Yep. I’m actually working at the day job tomorrow, but I expect at least a couple of the hours to be waiting on other people (and totally OK for me to be goofing off), so my plan is to make my puppets for the week using only craft supplies I have at work. Granted, there’s a bit of a cheat here as I’m planning on making finger puppets AND I keep a bunch of craft supplies in my desk. This should be fun, if a bit odd.
aren’t made yet. I’m putting together my schedule of puppet building for the next couple months, and as I was shooting with Death By Puppets much of Sunday I didn’t get started on this week’s puppets. That said, I’m going small and planning to try a small finger puppet idea that came up over the weekend. I’m going to have a vacation coming up in a few weeks and need to plan out what I’m building on the road too.
wardrobe change on one puppet, and two more puppets about 80% today… The moon needs some craters, and both of them need eyes (I’m waiting till tomorrow to eye them as I want some feedback from my troupe). I found a pattern for a cloak designed for America Girl dolls and eyeballed an enlargement of it to make a better “doomsday cloak” for the Death By Puppets logo puppet (aka “Death”), and when I didn’t like the little slits for the arms I made some ad-hoc sleeves that should film OK, but aren’t actually stitched together properly (to make it easier to get the hands in and out).
Surprised I got as much done as I did with that 3 hour trip running errands in the middle of the day. One of the errands was actually my own, and I picked up some nice black velvety fabric to use for space background, the doomsday cloak material, and a shiny metallic looking fabric to use for both fish scales and space suit.
I’ve been clearing off puppet area for a while this morning and my wife took the dog for a walk and came back with a stray kitten. I want to take a break from moon’s this week, but I’ve actually got a chunk of foam and an enlarged pattern waiting for another moon, so I’ll probably do that, my doomsday cloak (or go to the thrift store and look for a black toddler hoodie), and a customization to finish up.
Yeah, this has turned into a week of very long days at the day job, and no puppet building time on Sunday to start it. So, going into the last day of the week I have nothing done on this week’s puppet. Tomorrow I’ll be starting and finishing a puppet, and making a proper doomsday cloak for the Death By Puppets puppet so I can film with him on Sunday.
This Puppet Week is now one day long. Wish I was as good as James.
The latest moon… I think I need a break from moons for a week.
I’ve tried another moon design and still don’t like it. I’m not sure how to go about smoothing this foam out properly, which is probably the largest part of my problems at the moment. This design isn’t exactly up to snuff, so I’m going to try and cut out the foam head shape I used on my fish and see if I “De-bodify” it if it works a little better (and it has the benefit of me knowing I have a pattern to cover it with cloth that, if I use white fleece, I can tweak a bit more to make it look cleaner).
That’s no space station… that’s the beginnings of a moon. I’m trying to figure out the eye control mechanism still, and my sander is acting up so I can’t smooth it out the way I want to, and it still needs a coat of white paint to even things up, and then some detail painting, but the mouth movement is working semi-OK at least.
And I don’t have this week’s puppet started yet. But I’m about to. I’ve got a few more sets of eyes and noses and such that I’d like to finish up to have for swapping in and out on the whatnots, but once I clear off the work area (aka the dining room table), I’m going to get back to my moon puppet.
I need to clean up some before I take shots of last week’s whatnots, though I think it’s only going to be interesting to see them with all the various interchangeable parts.
Just a little video of how I’m currently making “puppet wigs” with yarn. This week has a couple more whatnots almost done, and a conversion of one from last week may get finished as well.
