Pattern advice for designed pupppets

[aaronmojo]

I need help! I've illustrated a children's book and the author has hired me to come up with puppets based on the two main characters. Here they are:

I've built puppets in the past but from fairly abstract designs -- never anything like this. I don't mind purchasing a pattern or two if it will help me out but I'm not sure which pattern to purchase!

Any advice on patterns for these two would be greatly appreciated!

I plan on making them rod puppets, I think, since chances are the author is only going to have one puppeteer (probably not an experience one, either). The main thing is that the faces look like the cartoon drawings.

 

[ravagefrackle]

those will be a challange, i hate building puppets based on designs that come from a Animation design style, it never really blends well in my experience,

i would carve the heads from Foam, and Pattern the body and arms, but no matter what that will be a challenge.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Yeah, that is going to be a challenge if you haven't built anything like that before. I'm not sure if there are any ready made patterns that will work for something like that.

I'm actually running an online course right now where we go through the process of how to building puppets from almost any design, but it's nine weeks and it sounds like you need information faster than that. You could try to take a look at the Playsoup DVDs which might be helpful.

 

[aaronmojo]

Thanks, guys. I found a couple YouTube videos that might help me out. I'll post the results once I get something made.

 

[Teenager's]

Yea, Cool. I would say go back to the basic shapes of the characters and build the features on top of those. Like the Dog (Which I like the design for) looks like a oval (or verticle watermelon) after making that, cut a hole and create the snout/mouthplate and then add on foam pieces of the cheeks.

Carving the foam would work well, the above description is how I would pattern foam for the head.