I am now doing a series of workshops to build the first prototype puppet for the Librarian. In order to do this I had to draw a scale drawing of the puppet and armature, this would in no way be the final design but just a starting point so that I can start to prototype and then build back into these drawings to improve them.

For the workshops my scale drawing needed to be under 20cm, this proved difficult as my puppet needs to be long and gangly, yet extremely skinny. The drawings below were the first attempt, however when finished I realised the legs needed to be alot longer so they would need to be redone.

I have started to transfer my designs into 3D. I want to get the body shape sorted primarily so that I can then focus on his aesthetic qualities.

The simplist way that I could test these ideas were with cheap wire, masking tape, cardboard and foam. I started with his frame under the bulk imagining how it would be made when building the puppets armature. Once I had his initial frame I then started to build ontop with his outfit. This is something that proved quite difficult and I will need to think how this will sit stable on the final puppet ontop of such a small body frame whilst being hollow to show his neck.

As soon as I had put the outfit on I realised that his body shape would have to change as having shoulders in the 'normal' position means that they are visible underneath his clothes. If I were to start them lower down they may be able to be hidden underneath his clothes.

I have refined the idea of the 'other mother' body shape by now thinking about how the character will look.

I will be taking the left hand Librarian in the top image and the one from below to develop into a 3D form; I love the way the neck disappears into his clothing. The top right image has too much of the femine qualities that I discussed in the previous post.