It has been quite the roller coaster here at the Tiny Circus over the past few days. But rain or shine, we're still having agood time!

We've had to say goodbye to a handful of members, including our impromptu deejay Mike, who has given us many memorable dance parties.

We've been plugging away on character development, as well as improving our living quarters.

We've made sure to stay hydrated in the summer heat, and well-fed. With so many people around and a rapidly growing garden, we're always bound to have delicious food.

The ducks are growing, too...

Sweet Rewards

We've been crossing more and more Tiny Circus TO-DO's off of our handy dandy new chalkboard lately. The shelf of finished characters is starting to fill up, the makings of different props are popping up in the studio, brainstorming ideas are quickly evolving into a full-on storyline. To celebrate our progress a group of circus members hit the local ice cream stand for some sweet hard-earned treats. We also took a day off to recharge our batteries and celebrate the summer solstice by going out to a nearby lake for an impromptu beach barbeque. The summer season is officially upon us.

After making miniature ice creams for a project:

Some circus members went out for the real thing:

The Dream Team

A few nights ago the Tiny Circus shot a family portrait before animating a scary dream sequence. We finished shooting scenes yesterday and are currently working on editing and music for the new animation. We've been experimenting by making lots of spooky sounds and playing around with editing styles, making the post-production process very exciting!

The past several days have been stuffed full of all sorts of creative collaborations including developing a captivating overall story for the TINY Tiny Circus project as well as fabricating an assortment of brand spankin' new props and characters.

All this creative energy has spilled over into daily tasks and fun shenanigans throughout the house.

And a few days ago at the Circus: Omelettes! It was a veritable carnival of kale (from our garden), mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, green peppers, and cheese.

We also continued the tradion of Tiny Circus community movie night by showing the Wes Anderson film RUSHMORE on the lawn. Thanks to everyone who joined us! Movie nights will keep happening on Wednesdays this summer and all are welcome to come.

And of course a Tiny Circus blog post would not be complete without a little duck love!

Charting Progress

A long morning meeting to discuss our daily schedule and progress resulted in a new chalkboard (scavenged from a previous Tiny Circus summer session). Our new process: categories and tasks are discussed briefly at a morning meeting, overall progress is charted at the beginning of our afternoon work-session.





Taking the ducks out for a walk.

Bread school apprentices.

Circonians are learning to make the circus bread (which is about 60% of a typical circus diet). 6-12 loaves a day!

Character Building

This past week, we've continued work on our current long-term projects. We’ve been developing our characters, building environments for them to live in, and creating the overarching story of their world. We’ve really enjoyed imagining how our characters might interact, and we’re having a lot of fun with it. Since our characters are hip to the latest trends, they’re naturally all on facebook. Look them up if you’re interested-- Billy Circus, Sheeva Circus, Maestra Circus, Marty Circus, Emile Circus, and Baby Circus. Maybe you’ll even see them on twitter soon! Or maybe not…







In order to ensure that everyone got a chance to do some animating, we decided to take a break from our long-term projects and create a short together. After an intense morning of brainstorming, we came up with a project that has proven to be a real NIGHTMARE—literally! We spent the day animating, and all gathered in the attic at nightfall to film a terrifyingly bad dream. We’re still working on editing and sound production (including toy instrument arrangements!) and finding new ways to spook things up a bit.





Other than that, we’ve been enjoying each others company, cooking and eating some delicious meals, continuing our weekly community movie night, and loving the Iowa summer weather. The gardens are yielding a bountiful harvest, the ducks have really grown (and they’re just as adorable as ever), and our feet are sneaking in a dance party whenever they can.