Slackbot's derpiest puppet

[Slackbot]

I just don't know what went wrong!

I made this puppet, Derpy Toes (a spoof of Derpy Hooves from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) as a goof. I've been getting faster and faster at making puppets. Janken took me months. Skeeter and Shonky took about a month each, and in Shonky's case a lot of that time was wasted on failed dye attempts. Since I'm on vacation from 12/24 to 1/1 inclusive, I decided to see how fast I could knock out a simple puppet, using all original patterns of course. (One caveat: I dyed her fleece earlier because I needed to use a bit of gray for Shonky's eyelids.) I started work on her on Tuesday, and finished her today (Saturday). Not bad, eh?

There are bits of her I'm less than thrilled with. I tried a new technique for eyes, and you can see a little of the hot glue and wire is visible at the bases of her eyeballs. Argh. And I realized that I've been placing the eyes too far back on my Fraggles' heads, which changes their expressions and makes them look older. For both of these problems I need to figure out a better way of attaching eyes to the skulls.

Her hair was by far the most labor-intensive thing about her. Oh lord, forget sewing hands, true torment is dyeing a bunch of white ostrich drabs, blow-drying and then towel-rumpling them to restore their fluffiness, and then cutting the barbs of the shaft and then gluing them into little clumps to then stick on the head. Hundreds of little feather bundles over several days! After I clean my living room tomorrow my vacuum cleaner is going to be filled with little blond feather bits.

 

[dreadnok]

i must say i love all your puppets you make

 

[ncchuck]

I agree great work soon you can start your own fraggle rock spin off thank you for sharing

 

[Vincent L]

Nice puppet considering the time it took to complete.

 

[Hubert]

Hey, I like it a lot. Aside from the minor eye issues you mentioned, it seems to be pretty spot on with a Fraggle. At least, it's better than anything I could ever make.

 

[Slackbot]

Thanks, guys! It seems that with each puppet I build I find new problems to deal with. I can't wait until I have enough figured out that I can actually make a puppet without any glitches.

Last night I contemplated what it would be like to go a whole day without getting contact cement crud on my hands. I was planning that for today, but now I have the urge to start 'nother puppet. Sheesh! At least for this one I can start by modifying Derpy's skull pattern, as his is quite similar. But, lessons learned, before I do that I'm going to see if I can get fur the proper color for his bod.

 

[dreadnok]

well they are outstanding looking puppets
my main problem is i hate sewing the arms onto the puppet cause i am just not that good at it and i cannot find doll joints anywhere around where i live got any advice for me

 

[Slackbot]

I bought doll joints on Amazon. Amazon has just about everything. Shoot, I tithe to Amazon.

 

[dreadnok]

yeah i think i am gonna have to do that
thanks and keep up the awesome work

 

[charlietheowl]

She looks great! Just be sure to make sure Derpy doesn't get too close to vacuum when you're cleaning up, haha. Who knows what might happen there!