Taking Flight

Dear Reader,

The cake alone made Alien Two's birthday a pretty amazing affair, but the chaos didn't stop there! Check out the laughter-filled clip to see the precursor to Squirrel King flight:



All we have to do now is turn the harness back-to-front, add some wings, some feathers and pull those beaks we made earlier this year out of storage!


The rest of the weekend was spent shopping, principally for a new bed to ameliorate our sleeping situation; when everyone moves into our bed, I can now move into the Aliens' new improved sleeping digs. As an added bonus we are now inundated with our favored construction material - cardboard. I just have to convince the Aliens to share :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Spectacular Rainbow Connection

Dear Reader,

Alien Two yesterday, shared a little birthday party with a good friend of hers.

Like all great things, the birthday cake started from humble beginnings.








Alien One shared a couple of inspirational ideas ...






And before we knew it, we'd attracted the interest of the rainbow devil himself.









And then the two principal instigators got serious!!









Now that's a rainbow connection cake!

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

References: Part 5 (flipbooks)

Dear Reader,

References sometimes come in the oddest of places; the trick is to see how they apply.

Parkour, or free-running, is to my mind a modern ballet, so when I came across this elemental flipbook rendition I was completely enthralled. The nature of the hands on the paper felt like fingertip parkour! It was so right.



How to incorporate this into The Squirrel King? ... with a little tweaking I believe this can also feel like the unfolding of an ungainly map. For now, enjoy the parkour, but pretty soon I hope to share a map of our township with you :)

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Dedicated to The Trouble and Strife

Dear Reader,

Today is a big day. It's our tenth wedding anniversary. To celebrate, I want to dedicate this post to The Trouble and Strife, my one true love.

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Titles in the Library

Dear Reader,

With Alien One's help Robin's library is turning into quite the delightful collection. Some of the must-read titles so far include:

The Appal Hoo Sed Moo
(aka The Apple who said Moo)

The Invisbol Snoflak
(aka The Invisible SnowFlake)





The Jomping Bone
(aka The Jumping Bunny)

Can't wait to see what else shows up on those shelves.

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Series Synopsis

The Squirrel King is an upbeat tale of Robin, a young woman with an inexplicable need to take action. Brainwashed by pipe-cleaner wielding Aliens into ridding her small town of squirrels, she ropes in Justus, her inept, climbing-bum boyfriend, as her missions' accomplice.


Over the course of 12 five-minute episodes she is helped and hindered by the town’s municipal-one-man-show, cat burglars, gypsies and the desire to be part of something serious.





Amidst the chaos of it all, Robin gradually discovers a truism of life embodied by Ed (the fire chief, police chief, animal catcher, forestry head ....). Simply put, she comes to understand that beyond personal responsibility, life is not about being part of something "important" or to be taken too seriously; life is about partaking and enjoying the absurd world.





As for exactly who the Squirrel King is, and why the Aliens are doing what they are doing, ... well those are questions that remain until the first season's finale.

Chin chin
Ruthless Whims

Robots and Monkeys

Dear Reader,

Yesterday, while I was busily shooting stop motion cellophane water disappearing down the drain, the Aliens begun work on Alien Two's birthday cake, or more specifically, the robots and monkeys that are to adorn it.


Pretty soon we had reinforcements.

Marzipan and fondant never looked so good :) There's still the little matter of the actual cake, but we're well on our way to a slew of monkeys and robots.



Chin chin
Ruthless Whims