How to start making puppets?

[john mark blair]

the funny thing is, i perused every puppet thing i could find on the internet. puppet tutorials, pictures, looked at galleries and saw books for sale and patterns too. There were alot of good ideas out there and there were neat things like moving eyes and eyelids. the bottom line here in my opinion and i have only made five puppets worth seein in my life so far, is you will learn more by doing. yeah i said by doing. i would say look at the puppet building stuff on you tube, and if you wish get a pattern from a book or a website, but all in all get some felt and make one. even if its just from a sock. but i made my first puppet recently from my own drawn pattern. you will need to draw the fingers extra fat and the shoulder part? yikes a night mare for me. so i leanred to do the body like a sock puppet and attatch the arms later.
you will learn so very much from making the first one. i made two so called sock puppets from a felt pattern i drew and cut out and stuffed. then i made a foam head for my third, and the fourth? blinking eyelids. just make one and have fun even if its not so great. best way is too learn.

 

[Voiceroy]

If this has been posted already, my apologies, but I don't have time to review 14 pages of discussion at the moment.

For anyone wanting to make simple, functional puppets on-the-cheap, I suggest checking thrift stores, yard/garage sales, and flea markets for plush characters that already have an open, working mouth that would fit your hand.

You can sometimes find interesting-looking character plush toys at these locations for well under $10. I have 5 puppets I currently use in my kids show and stand-up act which cost me less than $3 each because I found them at Goodwill or a yard sale. I bought two more last weekend at a garage sale for .50 each which I'll be modifying shortly.

Construction is very simple and easy, but first you have to decide on the location of the opening for your hand: the back or the bottom.

If you'll be using a stage curtain for performance, you might want to cut into the lower back or the bottom of the puppet so you have less arm showing and the puppet has a better aesthetic position from the viewer side. But if you'll be visible and using the puppet like a ventriloquist dummy (which is how I use most of my puppets), you'll want to cut into the plush starting just below the head where the neck begins.

Once you've made that decision, you're ready to begin.

1) Using an Exacto knife or box-cutting razor blade, make an incision (on the back or bottom of the puppet) that you feel is long enough to fit your hand inside up past the wrist. For most average-size hands, it should be about 4-6 inches from top to bottom.

You can also use scissors for better accuracy--helps in cutting a straighter, cleaner line.

2) Remove enough of the inside plush polyfil material that you can get your hand inside all the way past the wrist and get your fingers up into the mouth.

Before going any further, take some time here and go through some motions with the puppet to make sure it's comfortable on your hand/arm and that it's a good fit. You might need to make further adjustments, like increasing the size of the incision or removing a little more polyfil.

3) Take any tube sock, slide your hand/arm into it, and then insert it into the hole you made. Move it around and work the end of the sock so your fingers have a good grip on the inside of the mouth. Note the remaining length of the calf-end of the sock now sticking out of the back of the plush, mark it, and trim off the excess.

4) Sew the opening of the calf-end of the sock into the opening you cut into the back of the plush body.

And you're done!

For even simpler construction, you can go without the tube sock, but just bear in mind that you'll need to reinforce the opening with something (fabric sewn around the opening or even duck tape on the inside works well) or the opening will rip/tear open wider the more you use it.

And for a little fancier construction, find a tube sock color that's a close match for the puppet body color, or use a black tube sock to match the background curtain of a puppet stage and then you don't have to cut off the excess. And if you have more advanced sewing skills, cut a hole in the toe-end of the sock and attach the sock opening around the mouth as well so you can get a better grip on the puppet mouth and have more freedom to manipulate expression, without the mess and problem of the polyfil falling out every time you withdraw your hand.

And for a better grip on the mouth--especially if the mouth itself is a hard plastic or cardboard on the inside--I actually recommend taking a leather glove (right or left-handed, depending on your preference) and use an adhesive (like fabric glue, hot glue, or even caulk works pretty well) to secure the glove to the mouth (four fingers on the top, and the thumb on the bottom).

Only issues with gluing a glove inside is that it a) limits you to either a left or right-handed puppet, depending on which glove you chose, and b) limits your ability to manipulate the puppet's expression freely, but I have Kermit and Elmo puppets that I use with kids occasionally that the plush toy had such a heavy, solid plastic mouth that I could hardly manipulate the mouth at all if I hadn't glued a glove in.

At any rate, hope this offers some help for those on a limited budget. It's also good practice working your way up to crafting more complex puppets. I have a giant plush lobster that I already modified with a manipulative mouth and full arm for performance, but I'm giving him more character by adding working eyes and antennae.

 

[graphicpirate]

I have almost everything under control up to the skin, nose, ears, eyes placement, need some help with order and placement.

I have been doing a ton of research on making Muppet style puppets but I am a bit poor and cannot afford any books on the subject at this time. I was wondering what is the best adhesive to adhere "felt" or "fur" or other material to the foam as the skin? Also is there a specific kind of felt to use or better yet not use?
And my last question is how do you avoid wrinkles around areas like the nose mouth and ears?
I have almost everything under control up to the skin, nose, ears, eyes placement, need some help with order and placement.

Thanks for reading!
): D>

 

[CBPuppets]

Speaking of which how would you attach the eyes, nose and ears to the puppet?

 

[CBPuppets]

I have a recent question that I hope you can help me out with.

 

[Siege]

I just purchased The Foam Book, Puppet Mania! and Puppet Planet from Amazon. I will probably also get one of the patterns from ProjectPuppet after I read the books. Still new to this. I hope that my first isn't my last.

 

[AEaston]

Please, don't let your first be your last. My first one looks like poop. But I remember (9 years ago?) making my first and just being so excited about bringing a bunch of random, shapeless materials into something that had life and almost peed. So I kept trying, and now, I must say my puppets look fiiiiiine.

So just do it, and keep doing it. I've been building for almost a decade and I don't think there is a person on this forum who isn't still learning...that's what makes this a fun field; there is always something new to try.

Shine Bright!
Adam Thomas

 

[DumbAscii]

The Order of Things

Hey all! I've just begun to get serious about making my own puppets (pics and stuff coming soon!) and I was just wondering what order you prefer do things in...

I mean like making the mouth first, how you attach everything etc. The great thing about all this is there's no one right way to do it!

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I think it's really smart to build the puppet around its mouthplate.

 

[mrhogg]

Building Puppets?

Hey all,

I was curious to know if when you're building puppets, you make patterns as you go. Initially I'd sort of hack it together (when I wasn't using an existing pattern), but lately I've found myself making structured patterns for the puppet, sometimes intentionally to make it easier to do a second time, but I've also (in the case of Mojo and the Raccoon puppet) run through prototypes of the head, and making a pattern is helping me refine the design.

This does have the handy side-benefit of making it easier for me to redo the puppet later on (if I need to, as I likely will in the case of the raccoon -- I'll probably build a bunch of them for crowd scenes).

Do you pattern it up?