Blockheads

[Koozbanian Foob]

Has anyone tried carving a head directly out of a single polyfoam or ethafoam block? I'm not having very good results with cutting paterns out of foam sheets and I'm a fairly good at carving (don't ask - odd skill obtained from years of building miniatures and terrain for Dungeons & Dragons and Wargaming).

I was also looking at images from 'The Art of The Muppets' and noticed that the uncovered heads look very much like they're one piece.

IYO, what material is best to cut? What tool would you cut with if you were going this way?

Thanks as always, Love this Forum!

 

[BorkBork]

Hi Koozbanian Foob.

Take a look at this thread where there is some talk on carving foam blocks.

Also visit this site where there is some talk about building puppets/muppets.

Good luck.

 

[BorkBork]

By the way, what is 'the art of muppets' ?

 

[Koozbanian Foob]

Ah Self-Promotion!



Jus' teasin' BB.

I love your site and I've looked at it and it's forum a number of times. I intend to join once I'm comfortable building puppets again (it's been a while ). Thanks for the heads up however.

"The Art of the Muppets" is a 9x9, Full Color book put out in the 80's in conjunction with the 25th Anniversary of the Muppets and the Lincoln Center Gallery event. A number of actual Muppets, design sketches and other elements of art from the Henson studios were on display. The book chronicles the art in the display as well as the history of the Muppet phenomenon.

The book is both awesome and long since out of print. I just won one of ebay (the original I had was lost years ago in a move).

 

[BorkBork]

Yeah, self promotion

Oh, cool, i looked it up on ebay and there are 2x of the book there. Maybe i'll bid, if my budget allows it

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Ethafoam is light but kind of rigid for carving heads, isn't it? (maybe we are not talking about the same stuff). Generally though, if you want a flexible "Muppet" puppet you should use some sort of polyfoam block.

 

[punkNpuppets]

thats how i build em. it's usually kinda sorta choppy tho but looks good. the reason y its usually choppy is cuz i paint the foam. i guess i should be covering it.

 

[scarylarrywolf]

Yeah, painting foam doesn't last very long. It tends to stiffen the foam and make the surface crumble over time.

I tried carving a likeness of my P.E. teacher (We did a "talent show" at my High School and we seniors pretended to be the teachers. Our P.E. teacher is REALLY short so I made a puppet of him.) I found it extremely difficult to make a puppet with a mobile mouth out of one whole block of foam, so I had to chop out a mandible and then it didn't look so realistic. You could still tell who it was supposed to be though.

--"Scary" Larry Wolf