How To Make A Puppet

Found a great article on puppet making:


Here you can see the entire armature. I'm afraid I didn't get any more close-up pics before I fleshed him out though. But you can sort of see how I did it... basically I just laid the wires side by side, then I slathered them up real good with some Barge cement (a very strong flexible contact cement used for bonding the soles onto shoes) and then wrapped around and around it with some extra-thick silk thread- as per Tennessee Norton's suggestion. Silk is by far the strongest thread available. It comes in 50 weight and 100 weight. The 50wt is actually the thicker stuff! Why do they have to go backwards like that, the same as with wire guages! AARRGGGGHHH!!!!

Now... here's an important point that I want to emphasise... and this is true whether you're twisting your wires or not. You want the various limbs/spine/neck etc to be integrated into each other in as organic a fashion as possible. What I mean is that each one should be firmly rooted into every other limb near it. Hmmm... it's hard to put into words... I need to draw up a quick diagram and post it. But I'll try to explain-

Each arm is three wires. So, rather than all 3 just going straight across to become the opposite arm, which would result in loose sloppy construction, I ran one straight across, one down to become part of the spine, and one up into the neck. Once you've done this for both arms, You now have the spine/neck nearly finished... there are 2 wires there already. So I just ran one more all the way through, from the head down to the tailbone. Two of the spine wires extended on to become leg wires. I ran one more from foot to foot, pretty much completing the armature. Actually, I wanted the legs a little stronger, so that's why you see 4 wires there instead of just three (but it was easier to explain it with just the three).

In order to hold these wires together before I could start gluing them up and wrapping with silk thread, I used some wire ties from bread wrappers that I always save and find all kinds of uses for. I started by laying a wire down on a full sized sketch of the puppet that shows me the proportions. This is the first time I tried building the armature on a drawing, and it helps immensely! Until I tried this, i couldn't get my proportions the way i wanted them.

I started with one arm, laid all 3 wires out, bending one up and one down and leaving them extra-long to work into the rest of the armature, and as i said, one went straight across. It was kind of tricky for a while, but by tying things together with the wire ties, i was able to tame the unweildy beast and get it done one limb at a time. I got each limb glued and wrapped before proceeding on to the next, so it began to hold together after a while.

Now it's also very important that you have your epoxy putty blocks large enough that they solidly hold the wires. I made my shoulder block go just about all the way from shoulder to shoulder, and far enough up and down to lock those wires in place so they can't jiggle at all... otherwise you'll run into problems. Of course, before getting to the epoxy putty part, I very securely glued things together at these juncture points and wrapped tightly with plenty of thread. In factr, now that I think back, I used 2 full layers of thread on all the limbsd, and a little extra to secure the chest and pelvis areas together.

Here he is all foamed up:


Found a great article on puppet making:


I think the fact that the wires are wrapped with 2 layers of thread as well as the rubbery glue helps to protect them from bending too sharply right at the edge of the epoxy putty blocks. I considered also putting a gob of hot glue at each point where the wires emerge from the blocks to make it a little less flexible there, but ended up not doing that.

Ok, about the foam. I just have an old sofa cushion that I'm cutting up.... there's probably enough foam in there to make a hundred puppets! You could probably pick up a cushion at a local shop or something. For glueing it I'm using the Barge. It's available at Ace hardware stores (not sure where you are, or if they have Ace stores there). You can also get it online through www.burmanfoam.com or just do a web search. You might also be able to get away with using some fabri-tac glue, though it's not as strong as the Barge. I know Nick H uses regular spray adhesive to bond foam with... the 3M kind you get in the spray cans. I was thinking about maybe trying to sew it in place, but not sure how well that would work... just a possible alternative.

For shaping the foam, I start by poking a shish-kebob skewer through a block of it and then start shaping with scissors. I use big sharp scissors for basic shaping and then switch to some tiny ones I bought from Micro-mark for detail shaping. The skewer shows me where the center hole is as i work. That way I end up with a foam 'sleeve' that i can just pull on over an arm or leg. I don't glue the limb pieces on, or the neck either. They're just pulled on over the wrapped wire (the ribbing of the thread sort of holds them in place) and then I glue the torso piece on. It has plenty of glue on it, and the edges of it overlap each of the limbs anyway, so that's enough to hold them. The torso block is just one long pice that i fold in half over the shoulders. You have to slit it down the front first and make a little cut-out to fit around the neck, so it's sort of like a vest.

Here's an online dealer of polyfoam: https://garysupholstery.com/index.html

I know you didn't really ask about this, but I'm on a roll here-

I've found that stretch fabric works very well for making clothes. It's MUCH more forgiving than non-stretch fabric. The way I made the suit for my Buster puppet was by stitching it together inside-out right on the puppet and then peeling it off so it turns itself right side out. Sleeves first... simple tubes that I made a little tight so they actually compress the foam a bit. After stitching it up, trim off as much excess fabric as you can, but be careful not to cut TOO close or you'll cut through the stitching and need to repair it... I did that on one shoulder and it was a bee-yotch to fix! I'm learning to pay extra close attention to the ends of stitches and areas where two stitches come together, like where the sleeves join the body or at the crotch. Reinforce as much as you can!! And make those stitches nice and small. I bought myself a nice little kit with a lot of little spools of thread in a rainbow of colors so I have just about any color I need. And I'm making the clothes very simple... none of this fancy-schmancy tailoring or anything.... the pants are just one piece of cloth, and the jacket believe it or not is only 3! Next time I'll use a few more pieces for a jacket though... I ran into some problems just trying to use a single piece for the body.

Just to throw out a few alternate ideas, I remember Misha said he sometimes buys stuffed animals or dolls to scavenge parts of the clothing. He might have said for the skins actually, but it made me realize you could get them for the clothing. Might be hard to find a perfect fit though,,, probably best to do this for accessories rather than actual articles of clothing.

And the method I used to use... making clothes from gloves. I have more info in my simple puppetmaking tutorial: http://www.darkstrider.net/puppet_tut.html . If you search the net, there are a lot of places where you can buy plain white cotton "inspection gloves", that take acrylic paint really well. And of course there are other styles that will work too. For the size I tend to work in, the fingers are a good fit girthwise, but tend to be a bit short for sleeves and pant-legs. Maybe design puppets to fit them?

Ok, faces. Now we're getting into unexplored territory for me, as I haven't done this yet, but I've been thinking about it and taking a little from here and a little from there of what I've read about various productions.

One thing I'm thinking is to make a head basically just like the way your pig head looks- only from a hardening clay rather than plasticene- with no mouth, and then make some replacement mouths to stick on. If there's no dialogue you don't need as many... maybe just a few expression changes. Or maybe one mouth made similarly to a replacement mouth, but from latex with a wire running through the lips so you can bend it... and maybe make a few different teeth-plates to put behind it for when it opens to different degrees. Eyes could be replacements or beads set into the head that you turn with a needle and make lids from plasticene. Eyebrows could be pipe cleaners sticking out of the forehead or maybe replacement pieces stuck on with a little wax. If you want more movement than that, then you'd probably have to go with foam latex.