came to him for his heartfelt stop motion film, Two Balloons . For me, I open my eyes and feel as I did the instant Two Balloons ...
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