Corners of Mouths

[standay]

Hi folks,

I was wondering how you all handle the corners of your puppet's mouths. I want to wrap the cloth around the edge of the foam to give it a nice finished look when I glue the mouthplate in. After creating a test cloth covering for my foam head I find that I can't cover the corners of the mouth by just pulling the cloth. I have the stretch of the cloth going front to back but it looks like I still need a dart in there.

Here's a diagram of the problem:

http://home.comcast.net/~sday77/ebay/puppet_mouth.jpg

The dart of material will work, but I was wondering how others handle this.

Thanks

Stan

 

[Jinx]

This can be a bit of a problem to be sure. Depending on he particulars of the puppet, I often like to cover the foam with the "skin" before glueing in the mouthplate. This way the fabric is wrapped all the way around the edge of the foam and then the mouthplate is glued to the fabric on the inside edge.

The only thing you have to have is a generous allowance of the fabric to warp around the foam, but if it is uneven, it won't matter because it's inside the puppet, leaving a nice finished appearance.

The puppet in my avatar was made in this fashion.

Good luck!

 

[ravagefrackle]

i glue the mouth plate in first actually, and often times i will wrap about an 1/8 of an inch of the foam over the edge of the mouth plate,

then i go in and cover with fabric, if the materila has the right amount of give and strecth you should be able to wrap the edge with out any problems, but it does take practice.

 

[Jinx]

Well, there you go. I'd listen to Ravagefrackle, because he builds MUCH better puppets than I do! But I do think that like so many things, the decision might be steered by the materials used. The puppet that I am building right now has a mouthplate made of neoprene, and in this case I have put the mouthplate in first. But since the puppet is being covered in fur, I think that the mouth corners will be a bit more forgiving. At last that's what I'm hoping for!

 

[standay]

Depending on he particulars of the puppet, I often like to cover the foam with the "skin" before glueing in the mouthplate. This way the fabric is wrapped all the way around the edge of the foam and then the mouthplate is glued to the fabric on the inside edge.

The only thing you have to have is a generous allowance of the fabric to warp around the foam, but if it is uneven, it won't matter because it's inside the puppet, leaving a nice finished appearance.

The puppet in my avatar was made in this fashion.

This is pretty much what I'm doing. "Skin" goes on first, wrapped around the foam, then the mouthplate goes in. Even though I cut the pattern with plenty of extra to go around most of the "lips," once I get to within about an inch of the mouth corners there's not enough to wrap into the corners themselves. Can't really see how there ever would be assuming a standard 2-piece cloth head pattern. If I went with a 4-piece cloth pattern then it would be an easy matter to correct. I just don't want that extra seam around the back of the head.

i glue the mouth plate in first actually, and often times i will wrap about an 1/8 of an inch of the foam over the edge of the mouth plate,

then i go in and cover with fabric, if the materila has the right amount of give and strecth you should be able to wrap the edge with out any problems, but it does take practice.

This might be an option and I did consider it originally, although I still don't think there's enough cloth on mine to do it that way either.

The methods you guys outline are the only two I could think of as well (assuming one wants to get that finished lip/mouth look with the "skin" cloth wrapped around the lips).

There may be some trick to patterning the cloth to get this to work better in a 2-piece pattern but I haven't figured it out yet. I draped the foam head to get the basic pattern shape which worked well and is pretty standard looking with a roundish looking head, main dart at the top of the head and a wedge removed in front for the mouth.

The mouth corner dart will work and will look OK, but next time I may try the skin over the mouthplate as ravagefrackle suggests and see if that works any better. I think that method would be especially useful if using longer napped fake fur as there's little give and stretch in that stuff. Be really tough to wrap that around the foam first.

Thanks

Stan