PUPPETS
Click on a photo below to learn more.
Mother Puppet
The 'Mother' puppet was made for the stop motion short One For Sorrow. The basic armature was provided for us by a friend and my job was to pad out the puppet and sculpt the body. I started by creating the hip and chest pieces out of balsa wood for something for the animators to hold onto. I then attached foam around the whole body and cut away to sculpt her body.
The Mother's hands were created in silicone, using a moulding and casting technique. The Mother's head was sculpted out of a polymer clay. Due to COVID-19, the film stopped production, meaning that the puppet never had a finished head.
Magpie Puppet
The 'Magpie' puppet was made for the stop motion short One For Sorrow. I began with a simple wire test armature which I then expanded on to create the final armature, made of wire and milliput. The parts of the puppet were removable as I wanted to make it easier to replace if parts were broken through animating.
The wings were the most complicated part as they had to be fully functional. I achieved this by using thin wire pieces to create the skeleton of the wings. I then covered these in material in order for the feathers to have something to hold onto. The body of the puppet was felted and the feet wrapped in embroidery thread.
Girl Puppet
The 'Girl' puppet was made for the stop motion short One For Sorrow. Using an Aardman armature kit, I put together the armature for this puppet. As the kit was made for an adult puppet, I had to alter parts of it to make it smaller, which meant shortening the threaded bars and decreasing the size of the hip piece. As well as this, the foot piece that was provided was too large so I made my own.
Like the Mother puppet, the girls head was made from polymer clay, with removable eyebrows and eyeballs that moved within her head. Her hands were also made from silicone.
Idris Puppet
The 'Idris' puppet was part of a freelance project where I designed and built a puppet not being used in a particular film. The inspiration for this puppet came from the Cadair Idris mountain in Wales, which translates as "Chair of Idris". I started with a drawing of the puppet which I then recreated with a maquette. This better helped me to design the puppet armature, which was made from wire and polymorph. As the myth was based in nature, I wanted the body of the puppet to look as if if had been carved from the trees so I used insulation pipes to create this effect. I also wanted to stay true to Welsh mythology by having the dragon head, which was made from polymer clay.
