Making Clothes

[Melonpool]

So... I've been building puppets now for 17 years, and this weekend was the first time I've made custom clothes for my puppets. Actually, I didn't really do it this time either, but I took advantage of the way I've done the heads and arms this go-around to make a costume change.

What I did was make a second body which can be changed out with the normal body to have a custom outfit (this one being a Star Trek uniform for a Wrath of Khan sequence in the film I'm working on). Since the heads are tubes that run down the body, it's easily changed out. And the arms are held on by shoelaces so I can change those out as well. All I ended up doing was running the shoelaces up through the sleeves, then tie it off through a couple of holes in the body. It works great!

What I also like about it is that the outfit fits perfectly -- no weird draping from non-existent shoulders and it doesn't add any weight to the puppet at all. Since these puppet bodies don't have foam inside them, making new bodies don't take any longer than just making new clothes -- and they're super simple to change out.

Anyway, hope this helps somebody!

Standard Puppet:
http://www.melonpool.com/tmp/Sam2011.jpg

In clothes:
http://www.melonpool.com/tmp/Sam_Trek.jpg

 

[Animal31]

Haha, that's awesome!

 

[MuppetCaper]

Not to sound so weird or anything...but I like your dog nekkid better...now for the other characters, I think this would work better for the humans and aliens! But this is just my opinion. I like all your work!.

 

[Melonpool]

Not to worry -- Most of the time, he's naked (well -- except for his hat).

 

[Gonzo's Hobbit]

So wait, did you take the head off the puppet and attach it to the other body? Whatever you did it's a good job and it looks good. Thanks for the info. It's cool to read about the techniques people use.

 

[Melonpool]

The head, arms and torso are all separate pieces. The torso is like a tube that the head (with a long neck sleeve) goes inside. The arms are attached by shoelaces that go into two holes on each side of the torso and are tied off on the inside...

So, what I did was make a new torso with the clothes on it and a pair of sleeves that I could feed the arms through. Then, I out the original head through the tube and the arms (with sleeves) tied on -- creating a new body with clothes on it.

This worked well for mine because there's no foam inside the body. You could just as easily keep the original body and make a slightly bigger covering for the clothes and if the arms are attached with shoelaces, use the same trick with sleeves again. The perk of this is that it's really easy to change the outfit (since you don;t have to feed the rods through the sleeve or remove them altogether).

Hope that makes sense!

 

[Gonzo's Hobbit]

Yea, that makes since. That's a nice process.

 

[Melonpool]

And the sleeves are really easy to make as well -- they're basically tube socks with a hole at the "toe" end for the shoelaces to go through. (the open end becomes the cuff).