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I met a lot of puppeteers and puppet builders at all stages of skill at Dragon*Con this past weekend. When beginners asked me about building puppets, I told them to get some cheap materials and just go to it. Play with cheap foam and fleece, learn how to work with it, and don't be afraid to screw up. Just move on and try again.
Well, after spending a weekend wiggling dolls at people I've found a few screwups in my puppets' construction that I wasn't aware of. Most of them boil down to how bleedin' abrasive reticulated foam is when your hand is rubbing against it for hours. Sometimes my hand came out with red knuckles at the end of the night! So, I resolved to correct that right away by putting fabric over the areas inside the head that the fingers rub against.
You see the problem, of course. It's not like I can reach up through the neck hole with a brush full of contact cement. So, I got out a pair of cuticle-trimming scissors and opened up the seams on the back of the necks. The first subject was Skeeter...
I'm just cutting the thread along an existing seam, and as it's beneath that heavy load of hair nobody will ever see it, so there's no stress about wrecking the puppet. She actually didn't have a reticulated skull, but I had to open her up to correct another glitch:
The purple fabric covers the edges of the back end of her mouthplates, which are rather rough, being sliced out of hard plastic. Unfortunately, I glued it on with the mouth closed rather than open, so purple fabric pulls tight and the mouth resists closing. I had to push to close it, which was very tiring and got really old. Anyhow, I pulled it away from the bottom mouthplate to relieve the tension. It still covers the edges, so the puppeteer's hand is protected, and the mouth is now much easier to work. From there I just Henson-stitched up the back of her neck again, and as the fleece was already fluffed out I only had to brush it a little with a toothbrush to conceal the seam once more.
I was afraid when I took Skeeter to Dragon*Con that her glasses, the most fragile part of the puppet, would break. They held up without a problem, but I managed to break off one of the lenses during the repair. Oh well, gorilla glue to the rescue.
Well, after spending a weekend wiggling dolls at people I've found a few screwups in my puppets' construction that I wasn't aware of. Most of them boil down to how bleedin' abrasive reticulated foam is when your hand is rubbing against it for hours. Sometimes my hand came out with red knuckles at the end of the night! So, I resolved to correct that right away by putting fabric over the areas inside the head that the fingers rub against.
You see the problem, of course. It's not like I can reach up through the neck hole with a brush full of contact cement. So, I got out a pair of cuticle-trimming scissors and opened up the seams on the back of the necks. The first subject was Skeeter...
I'm just cutting the thread along an existing seam, and as it's beneath that heavy load of hair nobody will ever see it, so there's no stress about wrecking the puppet. She actually didn't have a reticulated skull, but I had to open her up to correct another glitch:
The purple fabric covers the edges of the back end of her mouthplates, which are rather rough, being sliced out of hard plastic. Unfortunately, I glued it on with the mouth closed rather than open, so purple fabric pulls tight and the mouth resists closing. I had to push to close it, which was very tiring and got really old. Anyhow, I pulled it away from the bottom mouthplate to relieve the tension. It still covers the edges, so the puppeteer's hand is protected, and the mouth is now much easier to work. From there I just Henson-stitched up the back of her neck again, and as the fleece was already fluffed out I only had to brush it a little with a toothbrush to conceal the seam once more.
I was afraid when I took Skeeter to Dragon*Con that her glasses, the most fragile part of the puppet, would break. They held up without a problem, but I managed to break off one of the lenses during the repair. Oh well, gorilla glue to the rescue.
