Human Proportioned Puppet

[RockerRob]

I'm toying around with the idea of a 1:3 scale human proprtioned puppet for my next puppet. He will be a US WWII Army infantryman PFC complete with uniform, boots, pack, gear, helmet, and rifle. (To skip the bulk and get to the point, scroll down to the **.)

I will make everything from scratch because I doubt I'll find the quality and scale I am looking for anywhere. The unirorm and packs will be patterned off origoinal photos and a couple things I already have (kid's clothing patterns for scale?), and I will make the helmet and rifle from foam, resin, and most likely some bondo (metal glaze and the rapid prototype machine if I can). Boots out of leather and glue, or something else (I'll come up with something when I get to that bridge). Then I will age and dirty things up to make it look like he's seen a lot of action.

Before I make all his gear, I've got to have a body to put it on. (And now I think outloud He should have limbs of the correct scale in length and muscule tone, and I would like him to have a lightweight skeleton so he isn't bendy like Gumby. I was thinking of fabricating thin cardboard tubes for the limb bones with elastic to act as tendons in the joints for realistic movement (It would look a little unprofessional if his knees bent the wrong way). Over the skeleton, I want to make foam muscules as seen in "The Foam Book". As for the skin, I want to give him something that has stretch, but not fleece, so I think that faux sueade would work in a skin tone. I want his face to be realistic, but not real enough that he actually looks like a little man, more stylized human face.

Now I really do want to make this guy! He'll take me a month and a half, but he'd be worth it!

This is what I am thinking, and I would love to hear any suggestions or comments from you guys!

**Here's a list of things I would like input on if you don't want to ready that long paragraph:
-Light weight "skeleton"
-How to make realistic "muscules"
-Good covering that has stretch but still looks like "skin"
-Ways to make a stylized human "face"
-Patterns and techniques for scaling down clothes

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

For making a realistic, light weight skeleton check out this tutorial on PuppetBuilding.com.

I don't think there is a fabric that really looks like skin; your best bet for that is probably latex or silicone. Google "Stop Motion Puppet Techniques" or something similar and you'll find a lot of good information.

To scale down clothing patterns, just put it on a photocopier and tell it the percentage you want it reduced by.

Does that help?

 

[RockerRob]

Thanks Buck. That skeleton's joint system is very helpful. I was thinking about a photo copier too.

I forgot to mention that this will be hand and rod puppet. I am not looking for complete realism with laytex, and cloth covering is okay by me.

Any tips on posable hands?

This is ambitious of me, and I am sure I will figure most it out when I get going. Any suggestions that you can think of would be immensely helpful in the mean time.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I have a puppet building tutorial that explains one method for making posable hands. Also see Swazzle's Ratchet puppet tutorial.

 

[staceyrebecca]

For scaling down clothing, oh gosh, I used to know this...if the pattern is small enough you can run it through a copy machine with reduce by X%

I'll ask my mom for the old fashioned way. I think if you just trace the inside (grab an A frame sort of tool with a pen on one side & nothing on the other) so you get basically the same pattern, only smaller. I'll double-check.

Have you thought about carving insulation foam (styrofoam) for a lightweight body? You can get thick sheets of it at home depot, cement them together, then carve.

You might want to investigate some marionette jointing techniques for the legs. just a thought

 

[D'Snowth]

Make sure you give him one of those wicked awesome WWII Jeep Caps too!

 

[RockerRob]

Thanks everyone for contributing these great ideas! It is really helping me out.

Staceyrebecca, are you talking about blue foam? That stuff is great! I could defintely use that and I could buy or build a hotwire for extra easy carving.

As for clothing patterns I do have an M-41 field jacket, but I will not have full size examples or patterns for anything else, so I will have photos to go off of. It will be a challenge, but that seems to be what my subconcious wants me to do.

D'Snowth, a Jeep cap would be wicked awesome! I will have to scour baby stores and departments to find something like it, alter an adult size, or you can knit one for me!

 

[staceyrebecca]

oh, I wasn't talking about the blue foam, but I'm sure it is indeed, great! The stuff our theater uses is just basically white styrofoam.

 

[D'Snowth]

D'Snowth, a Jeep cap would be wicked awesome! I will have to scour baby stores and departments to find something like it, alter an adult size, or you can knit one for me!

Hmm, I know original jeep caps were knitted in four different sizes, perhaps a small would fit him pretty well? I hear small ones are really tiny, the only problem the originals are really, REALLY hard to find in good condition.

If you can't find one, the only thing I could suggest is maybe find a costume designer who could knit one for you?

 

[RockerRob]

White styrophome... that is cheaper... What do you use to carve that, surfom, knives, hotwire, or what?

The jeep cap would be awesome. I want it. I will look around at the caps that I know of like at atthefront.com or some other reenactor sites. I don't think I will go as far to have one custom knitted, but I will buy one and if it doesn't fit out of the box, then I can alter it down to size and just hope it doesn't look terrible.

Since I am terrible at math, I have just realized that my puppet will be 1/2 scale human, so he'll be 3 feet (or a little shoter) tall.

I haven't started on yet, but all your ideas are really helping me in the pre planning stage. Thank you so much for your imput and keep it coming!