shtick said:
I've always wondered how a caricature of a person can be made as a puppet. I can draw caricatures but I believe the process is a little different.
Anyone have any ideas or tips on doing a puppet that liiks like a person?
i thinkit all goes to your skill level as a sculpture, or pattern maker, much like drawing a represtaional cartoon of a person, when building a puppet to look like someone you try to effisive certain facila features over others, that give that individual their "look"
but in contrast to simply doing a 2d drawing, your sculpt has to be a functional puppet , bucks ecample is great , its nice simple way of maikg a puppet of a person, i love good looking glove puppest like that and they are fun to perform as well, another great example would be the portrait puppest from "WHAT ABOUT BOB'they were built buy the folks at the Muppet workshop (after all Frank Oz would no were to go for good puppest)
when doing a Hand rod puppet like the Muppets, or Avenue Q you now ave to work in a moving mouth, and often you are trying to make the person look like it belongs n your little puppet universe, several great portrait puppets were built while i was at the muppet shop, Martin baker was given a fantastic puppet built by Matt Brooks when he left the company back in 2000, or 2001(yes he is again working with the company)he aslo maked a brief cameo as a beer stien in TREASURE ISLAND,
at the lyon puppets we did a series of portrait puppest as gifts for different folks, most notably were the CBS 2 promos we did in 2004 and 2005, Shon William,Mario Bosquez,Dave Price,ect.ect.
another option is to go the route of the SPITTING IMAGE puppetssculpted from clay then molded and cast in Foam latex, extreme caricatures (often timesgrotesque) featured in a well know Phil Collins Video , as well as a BBC series, and a short lived american one.
again its all about your level of skill, and expieience, if u wantto do one, go ahead, thier are no real rules, as long as the final product is recognized as the person u are trying to represent in puppet form.