Grimpen is a relatively large puppet with a reasonable amount of weight.  I decided to put a removable rod into him. This will help with holding the arm up and provide more precise mouth movement.  The trade off  is that some of the frenetic things you can do with a hand puppet are lost to the stiffness of the rod. Making the rod removable gives me the best of both worlds.

Some general notations:

The rod had to be customized to Grimpen’s anatomy.

The hinge for the bottom jaw was way too small so I enlarged it with a piece of aluminum from my scrap box. The aluminum piece was originally one of those struts that snaps onto a rail and a bunch of them in a row gives you a place to put a shelf. Application of a hacksaw and files turned the strut into a longer, wider, lightweight jaw which was bolted to the hinge itself.

The springs are from those cheapo desks  lamps. You know , the ones that extend and can be tightened so the lamp can be placed anywhere. Horse hockey!! They don’t work worth a damn but there are 6-8 springs on some of them!

After having  seen a few variations of mouth works,  I decided on my own version after a bit of  experimentation. My first forays were with dowel rods which I found were not the way to go for me.  The wood was too soft, split easily and did not stand up to experimentation whatsoever. I also learned that attaching flat surfaces to rounded forms is simply making things harder than they need to be. Note in the pictures the beat up hinge that is attached to the rod.  This is the effect of trying to put a flat surface on a round one.

The wood is a left over scrap from a threshold project I did on the house.   It is a piece of red oak, measuring roughly 3/4 of an inch on each side and cut to 18 inches long. The piece I cut off was again cut to a length of about 6  inches and placed in a vice.  I rounded the top with a  chisel and judicial hand pressure. I want it round and smooth here so the spring can ride smoothly over this area.

Working with red oak is really nice. You can drill it repetitively and not worry about splitting. It responds to metal working tools like rasps and files admirably and generally does not cost all that much more than much less desirable woods.

Through the pictures you will note small holes drilled all over. These were holes for the eye screws for the spring as I tested various placements for optimum tension of the spring and still fit within the puppet. Do this with a softer wood and soon you will have nothing but splinters.

In the end, I found that the optimum spring location for this particular puppet had the spring starting at the bottom jaw hinge, traveling up and over the top mouth support and then back down to the hinge itself.  There is no right or wrong way. Just ways that work better than others.

The rod was secured, internally, with a rope that passes through Grimpen’s lower jaw. This keeps the rod where it needs to be to work best and makes it removable within a few knots.

Onward with the pictures!

Good grief! Time is just screaming along and it is now October. In the past month, I have managed to become a grandfather, lay a new kitchen floor, install the baseboard and repaint the kitchen, bum around with Mick on her vacation, pop a rib while sword fighting with one my vastly superior mates, exhibit my amazing clumsiness by crushing my left my foot against an immovable object and just most recently bring the Great Grimpen Mire onto this plane of existence. There are of course a few dozen assundries that happened but these seem to be the memorable highlights.

Grimpen and Terrance’s will be performing a skit together at the ODDITORIUM, Friday, October 9th in Cambridge. If you in the area come by and see us! We will be doing a recital of the Duckling from Dorset, A Cautionary Whimsy.

Grimpen was once a famous literary character. There are two clues in this post. Wonder if anyone might know who he really is……

Today is the last entry, hooray! So the lips first. After determining how long the lip line was, I cut some fleece into the shape of a flattened oval. It was then rolled up and a quick stitch applied to hold the general shape. The tapered shape helps the material from getting too bulky at the ends. These ends were tucked into wrinkles at the corners of the mouth and then I carefully hot glued the rest to the edge of the mouth.  It looked pretty good but  it was pulling away from the face more than I wanted  so I decided to stitch the lip to the skull.  A straight needle was not going to do for this area and curved upholstery needles were just way too large.  I took a few needles and heated them up with a torch and bent them around a piece of small  copper pipe.  I then sharpened them ends on a stone because the points were quite dull.  They worked fairly well and I managed to stitch both lips down.  Some research on the web showed that they do make small curved needles for quilting so I will have to look into those.

Arms were created by folding the material over on itself and sketching in a basic arm shape with a marker.  I then followed the lines on the sewing machine.  The arms were inverted with the help of some surgical snaps to pull through the fingers. I then made an extra hand with a lot of long fingers, inverted it and then cut the fingers off.  These are to be my thumbs and strange bits of bumps sticking out all over the place.  Small slices were placed in the palms, the fingers were pushed through so they stuck out of the slice and machine stitches were run across the palms to hold everything in place.  Some oval shapes were then cut from the fleece and cross shaped cuts were placed in the center of those.  The arms ends were inserted into those cross shaped cuts. The end flaps of the arms were sewn to the bottom face of the oval shapes.  Then these were hand-sewn to the body.

The eyes: one of them is a ballistic ball and the other is a ping-pong ball.  They were painted with acrylics to go along with the overall color scheme and texture.  When I had initially made the skull, I figured out where the eyes were going to rest.  I had removed foam from that area because I wanted the eyes to be sunken into the form and not just sit on top.  I cut out small circles of the fleece where these recesses where at and clipped the edges of the fleece to relieve tension.  I kept flipping back until the eye rested easily in the socket and then they were hot glued down. The eyes were hot glued down so that the pupils are slightly crossed thus giving the illusion that the puppet is actually looking at you.  If the eyes are  parallel then the effect is just the opposite.

So that is it. Fini. This series of entries is not intended as a tutorial but to demonstrate how one process was done.  A lot of what was in my notes and sketches was abandoned as chaff and dead ends of experimentation. Most of what I have wrote is the condensation of what was left. You should, of course, explore your own methods and if anything I’ve done here helps you in your efforts, then terrific!

So Terrance is done! Here are his pictures.  I am hoping to make a small one or two minute video of a quick skit so we can see how he moves.  Any comments or suggestions, please let me know: )

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.

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!

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.

Finger tubes provide a place for your fingers to rest in the same position all the time. Their function is to increase the amount of control that you have over the mouth of the puppet.

The foam was bought at a local sewing/craft store. It is pricey so look for a sale. The section I got is 30 inches by 4 feet. The index finger tube was a piece of foam 0.5” by 4″ x 5″. The middle finger was a 0.5“ by 4” by 5.5”.  The thumb was 0.5″ x 4″ x 5.5″. I applied hot glue to one edge of the foam rectangle and then simply rolled it up on itself so that the glue at the edge contacted. Once cooled, I then placed the tubes onto my fingers and trimmed them to the size of my fingers. With the finger tubes on my fingers, I put the mouth flap in my hand.  I then marked on the back of the mouth flap with a pen where the tubes rested.  I then tacked down the finger tubes with hot glue being sure that the tubes were aligned with the marks.  At this point, it is important to put your fingers in the tubes and work the mouth.  It should feel comfortable, your wrist should not feel strained and it should not take a lot of effort to open and close the mouth.

If all feels well, then reinforce with the hot glue all along the edges until they are well mounted.  I then covered the tubes with a layer of Sculpt or Coat and placed linen strips over that. More sculpt or coat was worked in to be sure to bind the linen to the tubes.  The thumb tube had to be altered by cutting away at its proximal end.  There was too much foam and it was restricting the range of motion of the thumb which in turn affects how wide the mouth will open.  This was not noticeable when initially checking for finger positioning with the flap in my hand because my fingers were not actually attached to the flap so as you open and close the flap your thumb moves about. Something to watch out for.

The 1 inch overlap of linen that was not glued down when initially making the mouth comes into play now.  Once the linen that had been measured and placed over the finger tubes had dried, the overlaps were wrapped over and glued down with sculpt or coat. Throughout this process, this 1 inch flap helped to protect the felt inside the mouth from getting all covered with glue or sculpt or coat.

Stitch Test: Taking two pieces of foam, regular sewing thread was passed through with a large curved upholstery needle.  Taking a good half-inch bite through each piece proved that they held together fairly well.  A stronger waxed thread would be more ideal.  This might be a good idea for reinforcing areas.  Note that pulling the thread tightly causes puckers and lifts a line of pulled tight foam so this is might be used for slight deformation under a cloth skin.  Straight on top of foam it looks like Frankenstein stitching.

Next time: the head and modifications.

Caution: Hot glue is hot!  You can’t escape finger burns. They are part of the process.  However burning can be minimized by having a cup of water handy.  Before you apply the hot glue, dip your fingers in the water bowl. You are going to have to hold things together until the glue can set up and your fingers are going to come into contact with the hot glue.  Wet fingers mediate the burn.  Instead of crisping, your fingers just get warm.  Don’t worry if you forget this bit, you will remember when it’s time.

Also remember that during this entire process nothing is carved in stone. If it is too big, trim it. If it is too small , then add. Too weak? Reinforce. We are building a puppet, not a suspension bridge. If something does fall down, nothing dramatic will happen. Materials are going be lost to the creation gods but the trade off is in knowledge.

We begin with the mouth because it is the most structurally important part of the puppet. It will certainly be the most abused portion.  It is also the actual framework for the rest of the puppet as the head and body will be directly attached to the mouth. The mouth also dictates the general shape and size of the head, so we want to be sure to get it as close as we can to what we want for a shape and that it be flexible and strong.  I am using linen, an open weave material, that I had bought by the roll for other sewing projects.  I had previously done a small test with the linen and found that the Sculpt or Coat finds its way through the material easily enough.

I made a paper pattern in the general shape and size that I wanted for the mouth. Using the paper pattern as a template, I cut out the shapes from two ply Bristol board. I ended up with two pieces, top and bottom, which I corrected to suit to my exact needs before proceeding with the gluing. A black felt piece was flipped upside down and placed on the table.  The two mouthpieces were sprayed with glue (3M general-purpose 45)  and then placed down on top of the felt.  After trimming away the extra felt, the overlap was about a half-inch but I believe 1 inch overlap would have been better. Circular tension was relieved by clipping the felt around the edges but not up to the edge of the mouth shape itself.  The edges were folded over and hot glued down.

Again with the paper pattern, I cut out a linen piece with about a 1 inch overlap.  Using the spray glue , I attached this linen bridge to the back of the mouth pieces.  The overlap from the linen will be taken care of at a later stage.  For now what we should have is a linen surface on the back side and a felt surface on the inside.  The mouth was allowed to dry overnight into a roughly v-shaped position as if the puppet’s mouth was somewhat open.

Next time: finger tubes.

Welcome to Adventures in Puppet-Making 101!! This series of entries is based on notes I took during the process of creating my first industrial strength puppet.

The primary purpose of the notes is for future puppet projects.  With these notes, I will be able to make comparisons and improvements to the process and thus build better puppets.  I highly recommend making detailed notes for anyone doing any sort of creative process for the first time.  Documenting your progress, in one way or another, can only help to prevent a lot of error repetition on succeeding trials.  After a while notes, excepting for strange occurrences, are not even needed but for now I am learning so everything that is new to me gets written down. I assure you, you will not have to read everything I do write down as much of it is simply hashing out a working method.

I took photographs of this process and will post these along with the appropriate session.  Hopefully these will help to visualize what I am talking about. If you find something unclear, feel free to contact me and I will attempt a more lucid explanation.

Please note that there is an inevitable amount of burning from the hot glue gun along with the wonderfully delicious stabbing of thumbs and fingers by curved and straight needles. Sometimes learning can be painful.  So it could be that this process is not well suited for children that are looking to make a puppet.  Of course on the other hand, I could just be incredibly clumsy.

Throughout this you are going to hear me mention Sculpt or Coat. Sculpt or Coat is a product from sculpturalarts.com. It is a non-toxic plastic cream which creates a protective coating that helps to stop breakage and keeps foam pieces from drying out. It also prevents solvent-based paints from eating away at foam. Widely used in theatre arts.

Hot glue guns generally run around 400°F.  When it comes in contact with your flesh, it is going to cook.  However, this tool is indispensable.  I use the yellow glue sticks, as they form a stronger bond than the white sticks.  If you are thinking of using a low temperature glue gun you will find that 250°F is still going to burn you and your bonds will be weak in comparison to a high temperature gun.

My intention is to build a cloth covered puppet.