Puppets and Food, Toys and Games Primary i-D&T

In the beginning, I do a lot of drawing. You get a feeling

of the character you want.

The audience, in a few minutes,

have to get the feeling of what that character is.

You need good contrasts between good characters,

bad characters, old characters, young characters.

We have the clown, who's lots of fun.

We've got the girl, who's very pretty but very silly at the same time.

And let's have a very bad man.

So I think we're going to make him...

Maybe we're going to make his eyebrows come down a bit,

and he could have a cross mouth,

but maybe the moustache will do the same.

So, that does the same thing as the mouth would have done.

So he's going to look quite a bad guy.

All the clues you can give the audience help them,

so they know, when they see the character,

what he is, or who he is, and what he's going to tell them.

The good thing about using a marionette

is that, for a start, the puppeteer can be right away.

We have long strings and can stand on a bridge.

We're completely hidden and all you see is the full marionette.

An interesting thing about marionettes

is you see the full figure. You can do a lot of walking

and a lot of movement that uses the whole body.

That's something very special about a marionette.

With a tabletop figure, you get a very direct movement

because your hand is really close to the puppet.

That's something really good. It's the advantage of a tabletop figure -

you can get a really positive, straight action.

Quite a direct, strong movement if you want to.

You can also get the subtler movements.

The good thing about a glove puppet is

he can pick up things and hold them.

He can hold my hand, really quite well.

I'm not faking - he's holding it tightly.

That's their advantage. They can pick up things and move very fast.

I think it's about 19 different blocks of wood

that we use to make one marionette.

The major tools that I'll be using for shaping the wood

are really razor-sharp chisels.

You get flat ones and curved ones, and all sorts of sizes and shapes.

The brilliant thing with sanding is you can take all the marks

you've put onto the wood when you're chiselling -

flat shapes or curved shapes...

You can take all those marks away and make the surface really smooth.

Once I've got all the bits cut out,

shaped, sanded, smoothed and exactly the right shape and size,

the really delicate part is actually making each joint.

That's to do with restricting or stopping the amount of movement

in some directions, and allowing movement in other directions.

This piece, I've got almost to the point of final adjustments.

The leg on THIS side is really working very nicely and smoothly,

so I'm able to almost get a nice walk out of it.

This leg's too stiff, so I'll take it apart,

chisel things, enlarge it, and then I'll get the right movement.

We're moving on to making the costume.

The first thing to do is measure your puppet.

Materials that we use for puppets need to be nice and soft,

so...silk or cotton or washed-out cotton.

And then we sew it. With needle and thread, we sew the costume up,

being very careful how we sew it.

Then, try it on the puppet. Puppet costumes need to be quite loose -

the puppet needs to move freely in it.

Finally, you put your buttons, beads or whatever you want to add -

your little trimmings - and your puppet costume is done.

If someone wants to make bread at home and learn about it,

it's not complicated. One thing is to be focused

and to love and want to do it.

Each loaf needs our love and a bit of our soul.

Usually, you make it right.

We do not control the bread. The bread controls us.

When it's ready, it's ready.

Just enjoy it. If you do enjoy it, it will work.

Give it some love. Give it some love. HE CHUCKLES

I've received a brief from our customer, regarding sandwiches.

It's for Christmas.

They're looking for sandwiches to appeal to the whole family,

so really creative thinking. Caps on. What have we got?

When we get a brief for a new sandwich, we, as a team,

will sit down and decide what flavours work well together,

and for seasonal products, what produce fits the time of year.

Could we have turkey, stuffing, cranberry?

We could do Boxing Day leftovers and have a lot of meat.

And pickles, chutneys?

We get as many people's input as possible.

No idea's a bad idea. Everyone's got their own opinion.

We could put red in. A red chutney so you've got...

Christmas colours. Reindeer sandwich.

There's a compromise, sometimes, between flavour and health,

and it's trying to... get the balance right.

-Low fat?

-It's best to keep it indulgent.

In a Christmas sandwich, you want something that tastes fantastic.

Right, guys. We've got a few ingredients here.

We'll look at a few combinations to find out what works.

We'll taste and see if chutney works with a certain cheese.

We'll have a selection of chutneys or mayonnaises.

It's how it feels in the mouth, how the flavour lasts

and how balanced it works.

Try moist stuffing. Have you tried it?

-I've put it with the ham AND cheese, to see how that goes.

-Works well?

Mm. Yeah, goes really well.

Which chutney do you think goes best with turkey?

I really like the tomatoey one.

It goes with it nicely. It's a bit different, a bit tangy.

I'm not keen on that. I think cranberry goes better.

Mmm. To me, you can't beat

traditional turkey and cranberry sauce. Really great flavour.

We need to lift it. It's a bit boring.

-Like it?

-Yeah, goes really well.

It's definitely about experimenting

with the produce you put into a sandwich.

I think turkey, stuffing, blue cheese mousse

is the direction for the Christmas one, yeah?

-Yeah.

-OK?

-Yeah.

We're going to be tasting one of our sandwiches

against two competitors' sandwiches.

You need to make comments on appearance, aroma,

flavour and texture, then score the sandwiches overall.

When we design a sandwich,

we try to take into account all the aspects of the eating experience.

It's the presentation that first gets you.

In the supermarket with all your sandwiches there,

we want ours to be like, "I'm the best sandwich here. Pick me."

It's really playing on all the senses for a customer.

It's a very visual and sensual experience, eating a sandwich.

Out of the three, which was your preferred and why?

I like sandwich B. It was definitely best.

The turkey was really moist, the bacon was tender.

I thought two was actually pretty good.

Good texture on the bread. Bounces back right - it's not too dry.

I thought A was very slimy.

Very wet lettuce.

From that, we get a score of where our products are

against our competitors. Obviously, if we start to score lower down,

we have to look at our products and think, "How can we improve this?

"How can we make it better?" We always want to be the best.

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER FROM GAME

A game starts with just that initial spark.

The idea has to appeal to a lot of people,

so we start by talking about it, playing around the idea,

then do some sketches of what it could look like.

If we're confident they can go forward,

we then go into production of prototypes.

Before designing, I meet the people that have written the rules

so I know how many spaces, how many areas, there are on the board.

What I then do is draw a basic shape on the computer.

We start off here,

where we've got 27 circles on the board and they're totally regular.

We thought, "That's boring, doesn't work. No-one will enjoy it."

You can see here that I've taken all those circles

and rearranged them in a slightly crazy and odd shape,

so it's, "I don't know where I'm going", as you move around.

Then we start colouring them.

The colours are important for two reasons.

Number one, they help to define exactly where you are in the game,

whereabouts you are on the board,

and also, it helps to give a sense of fun.

Finally, we add things like the logos

and instructions that are necessary on the board.

People need to know where to start, when they win, where to finish.

If we had more than 27 squares,

the game goes on too long and people get bored.

If we have less than 27 squares, the game ends too quickly

and you can't determine who's really played it well.

Once we've a rough design, we print versions in different colours

and send them to people to play.

And here...

is our first design, ready to be tested.

We're getting the game tested by six ten-year-olds.

We feel they're the right age group to aim it at.

It's very important, because I need to know, are the jokes right?

Do the sounds actually make them laugh?

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER

The game play we've developed - is it simple enough for them to follow?

And the design. I'd like their opinions on the design.

What's grey and zooms through the jungle at 70 miles an hour?

An elephant on a motorbike.

GAME PARPS

THEY GIGGLE

What do you get if you cross kitchen equipment with a vampire?

Count spatula.

LAUGHTER

-Knock knock.

-Who's there?

-Boo.

-Boo who?

Don't get upset - it's only a game.

Oh!

I thought it was really fun,

cos the colours are really appealing and it's easy to play.

There should be more variety of jokes

and maybe some for older people as well.

It was easy to play. Once you read the instructions,

I think you could get it quite easily.

Good range of jokes and simple gameplay. The design is well liked.

Could be a good game. I'm really pleased with it.

MACHINE PARPS

So, use-and-abuse testing is primarily done

to see if we can break things off a toy

to simulate what would happen if a child breaks it, pulls it,

smacks it onto a door frame, drops it out of the car.

The torque test is used to simulate

what happens if a child pulls oddly on a toy.

The small parts cylinder

has been very carefully designed to mimic the inside

of a three-year-old's mouth and throat cavity.

Anything that fits wholly inside this could be swallowed,

might get stuck in the throat and could cause that child to choke.

The impact test is performed by dropping a weight of one kilogram

from a height of 100 millimetres onto the test piece.

After impact testing, we look to see if any sharp edges,

sharp points or small pieces have broken off.

If the pieces fit in the small parts cylinder,

it would be deemed unsafe for under-threes.

The drop test is performed from a height of 850 millimetres

into a tank of specified hardness.

The article is dropped five times.

At the end of testing, we see if anything's dropped or broken off,

then test those for sharp edges, sharp points and small parts.

When testing material from fancy dress outfits,

we take a length of material that's 500mm,

attach it to the rig, set fire to it, and measure the time it takes

for the flame to spread from the bottom to the top.

With different materials, we find different rates of flame spread.

Some will burn fast and some will burn slower.

Do not try this at home.

How fast the flame spreads determines whether it's a pass

and if it's deemed to be safe.

All toys will need to be tested for flammability.

This is to ensure that they are safe,

and we basically set fire to them to see how fast they burn.

Depending on the type of toy, we test it in different ways.

We adjust flame height, apply the flame to the toy in different ways

and measure it from different distances.

Don't try this at home.

Although the teddy bear burned completely,

it took enough time for the flame to spread to the top,

so it was deemed to be a pass and to be safe. This means

that if the teddy bear caught fire, the child would have enough time

to drop the teddy bear and move away.

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