#puppetmaking

[schmude]

My brother and I made puppets. He made the moon, I made the star. We've never made something like this before, so we just had to wing it without any sewing patterns and little planning 💀 all I knew is I wanted a star girl with baked clay facial features on the fabric star.

[rkschweiger]

my first time working with polymer clay from a few years ago he still lives on my shelf

[recreepy]

Puppet tutorial https://youtu.be/FPHH2ZJWhos

[rhiannayates-puppetry]

Casting the body experiment

https://youtu.be/voFRL-BSvwY

When i made the boyfriend puppet his body was too small and he was out of proportion for the lower half of my body. This ruined the illusion so i was keen to measure myself to have a rough guide on where the joins will be and how wide the proportions needed to be in 3D. 

I had planned on making a body form from duct tape as ive seen cosplayers do often. They cling film them selves and then cover that in a thick layer of duct tape. they cut this off and then fill the form with paper for support, to create a simple mannequin that is the perfect size of your body. i wanted to use this former to make a cast for each of the puppets. Its a cheap and really simple way of casting a performer. I also thought this would be useful to create a form to quickly cast each puppet body from rather than sculpting each from scratch. i could use this body form as a base for each of them saving me a lot of time. 

i started this process in the paint shop and Rorie suggested i try using mod rock if its only a simple shape i need. he said it would save on time and money which i liked the sound of. HOWEVER it was covid regulations still and i couldn’t get someone else to cast me so i had to attempt to cast my self which proved to be very challenging. 

I was now concerned about ruining my clothes so i donned a set of overalls and got going. this worked but was a far less detailed shape than if i had been wearing less clothes. 

managed to get a half decent basic shape as a size guid and started building up a paper former to fill it.

once i was happy with the shape i cling filmed it to keep the shape together then added my top to see how the fit was. 

The width and shoulders was good but there was no depth so i adapted the form with paper and tape to create the bust shape. now i had my maniquine shape.

I then experimented with using latex and scrap calico fabric to cast the shape like paper mache. I decided to use this technique as id watched a video of some people talking about their time attending the Bread and Puppet theatre company’s summer residency and used latex and fabric to sculpt puppets from. Similarly Natacha Belova has been used to sculpt texture over foam with this technique. I love paper mache and latex is used to cast forms with a lot so i figured it could work, and would blend with the performer really well. 

[boarsbunniesbirds]

And so it begins

[comparativetarot]

The Hierophant.  Art by Kaitlyn Taylor, from The Maker’s Tarot.

Puppetmaking.

[justanotherblonde]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

hello my loves! this weekend i’ve got three sexy pieces for the Sasori Mini-Bang! today’s offering: The Narcissist’s Muse

@sasori-mini-bang​

He was smiling as he worked. He knew it, too. Couldn’t help himself. He lived for this work. This work was his life. His life was this work. He was this work.

A little more off the cheek. His were not prominent cheek bones. But he had to get the curve of the—what had the med-nin called it?—malar prominence and eye orbit as it lay beneath skin just right. So he shaved a little more wood away with his knife, sharpened not ten minutes ago on the leather strop he kept on his worktable. Blades had to be kept fresh, every stroke precise to the millimeter.

The block of wood pressed between his left hand and the anchored backboard was far from finished: its surface was rough, consisting of flat gouges where he had removed material to form a vague sphere; he had drilled two holes deep into the sphere where the eye sockets would appear and a third hole where the spinal column would have been up into the skull to allow him to hollow out the sphere, creating a shell of an appropriate thickness. For now, the surface was crisscrossed with pencil strokes marking the centerline and positions of features. These would slowly be removed as he smoothed away unwanted edges.

Taking his attention away from the cheek for a moment, he set aside his short knife and picked up a moderately curved gouging tool. He needed to remove more material from inside the skull before he could work properly on the eye sockets. It would not take long: his wrist twisted in curt, measured demi-rotations, flicking wood shavings out of the cavity onto his worktable at a rapid pace. The consistent speed, pressure, and length of his strokes were what had earned him his reputation as a master of efficiency and prolific creator in the Puppet Corps. Yet those weapons he had produced for his ungrateful colleagues were bundles of matchsticks compared to this. In those days, on a budget, he had been forced to work with the materials the Corps could afford: dull blades and frustratingly mediocre wood. On this project, unlike then, he had spared no expense on materials.

Selecting the right wood had been paramount. It needed to be close-grained, not porous. The pores of an open-grained wood would drink up the finish, leaving it bumpy and uneven like the face of some pockmarked ancient. Why should his body be riddled with disgusting imperfections when it could be smooth and flawless? Close-grained wood, once carved, carefully sanded and meticulously oiled would take the varnish in a smooth, mirror-like gloss.

The wood had to be durable, rot-resistant, insect-resistant and dense. If it was difficult to work with because of this, so be it. He had the tools, he had the time, and he would not rest until this job was done. The wood must not lose color when exposed to light or water or any other unfriendly element. He would take great care selecting ingredients for and mixing his finishes, when the time came—experiments were necessary before he could guarantee that no undesired reaction would occur between oil or alcohol in the finish and wood.

The wood he had chosen possessed a straight grain, so fine, so thin, so uniform in texture that the striations would be invisible save to the most discerning observer. The color was a pinkish cream; each block of wood hid a blushing, blooming rose. He worked with the natural ebb and flow of these hues, each piece of him pale where it would need to be pale, flushed where it needed color and life.

... 

Keep reading on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27352591

[retrowave-racer]

And now for something completely different! I got inspired to finally start a project that’s been on my mind for several months now...making my very own Audrey II puppet! He still needs work, I want to cover up my arm of course and find a way to make it look like he’s in a pot while still being able to control him, but I think I got a lot done in one day! Wont be the last puppet posting from me for sure, I have a lot I want to still add to this puppet. This is also my first attempt at something like this, though I will say I’m much more impressed with it than I thought I would be going into this project!