Side Quests Prop Making & Character Development
Alongside the motion experiments, I’ve been developing the props and characters that will feed into the project. A lot of this is about drawing on Kentish traditions – the kind of carnivalesque humour, crude play, and chaotic energy that comes through in things like the old joke shops and the way local carnivals often leaned into parody and grotesque performance.
I’ll also be working with Peter Cocks, who many people will remember from children’s TV in the 90s. He created these brilliantly grotesque characters that used to crash through the studio environment and break the fourth wall with the audience. For a lot of kids from that era, Peter himself became a kind of folkloric figure – part comedy, part chaos, part cultural memory. We’ll be talking more about how that spirit can be distilled and folded into this project, but already his influence gives me a clear sense of tone: exaggerated, playful, and carnivalesque in its mix of humour and unsettling spectacle.
On the physical side, I’ve been collecting materials from building clearances around Folkestone – things salvaged from the old amusement arcades, nightclubs, joke shops, and other remnants of the seaside entertainment industry. These fragments are being translated and distilled into props and talismans, carrying a layered sense of memory and symbolic charge for the virtual production.
One example is the “nose club”, a piece that plays on both carnival absurdity and talismanic ritual. Another is a set of Hooden horses, echoing the East Kent custom where, around Christmas, a wooden horse’s head on a pole would be carried into pubs as part of a raucous, mischievous performance. Traditionally, the Hooden horse was a folkloric visitor, unsettling and comic in equal measure, tied to a provincial vernacular of disguise and misrule. Its grotesque, snapping jaws sit within a wider family of British folkloric horse figures – from the Mari Lwyd in Wales to other carnivalesque beasts that drift through seasonal rituals.
In my version, these Hooden horses have been set onto a wooden frame salvaged from JG’s Amusements, the arcade that once stood at the end of Tontine Street. Adorned with brasses and fragments from the seaside economy, they carry that same uneasy mixture of festivity and menace. In a way, they mirror the grotesque, carnivalesque energy of the seaside entertainment industry itself – the joke shops, arcades, and fairground rides that blur the line between play and excess.
As talismans, they root the project in local folklore while also pushing into the uncanny space of the digital performance environment
My next beast will be in response to the provincial paintings of 18th century rural England. These distorted beasts often featured oversized Square cows sheep and pigs.
To form the body of the costume i will be using a series of salvaged tongue and groove wooden panels. These were harvested from a mid century Cafe from Tontine Street formally called Eleanor’s Cafe
Eleanor’s café had a fantastic ambience and was a classic mid century Cafe interior.
To realise the forms required I have created a steam bender to allow the processed salvaged wood to be manipulated into a series of curves to form a hooped frame that takes inspiration from obby oss and tourney horses designs.
