Puppet Patterning

[WillyThePig]

Here's a question for all you puppet makers out there. How do you make your patterns? Specifically sheet foam patterns. i have made only about three foam head patterns successfully in the three years i have been building puppets and although i know that i have made incredible progress i am still not as good as i know i can be. So i am looking for a quicker proccess that wastes as little foamm as possible. So how do you make your patterns? Please feel free to share your process or pictures of your puppets.

 

[Slackbot]

Trial and error. Plus, I keep patterns for every thing I make, even the failed skulls seen in the first post, because they might be suitable for something else. When you have a library of patterns it becomes a lot easier, and you can often tweak one pattern for other uses.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I have some excellent step-by-step notes on this that one day soon I hope to put up on the web (I know, I know, that's not terribly helpful right now).

For basic foam shapes, one approach is what's known as "the wedge method". If you do some searches here on the forum you should find old discussions that discuss this in detail, but the basic idea is that you create a round head shape out of a series of wedges (try to imagine the skin of an orange cut in to about 8 slices). By varying the number and shape of wedges you can create different shapes.

You can find an old wedge pattern I made up a long time ago on Puppets and Stuff.

The Foam Book decribes two methods of patterning heads, "The Three Piece Head Method" and "The Nip and Tuck Method". There are also videos available that demonstrate those techniques. You can order the Foam Book & videos from Amazon or Grey Seal Puppets - http://www.greysealpuppets.com

A really good source of information on patterning is the first video in the "From Sketch To Show" series from Playsoup. You can order it online from http://www.playsoup.com

I've also collected a lot of useful puppet building information that might help you on Pinterest (Pinterest is a good place to search for puppet building inspiration and information).

The best thing to do imho is try several different approaches and find what works bets for you. As Slackbot said, there is a lot of trial and error involved. Good luck!

 

[WillyThePig]

I have some excellent step-by-step notes on this that one day soon I hope to put up on the web (I know, I know, that's not terribly helpful right now).

For basic foam shapes, one approach is what's known as "the wedge method". If you do some searches here on the forum you should find old discussions that discuss this in detail, but the basic idea is that you create a round head shape out of a series of wedges (try to imagine the skin of an orange cut in to about 8 slices). By varying the number and shape of wedges you can create different shapes.

You can find an old wedge pattern I made up a long time ago on Puppets and Stuff.

The Foam Book decribes two methods of patterning heads, "The Three Piece Head Method" and "The Nip and Tuck Method". There are also videos available that demonstrate those techniques. You can order the Foam Book & videos from Amazon or Grey Seal Puppets - http://www.greysealpuppets.com

A really good source of information on patterning is the first video in the "From Sketch To Show" series from Playsoup. You can order it online from http://www.playsoup.com

I've also collected a lot of useful puppet building information that might help you on Pinterest (Pinterest is a good place to search for puppet building inspiration and information).

The best thing to do imho is try several different approaches and find what works bets for you. As Slackbot said, there is a lot of trial and error involved. Good luck!

Wow! Thanks, Buck. I'll take all this into consideration...as for the "wedge pattern" you posted the link for, I recently made an Ernie replica (just for experimental purposes) and made a pattern similar to that and was impressed with my results. If I just been patient and waited until i could get some fleece so I didn't have to use scraps, i probably would have finished more than just the head. But I'm getting off topic...anyways thanks for the suggestions.

 

[WillyThePig]

Trial and error. Plus, I keep patterns for every thing I make, even the failed skulls seen in the first post, because they might be suitable for something else. When you have a library of patterns it becomes a lot easier, and you can often tweak one pattern for other uses.

Ah, yes. Trial-and-Error and I are on bad terms right now...every time I try and wing it hoping for the best i always get some weird shape that looks like a deformed watermelon...but then again I'm not that experienced either. I have a few patterns that I made with success and have been using/modifying these along with Project Puppet patterns for a long time now and should probably start trying something out of my "Comfort Zone"...trial and error

 

[Slackbot]

I know it's a pain to waste foam, but if you're going to learn to do more than follow other people's patterns you have to be willing to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. I bought a lot of cheap foam to learn on, and I still do plenty of that. Every puppet I've made required multiple drafts of the skull before I got it right. I made eight or nine for Wembley alone!