Making Full-Bodied Puppet Costumes

[HauntedPuppet]

I tried it and it looked terible ,maybe it's just the way you sew it

Thats because wool is used rather than thread. Use some 8 ply and then comb it out. makes pretty good fur but is very time consuming if you are making a piece that is bigger than a head cap. Try using a multicolored wool, looks awesome when combed out.

Thread would take far too long.

I dont order fur online because photos can be quite different from the actual look. Going to a fabric store is always preferable because you can hold the fabric from underneath giving you a good idea of how the fur will sit. Different furs sit different because of the flexibility or stiffness of whatever they used for fur.

 

[charlie bird]

Do you mean 8 ply yarn, or just plain wool. I looked it up and it showed up as yarn. I just wanted to make sure, so I wont get the wrong thing.
Thank you
ps:do you sew the yarn to it ,glue it,or punch it in with something?

 

[HauntedPuppet]

Do you mean 8 ply yarn, or just plain wool. I looked it up and it showed up as yarn. I just wanted to make sure, so I wont get the wrong thing.
Thank you
ps:do you sew the yarn to it ,glue it,or punch it in with something?

8 ply yarn (we call it 8 ply wool here in AU but its yarn)

I sew it, big loop small loop. Its good for making unique fur that you can otherwise nto find in a shop.

 

[charlie bird]

Thank you.Sorry for my many questions, I just had to make sure before I started to make the fur.

Thank you so much!

 

[charlie bird]

I need some help on finding a small camera that can be made as the eye of the puppet, and a moniter for my sight in the puppet.Please post your'e coments, ideas,and camera recamendations.

Thank you

 

[HauntedPuppet]

I need some help on finding a small camera that can be made as the eye of the puppet, and a moniter for my sight in the puppet.Please post your'e coments, ideas,and camera recamendations.

Thank you

eBay

 

[luther962]

What you are looking for is something called a lipstick camera (roughly the size of a tube of lipstick). They are really small and produce a decent wide angle field of view. For a monitor, I reccomend a portable DVD player with line-in functionality. I have a Sony one, battery operated that I use as a field monitor when filming video. I hope this helps.

 

[practicecactus]

A small spy cam and a hand-held tv would work as an in costume set up. Might take a little shopping around for connectors on the video input cables but I managed hook up my little tv to my brothers spycam and with the camera running on a 9volt battery it's all selfcontained.
Something like this camera, but with 'video output' cable instead of the wireless input reciever because you don't want to record what you're seeing in the costume, just have the live feed.
Handheld portable tvs should come with some kind of input but doublecheck before buying, and like I say, you'll probly have to find some kind of 'video input' connector as it won't be the standard yellow one like on most things, but there's all kinds of bits available so there's always a solution to make two ends work together.
But this is how I'd do it. Having given this sorta thing some thought and have a puppet costume design all drawn up, it's just a matter of the total cost of materials that's stopping me. One day...

 

[luther962]

Ditto what practicecactus said. The Sony portable DVD is the only one I could find that video input. I got it at WallMart for around $100.00. The line-in is a mini 1/8" but you can go to the shack and get an adaptor to go from RCA to mini.
Good luck!

 

[charlie bird]

Thank you for all of the verry helpfull posts. My portable dvd player has an imput that says video,I'm not sure if it would work.I looked up the lip stick camera and found the cheapest one to be $85,thats not too bad because I can also use it as a camera for a moniter in puppet films that I do.

Thank you so much for you're help.