Taking Shape

The little guy has now begin to take shape. I first made a prototype of him from aluminium wire and oil-based clay just to get some ideas of how he will look like and the limitations of his movements.

Later on the week I went and meet with David Morgan, a studio technician here at ECUAD who are extremely knowledgeable about puppet making. I learned from him that there are MANY methods in making a puppet, in which the load of information is quite overwhelming. First and foremost is knowing what you want, so a pre-visualization of how the puppet's appearance is and how it's going to move is crucial in deciding what method you are going to use to create the puppet. From all the options David has told me I boiled them down to two stages:

1. Making your original: In order for me to go any further I must have my original model. And the best thing to do is to create two types of model, one hard and rigid for making soft mold and one pliable for making hard mold. It's good to have both options just in case you want different types of puppets for different scene. for instance, I can make rubbery puppets from my hard mold for scenes that he got stretches or make a sturdy puppet with replacement parts to retain his proportions. 

Here are all the materials am using to make both of my models.
- Pliable silver frame wire, 32 feet.

- Air-dried sculpting clay

- Oil-based modeling clay

- Ice-cream sticks
- Tape

- Styrofoam Spheres

Let's start with the hard model. Since this model doesn't have to move, the structure is built from ice-cream sticks, tape and styrofoam. The exterior is covered with air-dried clay. I simply rough out his outline and work to towards achieving a 3D sculpture from his 2D design. 

I probably have to spray him with protective spray or brush him with modge podge so that he won't break during the process of making the mold. I especially worried about his hand.

Hopefully by this Wednesday the 23rd a complete puppet will be finished.

Lastly, I found an incredible sight as my resource: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAMARU_380r9WmECHunDhcA
Almost everything I need to know.