How to make a bird's beak

[Dwo shwoom]

if my first puppet project goes well, i'm thinking about making a bird next, a crow, i wont give off anymore of him, but i'm absolutely sure his beak is somewhat bigger than his head, so, i dont want it to look fabric looking, what do you guys reccomend for hard rough surface's like the the beak??

 

[gfarkwort]

paper mache

 

[Dwo shwoom]

hmm, that sounds good, but for making it smooth (and rough at the same time) would take lots of time.
thanks

 

[Punch'n'Judy]

hmm, that sounds good, but for making it smooth (and rough at the same time) would take lots of time.
thanks

Am confused as to what you mean. Papier mache is avery versatile, and often underrated material. Latex would also work well.

 

[Karrion]

Do you want it actualy hard or just look hard? How about thin plastic like 'for sale' sign material. You aren't going to get compound curves out of it but it'd be light and fairly stiff.

I'm doing a bird myself. I'm trying painting foam. It'll be fairly rough but I think it'll work out for the type of creature I'm shooting for.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I would try either casting the beak in latex or making it in foam and then applying several coats of latex to the beak. If you do enough coats and they are thin enough you will get a nice, smooth finish.

Bonus points if you cast the beak in latex and flock it, but you need a flocking wand to do that.

 

[Melonpool]

I knew a puppeteer that used one of those baby ear cleaner things to blow the flocking onto a puppet. It looked good to me, but I don't know how it compares to a correctly-flocked puppet. He said that a flocking wand was basically the same device, only a lot more expensive.

Steve

 

[Dwo shwoom]

well, i need something rough as papier mache, but tuff as fiberglass
edit: that might work

 

[Buck-Beaver]

The flocking wand uses static electricity I believe. I've been told that the old way of doing flocking was to blow the flock on to whatever you were flocking, but that's considered to be unsafe because you end up inhaling the flock.

 

[MGov]

What the flock?

http://www.axtell.com/flock.html