I have finally attached the eyes, hair and nose to my first puppet.
First Puppet has Eyes and Hair
Archive for category Project – Horror Comedy (2010)
Hair
Mar 7
It has been a very busy month with work, so I haven’t made as much progress as I would like. Over the past two weeks I have been able to hand sew some wigs for the puppets.
The brown wig was hand sewn with long hair in the back and bangs in the front.
Brown Wig
Set on top of the puppet
Brown Wig on Puppet
Grey wig uses shorter grey yarn and was hand sewn onto a piece of puppet skin.
Grey Wig
Grey Wig on Puppet
Grey Wig on Puppet
The wigs are going to have Velcro attached to them and to the puppet so the wigs will stay in place and be interchangeable.
I decided that the foam based iris and pupil were the best solution for the current set of puppets. I have been searching for an way to cut smooth circles in the foam all week. I check in the scrap booking sections of several stores. The hole punches that they offer that are larger than 1/4 inch will not accept a piece of craft foam. They opening is only large enough for paper.
Today at Hobby Lobby, I found a perfect solution to cut holes of 3/4″, 1/2″, 0.28″ and 0.18″ in size. It is the FoamWerks foam board hole drill. It cuts through the foam beautifully. I settled on the 1/2″ hole for the iris, and .18″ hole for the pupil.
FoamWerks Hole Saw
Now that I had my sizes locked down I could start mass production.
Since I wanted to counter sink the iris and pupil into the eye, the first step was to build a jig that could hold the eyeball securely while I drilled. To do this I drilled a 1″ hole in a piece of scrap wood. I then screwed that wood to a larger board that I clamped to my drill press. The table of the drill press was put to a steep angle so that the circle would be cut into what will be the front of the eyeball.
Eyeball Jig
Then the eyeball is dropped in.
Eyeball in jig
I carefully held the eyeball in place while slowly drilling into it with a 1/2″ brad point bit.
Drilling into eyeball
I drill into the eye about 1/8″ of an inch. At this point the eyes are ready for being spray painted white. While the eyes are drying I went on to cut out the pupil and iris. I laid out a basic grid with the iris colored foam. Then I used the FoamWerks hole drill to drill out the pupil hole from the iris.
Cutting out the pupil hole
Once all of the pupil holes were cut out I switched to the 1/2″ hole drill, and cut out the iris from the piece of foam.
Removing the pupil from drill
Once I had all 16 of the iris’s cut, I switched to the black foam and started cutting out the pupils
Cutting pupils
I repeated the process and created 16 blue iris/pupil combinations.
Then the final step was to hot glue the pupil and iris onto the eyeball.
Eyeball with iris and pupil
The next step will be to add the eye lid and lashes.
Hand Sewing
Feb 10
Even with reading glasses, after 2 hours of hand sewing various puppet parts my eyes are tired.
But I have the 3rd puppet destined for the 2010 Horror Comedy well on the way to completion. Puppet 4 was started as well.
Puppet 3 is going to be named Adam. Puppet 4 is going to be named David.
Not sure yet on puppet 5. Have it cut out and ready to start, but not sure what how it is going to be used. Possibly a minor character.
It is also about time to buy more Antron fleece.
I haven’t gotten the eyes done, or other of my plans for the last week.
But I have managed to cut out the foam and fleece for 3 more puppets ready for construction.
Puppets ready to build
With the exception of the facial features and hair Maxwell’s upper body is now complete.
I finished up the mouth plate, and attaching the arms tonight.
Upper Body
I also started the hand sewing of the feet. I got one of the ankles sewn tonight. Hopefully can get the feet closed up and finished tomorrow.
Hand sewn ankle
The goal for the weekend will be to play with dye’s to develop some darker skinned characters.
Give me a hand
Jan 20
Back to working on Maxwell. Spent the evening working on his arms and head.
The arms are straight forward. Sew up the shape.
Arm sewn up
Arm turned right side out
And stuff.
Arms stuffed with batting
My eyes are killing me from focusing so close for so long. I hand stitched the head on to the body and the mouth into the head. Lots of hand stitching. Not the best picture below of the stitching. Will try to get better shots later.
Mouth and Neck Stitching
After burning myself last night with the hot glue gun, I managed to complete the gluing of the body. As a note, hot glue is really hot, and sticky. I had gotten little bits on my finger tips pressing foam together, but when a large drop of glue lands on your finger, it hurts.
The puppet skin that covers the chest has also been sewn up.
Several plans in the works for the long weekend.
- Finish up puppet 2
- Get facial details for puppet 1 and 2 (Eyes, ears, nose, etc.)
- Build a puppet tree for storage of puppets while in use. I can’t have 20 puppets just lying around for the dog to destroy.
- Start grinding glass for the depth of field adapter.
Started sewing Puppet 2
Dec 29
Sewing puppet head
Started sewing the puppet head this evening. I got the basic head done the switched over to glue some of the body. Got most of the body and head foam ready, so tomorrow I will be able to go back to sewing.
I have got to come up with all of the puppet names. Or at least name the first few so that I can refer to them better than puppet 2. Puppet 2 just isn’t a name. So I have to do some more work on the script.
Time for cutting
Dec 29
For the Horror comedy, I am using the Roly pattern from http://www.projectpuppet.com. This pattern is nice because it is setup for hand or machine sewing. Because of the number of puppets that I need to build the use of the sewing machine is critical.
It can be laid out on approximately 3/4 of a yard of fleece. It has an optional foam skull and body. I am using the foam skull and body to provide additional support and durability to the puppets.
Shirts and shoes from build a bear do fit rather well on the puppets.
I cut out the fabric pieces last night and should be ready to begin sewing them together later today.