another cast!

last night i finished off the hand armatures and trimmed the wire fingers down to size and cut the excess off the bolt. im feeling confident about these hands, if it means i dont have to keep changing them i will be very happy, hope they animate well too.

once i had both hands ready i sandwiched each one between two pieces of memory foam and cut away at the foam until the hands sat nicely inside the mould. before i submerged the arms in silicone i removed the puppet and applied a thin layer of silicone inside both half's of the mould where the arms are. once this was dry i popped the puppet back in a applied more silicone and clamped down the two half's. 

more to come soon.

mix post, clothes and hands

the other day i started making the clothes for my boy puppet. i started by cutting the shapes for the body using this surgical sponge wrap. its quite good to drape over the puppet as it kind of sticks to its self and the surface of the puppet.

after cutting the material out using the template i started sewing the two half's together on the shoulders, i used a mattress seam stitch. this stitch pulls the two half's together instead of over-lapping the two half's creating an invisible seam.

but.............. before i could finish the clothes i noticed the wrists to the wire hands had yet again broken! so, i got fed up with unreliable wire hands and made these ball joint hands with wire fingers. i don't mind having wire for the fingers as they don't go through quite as much abuse.

i have wrapped some cotton around the two pieces of wire and glued the wire on one side of the plates using araldite the cotton helps the araldite bond to both the wire and the plate.

i quickly remade the hands because i realised the thumb was to high up the hand and looked more like another finger, i have glued the wire on as before but split it so one strand goes further down towards the wrist.

heres a quick pic of the puppet now with painted face, teeth and hair.

new test

today i thought i would do a quick test of my newly cast armature. i wanted to make sure the limbs would hold their own against the silicone and keep the positions i put them in.

i will try take the green screen out and remove the rig later, ill upload it when i do.

new cast

i finally got around to casting my armature. before i put the armature in the mould i padded it out with memory foam to fill some the the space in the mould, this will save on silicone and make the puppet more flexible. i also covered the joints in plumbers tape to stop the joints getting clogged. 

one thing i did notice is the silicone is a completely different colour, also the theory of the padding helping to make the puppet more flexible didn't really work. i think i need to pad it out a bit more, it doesn't have the movement i was hoping for. i have actually resprayed the faces and ordered a new spray so i hope it will match up.