New Puppet; Working Progress

 A new puppet! Headless, handless and footless at the moment...

Inside the body is a simple wire armature to allow the limbs to bend, in case I decide to try and animate the puppet.

I hope to add a lot more detail to the body, like a pocket watch to make it more interesting!

The body turned out to be a bit of an odd shape; from the side view it's a bit like Lurch from the Addams family! But I think it adds more character! :D

Also the shirt collar is really high so it's head is going to be really weird looking!!

 

I was originally going to make a new head for this puppet but I've decided to re-use one I already have...who was never given a body!

I think the expression works really well with the sort of personality I want the puppet to have.

Next steps: Attach the head and give him some hands an feet the poor sod..

I'm going to come up with some concept sketches for an illustration; I really want to create a small set to photograph him in made from old, found objects so will look into that.

After that I might try a bit of animation :)

Animation Experiment

Here is a quick animation experiment I did this afternoon using one of my own puppets! It's not the best, I'm not really an animator, just wanted to make my work come to life :) 

It was interesting to learn how different materials would need to be used in order to make a puppet for animation. This puppet was made of quite sturdy wire so was fairly difficult to move the way I wanted it to. Also I had to tie a piece of string to his head to help him walk as he is too top heavy and wouldn't stand alone!

I used iStopmotion to produce this, which I'm loving at the moment..it's so easy to use and great to make smoother animation as you can select the frame rate.