I did an animation test for the moving eyebrows that I was planning on using on the puppets head. If anything I thought it made him look quite comedic which is not what I want in the slightest so I am going to scrap this idea. I will probably still give him eyebrows on the final head, just not ones that move!

I have mocked up really quickly a new marquette so I can visualise the new body shape, which was altered alongside the new storyboard, in 3D.

I then tested this under camera to make sure it worked well, and that the shape of the body wasn't difficult to read on screen. I am happy with this marquette.

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 tested the two head that worked well under camera and lighting to see how they looked on screen.

Balsa Wood:

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.