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 made up some hand armatures with wire and milliput and then skinned them with fine sporting injury foam dipped into latex. I didn't dip them in latex, but left the texture of the foam exposed as I didn't want a shiney quality to them and then added bits of ripped up book pages alike to the head.
If I had the time I would have made the hands out of balsa wood to be inkeeping with the head, however this would require lots of replacement hands as I need them to move, so this is a much quicker alternative and will hopefully not look too alien to each other under camera.
For the hands that you can see above, I used the lighter colour foam (left image), however when I make them for the final puppet I will be using the darker foam as seen in the right image as it matches the colour of the wood better.
| | I also skinned the other prototypes arms with 80 dernier tights material, which worked better than the woolly material that I had tried previously, as well as the latex for the texture of clothes. However I will be using foam and latex to skin the puppets neck as the skin of the hands will then match this.
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I decided to add bits of torn up book pages to the wood here and there and then sanded them back a bit to make it look like it is growing naturally ontop of the wood. I didn't want to hid the wood and it's texture completely so this technique works well.
I had also bought two jump rings in different sizes with extension chains to try and create a monocle. This works quite well but I will decide on the size when I have made the final head.
I decided to stick with the pins for eyes but thought they needed something to make them look more like they belonged to the puppet so I covered them in book pages as well.
I wanted to see whether eyebrows would work on this head like I tried on the foam latex one, so twisted two very fine bits of wire and glued these into the head. I then wrapped wadding around them to give the eyebrow effect, I was considering more book pages but thought this might be a bit of overkill on the book page front!
Finally I had a go at darkening the crevices of the face with a pencil and thought this worked quite well. I had experienced with the coffee that the wood was just going to soak up anything liquid that I applied to it but the pencil obviously stayed put and I was able to blend and smudge it aswell.
| | I am pleased with the general look of this head using the balsa wood and how I have treated it. I am going to make a new head making sure the grain of the wood is facing the right way this time so that I can carve better detail into the facial features.
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I tested the two head that worked well under camera and lighting to see how they looked on screen.
Balsa Wood:
Sculpey, foam and latex:
I thought they both worked well on screen. I do slightly prefer the balsa wood for a few reasons, the main one being that it is a really light material and doesn't affect the movement of the body armature. It is also really nice to work with and the definition of the face showed up a lot better than I thought it would. The sculpey, foam and latex head does look really visually nice, however it is really quite heavy and had an impact on the body armature. It was also shiney in places because of the latex and I want to try and avoid this.
What I want to try next is adding book pages to the balsa wood, like I did to the foam and see if this adds the nice textural quality that the foam head has.
| After my tutorial, it was suggested that I try adding very fine sporting injury foam dipped in latex and applied with spray mount ontop of a sculpey head. Once layered it can look like paper.
Firstly I wound some wadding around the eyebrow armature. I then sprayed a light layer of spray mount over the head and applied the foam with almost dried latex onto this. I used a coctail stick to tease it into the ridges on the face.
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Once I covered the whole head I added bith of ripped up book page onto the surface.
I was surprised at the end result that it did have a papery quality to it. However it was also quite shiney due to the application of the latex so I would like to test this head under camera to see if it does look too shiney.
I've started to carve a head out of balsa wood, it was a material suggested to me that might work well in a previous feedback session.
Here's how I got on:
| | I really liked working with the wood, the only problem I came across which I didn't realise when I had started was that I was carving the wrong way into the wood. I had positioned the grain at the front where his face is so would do this again with it on top so as not so affect the carving. I'm not sure if this will be the material I will use yet, I still want to test other methods. The two main concerns I have for the balsa wood are whether the detail of the face will show up well under camera and what I will do about the eyes. I shall test these both!
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