Building Puppets from Scratch

[FeLo]

Hey guys
First of all want to thank everyone for thie rhelp so far i have made my first puppet using the glorified sock puppet pattern from project puppet and am now working on one using the melonhead pattern and am wondering how do you build from scratch? how do you design your own pattern and all that sort of stuff? any help would be much appreciated because i would love to try and do one from scratch on my own one day

 

[staceyrebecca]

First you make 27 puppets that look like mongoloids & then you get it somewhat close to right.

at least that's how I went about it.

 

[SesameKermie]

Check out PlaySoup's "From Sketch to Show" series. It has a section on creating patterns for your puppet and how to make it look it's best http://www.playsoup.com/store/video8.htm

The other video I would recommend is "The Foam Book" video series. It has a section on what they call the "Nip and Tuck" method of creating a puppet, that can yeild some great results. http://www.greysealpuppets.com/FoamB.html

 

[Jivepuppet]

"First you make 27 puppets that look like mongoloids & then you get it somewhat close to right." - staceyrebecca

Not the best advise, but oh man! Hahaha, it's so true!
Just keep trying and trying!
I got lucky, my first one came out great... The nezt 15? Not so much... But I've been doing it for years now, developed my own patterns, and use others... Half the fun of puppets is making them!
Keep it up!

 

[CoOKiE]

well in a sense... build 27 first... yea kinda true lol. The first 3-4 i made came out good... but not great.

my first puppet was made with sheets of felt... yea i've learned from that FAST lol. I still use him, but i seriously need to rebuild him at some point. Hes stiff to use and i feel constrained.

But yea my was of building from scratch is to draw out the character first, then imagine the shapes you would use to get the features. My first one has no foam. So i made an basic shape and went from there. Hes a duck. I still love him lol

 

[Animal31]

well in a sense... build 27 first... yea kinda true lol. The first 3-4 i made came out good... but not great.

my first puppet was made with sheets of felt... yea i've learned from that FAST lol. I still use him, but i seriously need to rebuild him at some point. Hes stiff to use and i feel constrained.

But yea my was of building from scratch is to draw out the character first, then imagine the shapes you would use to get the features. My first one has no foam. So i made an basic shape and went from there. Hes a duck. I still love him lol

Cookie, e-mail me when you have a chance. I'd like to hear more about this group you volunteer for....thanks!

 

[siebyspirit]

Hi everyone, so happy i found this site. I'm a uni student looking at making puppets for a short film that i am going to create using puppets with animation, still writting the story atm but i guess my brain is going quicker than my body as usual. over the yrs I made sock puppets lol my mum used to yell and scream cause all our family socks would have buttons sewn on them, buttons hurt when u put ur foot in ur shoe. But i'm here because i am interested in learning to make puppets using latex, I'm only just learning atm....... I'm going to check out the rest of this site to see what it has to offer. have a gr8 w/e