More Wonderment to Behold!

So...I'm off to the UK and Ireland tomorrow, and the puppets are not fully finished. But don't fret my friends...
I will have an extra week to finish them off before shooting begins on the music video, so hooray.
Here's what's been happening the past 2 days:

I enjoy epic mochas at Bronwen's while we discuss all thing puppets. She's like my Obi-Wan, and I am the young Luke Skywalker...learning the ways of the puppet.



















Bronwen, the Master Dremmeller...














Brass pieces cut for hand mech, and dowels for hand rods.














A finished hand rod.














When I got home from Bronwen's work shop I started to get the hand mech together.














Used some brass wire to make a little knot for it all.














Then we get some glue



















and glue that sucker into place














I also sewed the hands together, leaving the bottom open so we could fit the wire inside.














Then.......then ladies and gentlemen comes the fun part of this project.
FAUX FUR TIMES!!!



















Wrap him up like a burrito, and cut out some space for his eyes!



















Sew up the fur burrito with some hidden stitch work.














Done!!! He needs some fleece for his blink rig, and some eye pupils!



















Then it was red guy's turn! Drape him in fabric and start making darts!!!



















He looks drunk here...but I was cutting out his eye holes.



















And then my camera battery died. So to see more you will have to wait 3 weeks until I am back from my trip! See you darlings soon!!!

Today...a lot got done!!!

Today was a productive day. Much was accomplished...such as...

1) Mouths for Red, Yellow and Green were black felted, and taped together on the inside

































Ta da!














2) The eyes were glued into the sockets, being careful not to get any hot glue on the blink mechanism














Inside














3) A little finger loop was added to control the blink and leather straps also added for your fingers and thumb



















Here's how it's operated. I hope none of the puppeteers are left handed...I made these for right hand...














Here's the gang currently!
Special thanks to Gary for coming over to bend the wire for the hands, cut out the fabric for the hands, and stuff the arm and leg tubes!!! It's all starting to come together now.



















On the agenda for tomorrow and wednesday:
1) glue in the mouth for blue guy that was cut out today
2) cover them all in fur and fabric, including their eyelids
3) rig up the rod wands for controlling their hands
4) assemble hands
5) cover arms and legs with gray fleece
6) attach arms and legs to body
7) last details like costumes and pupils and tongues and such

then DONE! and off to the UK and Ireland for me!

Glue-Free Hands

I spent most of the weekend with a good thick layer of glue on my hands...
It has finally washed off, so now my fingers won't stick to the keyboard. So, here's how the weekend went:

I got all the chip board and foam cut out for the mouths of Red, Yellow and Green, and glued them into their heads/bodies.














Blue dude got glued together fully. You can see all the pins I used to hold the seems closed as it was drying.














Then I added some boning (stuff they use in corsets, or strapless dresses) to add a bit more shape to him. It was glued on and held in place with pins while it dried.



















More Boning on the top of his head.














And a bit more boning on his front to flatten it a bit. Also added his face temporarily.



















Also...the pillow top i sewed for the green guy was actually a bit heavy. So i layered up some extra foam I had from cutting out the blue guy, and made a top of his head from that. Much lighter, so now he won't tip over.

Tomorrow a lot of stuff is getting done, and I'm going to do a few more things tonight as well. So expect a giant update coming sooooon!

Fabric Rainbow

Got the rest of the fabrics today...look how pretty they all are!




















Note...wearing black pants while working with faux fur results in a colourful mess!




















Right now I'm waiting for the blue one to dry after I contact cemented his seams closed. I have every pin I own holding them closed as he dries...and when I ran out of pins, I used electrical tape!
I'll have a bigger update tomorrow as a result of getting stuff prepared today.

Greenie, mouths, and tubes-a-plenty

Not an uber exciting update....
I did a bit more shaping on the green dude and made his eye blink rig:




















Then I started constructing the inside of the mouth out of foam which will be reinforced with chipboard later....















Not a great pic, but foam is tacked in there. I'm not totally sure if this is the right way to go about this, so after getting this far I quit, and started working on other stuff.















Other stuff included tubes out of scrap fabric for arms and legs.















I sewed a line across the tube for the elbow and knee joints. These tubes will later be covered in another tube of gray fleece...so that you don't see the joint so visibly.

Green guy underway

Today was all about the green dude.

He's only 3 pieces of foam high instead of 4 like the red guy.
Front view




















Side view




















The reason he has a flat top, is because he will have awesome yarn hair...so I made this pillow out of scrap fabric and stuffing to rest on top of his head. Then we can glue the yarn on top of the pillow.







































Now that I look at him...i might need to round him a bit more on the bottom. He's looking a bit too square-ish right now perhaps.

Blue Dude! My brain was broken by Math

So...we have a different technique for making the blue guy since he's the biggest/fattest...and making him out of a solid piece of foam would be costly, and more labour intensive to hollow out his insides.
Therefore...we got this flat sheet of 1 inch thick foam:















Using some math skillz, I drew out a rectangle on the foam. The length was what I wanted the final circumference of the dude to be. And the height of the rectangle was half the length.

Then I divided the length into 12 equal sections, and the height into 8 equal sections, thus-wise making a grid:















Then I found the midway point of the first column, and called it point "A" (half way was at 7.1 cm)















Then I put a mark "B" at half the height of the rectangle on the very left most edge.




















Then I tacked a string into point "A" and drew and arc slightly below point "B". I had to put some paper beside the foam to draw onto.




















Then I used the same length of string, and tacked it into point "B" and drew a similar arc. There are 2 points of intersection between these arcs.















I tacked string into the Left most intersection, and made a straight line through the 2nd one, and followed the string until it intersected the grid line that mark "B" is at (the line which marks half of the height)















The point where it intersected there is point "C".




















Then I tacked string at mark "C" and drew an arc at the left edge of the foam.That gave me the curve I needed to mirror in the 1st column, then repeated that curve into all 12 columns across the rectangle.















Then I cut it all out with an exacto knife.















Tada! Math skills at work! It's a globe shape.
Now at this point it's not glued together...I have T-pins holding it together to take this photo. I'll shave down slit-thingies on the top to make him more egg shaped rather than the rotund-globe-kinda flat in the middle shape it is now.




















But for tonight, blue guy can sit and chill with his buddies.