I dusted his clothes with talcum powder to give them an aged and worn look:

I gave him some eyebrows made of wadding and attached his monocle:

I have finished the clothing on both puppets. hooray!!

I first stitched on the layer that is 'skin tight' which included his shoes, trousers, shirt and jacket sleeves (see below):

Next I made his jacket, which started out as triall and error, I had to discard the first one but then I worked out a good way of doing it.
I'm not sure what it's called, but I used a stiff iron on material  ironed onto a large panel of the tights material I was using for his jacket, placed at carefully measured points. I then cut slits at the top of the jacket and tail piece meaning I could cover the backs of these sections but leaving them connected to the middle piece. I then cut neatly round these shapes and stitched around them in a grey thread with keeps the seam together but is also a part of the aesthetic design. I then measured the middle section to just fit around his waist and, hey presto we have a jacket! A few buttons and bits of book pages later it is ready to be stitched onto the puppets body.

I have started to make the two final armatures for the puppets that I will use in the film. I decided on two puppets being enough as they don't have to do any excessive movements or wild positions, but if one decides to break then I do have a spare!

(I decided to make the hands slightly bigger for better screen presence and for ease of holding the books.)

Hey presto! Time to start skinning...

I made sure with this sculpt to have the grain of the wood running from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin so that it was easier to carve the detailing into the face. It worked! I was able to control the tools alot better and create something which looked a lot more like my designs!

Once I was happy with the sculpt, I stained it roughly with coffe and then added pencil to the deeper crevices in the wood.

Perfect size!:

I then added pins for his eyes and glued on the book pages which I then filed away roughly again. Et voila!