How to start making puppets?

[Blink]

Yep. It is good practice. Also, if you ever need somone else to build from your patterns you may want to make notes on the patterns themselves to help . It can also help when you have a customer coming to you years later to rebuild a puppet.

 

[mrhogg]

That's a very good point, I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Everybody has their own way of working, but for me patterns are essential.

 

[CBPuppets]

I just got the foam book and I tell you, it's very useful!

 

[jacobmaraia]

I bought the Roly pattern from projectpuppet and I think that it was a great starting point. The finished puppet was too small for my hand, unfortunately -- my wife took it over and made a fun little bunny puppet -- so the other two I've built I've just taken the basic shapes and expanded it by about a half-inch all around. I'm now branching out, working with wedges, playing with new shapes. I think that by building new puppets my learning curve is growing pretty rapidly.

All I need is time, right? I'm hoping within the next few weeks of putting up pics of some of my stuff.

 

[drmolarmagic]

help with making the mouth move

Hi everyone....I need help with something. We (my son and I) built a Beaker puppet. Only problem we are having is with the mouth movemets. We started with a mailing tube and cut out the mouth, but we are stuck in how to move the mouth. We've tried through the inside of the tube but the angles are tough....any help from the community on ideas to get the mouth to move....Thanks!

 

[staceyrebecca]

Hi everyone....I need help with something. We (my son and I) built a Beaker puppet. Only problem we are having is with the mouth movemets. We started with a mailing tube and cut out the mouth, but we are stuck in how to move the mouth. We've tried through the inside of the tube but the angles are tough....any help from the community on ideas to get the mouth to move....Thanks!

You could have some elastic hold his mouth closed & then tie a string to the inside of the mouth at the top that goes down, essentially a rod (or it can just hang?) & then pull the string (with a ring on the end) to open his mouth & when you let go the elastic will pull the mouth shut again.

 

[drmolarmagic]

good idea

Great, I'll try that...the problem I have is with the angle. the mouth is flat closed to the tube at rest and that's a pretty steep anlge to pull against to get it open, but we'll see. I also searched the forum for ideas and found some real "mechanisms". They may be too advanced to build but I'll try the elastic to start and go from there.
Thanks!

 

[staceyrebecca]

Try putting an eye-hook at the back of the head to thread it through to make it pull backwards before it pulls down maybe? (if I understand the problem correctly...

 

[CrazyHarryFan]

I've spent several hours the last couple of days reading and reading and have one question.

Is there a place on the forum where it has the breakdown of how a puppet is actually made?

Because there are a lot of links to purchase the parts, but I still don't know how Muppets are made!

Is there a good link with the breakdown of all that? Because I would love to have a better understanding of how Puppets are actually created! It may be here on the forum, but I haven't really found it yet!


Thanks!


---- Chuck