Eureka! New Idea: How Time Flies

The Time Frog catches flies from his spot in the pond but they don't die. Instead they make their way to the Frog's belly, where the gears, levers, jewels and such of a clock works operate in him.

Readers here have heard me fumble around for years about the Time Frog character. My original vision was certain. He was a frog with one of his eyes a clock face. He will sit quietly in his pond, just down the hill from Rana's cottage and all that we know of as time exists because he exists. He is Time itself. (The origins of a frog with a watch in his eye initially came to my mind as I was working on one of the early Mac desktop computers in 1993. I was rendering a large file for a childrens book and the cursor, happened to be placed over an illustrated frog's eye, as it turned into a watch icon during the Hard Drive's slow operation. One dot led to the other.)

Readers will know that the addition of the Time Flys seemed to flow naturally as things developed here on the blog. I knew I wanted them to buzz around and land in the bejeweled spider webs in the corners and be captured in Rana's sewing pin cushion. But I really groped around for how I could connect the Flies, the Frog, and Time in a way that made really good and fun sense. I wondered if the flies dropped watch parts? or somehow built a clock, nothing really had enough logic to me. Finally, in a flash, I got it yesterday morning as I was waking up.

The dots started flying in my head and rapidly connecting themselves as I came to, until I flew out of bed and started constructing what I imagined. A domed plastic packaging from our recycle bin, watch parts Marcie H.O.N. (Halfland's Official Naturalist) sent next to the puppet's sculpt and mold, to start sketching out how to construct clock works in the Time Frog's belly!


I plan to construct this large pocket watch under glass and animate it with rotating gears and busy flies making it all go, like a small cut away vignette.


Readers here will know how exciting this development in the minor character in the story/play is, and how much I thank them for staying around. Now it flows just right. Just right for Halfland. (Readers here will please refrain from noticing that the date on the previous sketch of the Time Frog was October of 2007.)