So as you may know from my previous post, Learning From Stoopid Buddy, I am learning puppet fabrication and animation from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. If you haven’t read that post yet, you may want to give it a read first.
Here are the casts de-molded. The jewel cut is a little hard to see, but it’s basically a zigzag pattern cut into the silicone. The castings now need to be cleaned, sanded, and primed with the flashing removed (those little pegs you see).
Once that’s done, I painted the head and jaw and attached them. The flappy jaw is imbedded in the head with a pair of lashed wires attached with Cold Weld. If it breaks, it will be fairly simple to fix. The eyes are going to have “floating” pupils (flat discs attached with sticky wax). The whites look creepy though, I know.
So this is skipping ahead a little as I didn’t have time to take pics of the bare foam body buildup, but here is her body after it was covered with colored latex and painted. The liquid latex was laid over the foam in layers on top of a covering of foam tape.
And here she is with more costuming details. The body has also been flocked at this point to give her more of a “fuzzy caterpillar” look. You will also notice the head off to the right side. Her antennae (wires with foam and latex built up like the rest of the body) have been attached, along with her funny “mohawk” of yarn hair, which is stiffened and attached to dense foam.
All that was left was to put it all together, so there ya go! I really enjoy the “Muppety” look of her. I could hide the sides of the jaw with some foam tape and latex, but I am rather fond of the obvious hinge. I think it adds to the charm. She WILL, however, be getting some hard-cast eyelids with the eyelashes to make them animatable. Right now, there is just colored sticky wax there with the lashes stuck to it as a placeholder. Also, her dress needs more work. Admittedly my sewing skills could use some pointers, but I can make it look better with a little more time.
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is awesome, but I’m sure you knew that. If not, here’s proof.
Now I just have to clean up my mess – in preparation for the next build, which will most likely be Bookworm. 🙂
The Animation class is continuing for a few more weeks, so I am still producing material for that and will be discussing it in another update very soon. The videos are still private, but I will see if that changes at any point. It’s been super fun and educational and I’ve loved every minute of it!
Creations, Thoughts and Musings 