Help Making a Small-Mouthed Puppet

[Li'lbutton]

I have somewhat recently started making puppets and have got a good idea how to make the classic wide mouthed puppet with different shaped heads.
Now I am in need of a very girly faced puppet and am intrigued with puppets, I have seen, with tiny mouths, similar to a human mouth-to-head dimensions. I have tried and tried again and It just doesn't seem to work out. Usually I lose most if not all range of motion and/or the head sometimes sags like an octopus. Any tricks for making a small mouth? It doesn't seem like it should be that hard and I must just be missing something simple.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

There are a couple different ways to approach this, it really depends on your design.

Generally, it's important to design the puppet so that its mouth is naturally open. If the mouth is naturally shut, every time a puppeteer tries to open it they have to displace material in the puppet's face (foam, fabric or whatever).

You might also want to look at this mouth plate design. I've done similar things in the past and it can be a really good solution for controlling very small mouths.

 

[Li'lbutton]

Yup, I think I wasn't making the mouth open enough. It makes such a difference. I am definitely going to try that mouthplate idea. I think if I keep playing around with it it will have to work. Thanks for the help!

 

[ashkent]

One way I used in a test puppet, which kind of worked and just needed a bit of adjustment was to scale down a head pattern by half and make a complete small head with mouthplate. I then build the larger head around this, so the cheeks were built on the side, lips on the edges of the mouth so by the time it was done there was a full size head with a small head inside it.

Once it was fleeces you couldn't tell there were really two heads and there was about the same space for grips as you get in say a Kermit head.

I'm doing another one soon using the same technique so i'll take some photos of it during the making as i think it is probably better to see than explain.

 

[Li'lbutton]

That is too funny Ashkent! I will try to work on that also, it's a great idea as well.