Time to skin the puppet! Sounds nasty but we are not taking it off, we are putting it on! I am using a piece of anti-pill fleece with a rather bright green color with some mottling. Not being sure how to approach this, I went ahead and placed a very small tack of hot glue on the center lower jaw and stuck the fleece to it. Then, I started wrapping the fleece around the edges of the jaw looking for lines and folds that I would like for the features. When I found something I liked,  a tiny spot of hot glue was used to tack the material down and then reinforced with some hand-sewing. I kept working this way till the lower jaw and body were done. The skull portion was a repeat of the process by starting with a glue tack, centrally, and then wrapping and stretching the fleece to get the desired effect.  A dart or two near the crown was employed to relieve the extra material buildup but other than that it was pretty much straight forward. I used very little glue and tried to hand sew as much as possible, tucking and pulling as I went along. I found out quickly that too much glue makes sewing impossible. You cannot push a needle through the set up glue very easily. So, the less the better, at this point. We want to be able to manipulate the features as much as we want and this may mean backing up a few steps. Clipping stitches beats cutting material loose from glue.

Two days later: I have found a very cool material remnant. It is a variegated purple shade with a very coarse weave and a bit of shagginess  going for it. I picked it up thinking it would make a good skin for the back.  I cut a piece out of the remnant about 12 x 20 inches and draped it loosely over the back of the puppet.  Bulldog clips were used to hold the materials in place while the hand-sewing was done.

Two days later: I am not very satisfied with look of the back piece.  Because of its stark contrasting color and texture, it looks more like an overcoat than a section of skin. So off it comes!! As no glue was used, removing the piece was as easy as just cutting stitches.  I then replaced it with a dark brown fleece that I had originally bought for this. Not only does it look better but also looks like it belongs for the material texture match.  Not much of a surprise really, as I had matched these different colors of fleece together initially for the different parts. So what happened? Beats me. Having a plan and sticking to it is a lot easier said than done and everything we do can be changed on the fly.

Two days later: Terrance is starting to take on a life of his own and is beginning to dictate his looks. I am now making a hairpiece to decorate the top of his green dome.  Looking for more remnants and supplies, I found some very cool yarn in the bargain bin at a local craft/sewing center.  It immediately attracted my eye for it was also a variegated purple with a slightly fluffy texture and very soft to the touch. I realized then that Terrance was going to have long flowing locks. The yarn was cut into lengths ranging around the 32 to 36 inch mark.

The piece of material that I had used as skin for the back and then removed has a very open weave much  like the material that you would use for hooking rugs.  Placing it on top of the head, I cut a rough triangular piece to follow over the top of the skull with some extra length so that it could be tucked into the body at the back.  Using a crochet hook, I weaved the yarn through the material.  Basically, the yarn was pulled down through one hole and then up through another. I then evened the lengths and knotted the yarn down to the backing material. The slight shag of the backing material blends all this well out of sight. I passed a length of yarn through approximately every fifth hole on every third row until I had the amount of hair that I wanted for the top of the head.

I ran a small stripe of hot glue centrally on the skull and pressed the hairpiece into that.  A tight running stitch along the edge achieved a raised look where the hair meets the skull.  I am really pleased as this looks great and integrates well with the head.  Shaking the puppets head around, the hair looks great as it is flys about. This hair piece process was completed over the course of three evenings.

Next time: We finish up with lips, fingers and eyes.

February 7, 2009, Providence, Rhode Island TempleCon, now having completed its fourth incarnation, is a gaming festival, a social celebration and basically a three-day party.  They got continuous gaming, live music, and this year some live performances…. cabaret style!!!  Ameena was one of several performers scheduled for the mid afternoon diversion special performance.

We arrived Saturday morning and were quickly greeted by the sight of crowds of people gaming literally everywhere from the second to fourth floors.  They were in the halls, on the stairs, in the ballrooms and in little out-of-the-way niches. I’m not sure but I thought I even heard some rustling of dice in the bathrooms. Gamers are a crazed lot.

The Biltmore Hotel (1922) is beautiful old building with much of its architecture and detailing still intact, a perfect atmosphere for the steampunk aesthetic. The live performances were excellent and went over quite well with the crowds. This convention is growing year by year and boasts some really great artwork, authors, vendors, and continuous gaming of almost any genre you could possibly think of.  I look forward to going again next year when I’m going to take a nap beforehand so I can get in on one of those two o’clock in the morning Cthulhu rampage games!

I am going to be gluing the cloth neck tube today. This is the piece of material that your arm will be closest to. The body of the puppet will be placed over this. The neck piece is 17 inches long and 18 inches for the width about the skull. The material is an anti-pill fleece sewn into tube shape on a sewing machine. It is going to be connected at the bottom of the body and not at the shoulders.  The reasoning being that if it is connected at the shoulders the range of motion that you will get with turning the head will be severely limited.  If it is connected at the base of the body then in essence you are turning a tube within a bigger tube. The color of the material might also coincide with the color of the head so that when it’s all put together is not apparent that the head and neck are actually separate.
I started with the hot glue at the top hinge of the back of the mouth and then up and around the back of the skull to the other side. After that set, I hiked the material up about the lower jaw edges and cut a very small hole for the thumb passage.  I then helped some of the material into the lower jaw and over the thumb tube and hot glued it all down. Sounds confusing? It’s not. You will find your own way around these areas if you take time and care by checking fabric placement before gluing.

Next day: Now for the body.  I measured from my wrist to the elbow and got about 9 inches.  So I took a 9 x 16 x 1 inch piece of foam and glued into the shape of a tube.  The tube felt quite tight on my arm, much more so than I expected.  So I inserted 6 inches more foam to the width.  This makes the overall length of the foam 9 x 22 x 1 inch.  I then cut Y- shapes at the quarter marks of the piece to relieve the tension. Now the body is big. Really big.  A lot more than I want.  I’m going to have to rethink the body shape while still keeping the multiple arm elements that I have in my sketch.  The jaw was reworked again to relieve a very baggy corner on the left side. Basically, I took out a dart of foam with the electric knife and hot glued the cut back together.

Later: I have been thinking about the body shape for the last couple of days and opted to ditch a new design in favor of trying to do the simple basic shape again but this time with a half-inch foam.  This turned out successful.  I started with an approximate 18 inch long piece of foam 9 inches high which I glued into a tube that fit nicely on my arm this time. The thickness of the foam was the key.
Next time: Skin and hair!

Manuela has been invited to dance at a local convention called TempleCon and the motif is steampunk.  She asked me to create a bustle for the outfit she had in mind.  So, we started digging into the piles of material that seemed to have accrued in the house and we did indeed find something that had great texture, some sheen and folded well.  I then went out onto the web and looked at bustles.  What information I could find was either you got to pay me to tell you, that there was no real way to do it or that there was actually a very specific way to do it.  Paying you to tell me ain’t working for me and the specific way was in an old book from the late 1800’s that I was going to be unable to get.  The not so specific way seem to be a matter of folding things and arranging them till you got what you wanted.  Sounds like a plan to me.

The piece of material that I had to work with could have been a bit longer.  Initially, I cut the length into thirds and then worked each tier individually connecting them all at the waist.  The clothing dummy that I had built earlier in the year was indispensable to this process.  As you can see from the pictures, I pinned the first piece of material to the waist and then started pulling from the bottom up trying to discern a process to follow.  With each try, I recorded what I did with drawings in a very step-by-step manner.  It didn’t take too much foresight to realize that I would eventually find something I really liked but unless I recorded it somehow, there was no way I was going to be able to do it twice.  On the fifth try, I got the first tier of the bustle process together.  I then took the folds apart, followed the drawings and sewed it back together step-by-step with small tacks of thread to hold the folds in place.

The second tier was simply a repeat of the process.  The third and fourth tier are actually one piece of material folded over so that the third tier falls short of the length of the fourth tier.  These two tiers were actually folded inward as opposed to outward.  Again each step of the process was drawn on paper and when I found what I wanted, I simply followed the instructions.

I have done some other work and alterations on the entire costume and Manuela will be using it this Saturday coming.  We shall see how it goes!

     I have recently was contacted by the Nelson Provincial Museum in New Zealand.  They wanted to use an illustration of Woolungosaurus glendowerensis that I had done a while back for an exhibit called New Zealand Fossils Dead Precious.  The exhibition itself will be running from May to September of 2009.  Below is the exhibition flyer.

Caution Note: An electric knife is made to carve meat. This is exactly what we are.  As I’m carving foam in smaller and smaller sections while holding onto it, I am beginning to envision fingers jumping about in front of my eyes but they’re not attached to my bones anymore.  I haven’t cut myself yet but it’s unnerving to think what this machine could do.  Take especial care with it.

So for the head shape, I took a piece of foam and wrapped it around the perimeter of the jaw to see how much I would need. Using an electric knife, I cut off a generous piece of foam and just started hot gluing it to the edge. Darts were placed to help shape the form as I went along. This is really more spontaneous than I would have thought. You have a general direction but no directions so you cut and test the shape by pinching the pieces together. If you like what you see, hot glue it. If not, cut some more. Try a wider cut to bring the shape in dramatically. Slight removals of foam make for more subtler changes. Just cut and glue and see where it takes you. If you take out to much then simply glue back in a nice sized piece and keep on going. Modify till happy with what you see. Pictures below will explain more. Also, note the shapes of the foam debris on the table and you can see what size and shapes I am removing to accomplish my goal.

The next day and I am not real happy with the head shape.  It is too high in the back and needs to slope once past the eyes as per the sketch.  So a few darts here and there and its shape is much better.

Following day: the thumb tube has been re-situated.  I found that thumb placement should be more in the position of your thumb resting under your index finger for comfort.  When trying for placement with just the mouth flaps, you tend to place your thumb centrally to hold the flap up so it doesn’t fall out of your hand.  Then you mark that and glue it.  Once the head is on and you start to work the mouth, you begin to feel the stress from the bad positioning.

The back of the head piece has to be shortened again to accommodate the extreme range of the mouth opening.  I am unable to extend the mouth completely as I would like because the back of the skull is in the way. When I open my hand all the way up it connects with the back of my wrist. So the head is reshaped once again with darts and hot glue. Corrections are easy and quick and testing as you move along in the process is essential at every change.