My journey creating and producing puppetry... trials, tribulations, inspiration and contemplation.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Down & Dirty Dog Puppet

I took Matt Ficner's puppet building workshop in Spring of 2009. It's been well over a year since I began building my own puppet using what I learned in Matt's workshop and I have FINALLY finished it. The foam head base was built last year after I knew my 9-5 job was going to be outsourced. The puppet was one of those projects I kept putting off until the job ended. It finally came to pass this October and, slowly, the puppet muse crept back in and before you know it, fur was flying and I was slinging the hot-glue gun once more. As a graphic designer, there's nothing I like more than what we call "down and dirty tricks" - simple tricks to get a job done. Matt's method to puppet making was a great crash-course in "down and dirty" puppet making. I had a lot of fun watching this guy take shape and finally come to life. The ears are pose-able with a built-in wire armature. The nose was sculpted from light-weight sculpey clay and its wet-like sheen was created with stain glass paint. Following are a full body view, head close-up and ear span images.



4 comments:

Unknown said...

I absolutely LOVE this puppet. Great job!

Margaret
www.talkinghand.net

David said...

Thank you Margaret! Much appreciated coming from a fellow puppeteer.

Matt said...

I'm working on a mouse puppet and am curious how you constructed the nose/mouth piece of your puppet. I feel like a similar idea could be applied to my mouse! Thanks!

David said...

Hey Matt! The method I was taught can be seen a little better in this other post here: http://puppetmuse.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-beginning-and-russ-walko-creation.html

Basically, the mouth-plate was built upon by the foam pieces and then covered with fabric. I found that the longer mouth/snout for the dog was a little unwieldy so, I would definitely recommend keeping it short. In this method, I also did it how Matt Ficner originally showed by cutting a black sock at the end and glueing either half to the top and bottom of the mouth plate to allow as a sleeve and grip. You could probably make a grip of your own without the sock as well. Hope that helps!