Another short post: After a few weeks of sickness in the house (I LOVE flu season...) I can now continue work on the Wood Elf puppet (and client puppets as well). I wanted the Wood Elf's wardrobe to scream "forest" so I came up with the idea to create vest that looked like it was made of leaves. I created an initial template for the vest itself, then made the vest base out of dark green felt. Afterwards I layered on a ton of different colored leaves that were also made out of felt.
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With the giveaway over, I can now focus on the elf character for "Beyond the Trees." I decided to machine sew his arms in order to give him a cleaner look (I'll still pick the seams). I left an opening in the hand so I could stuff the foam/wire hand inside. I also gave him very large, stylized elf ears. You can see in the second picture that I layered the ears (then smoothed out the shape using scissors) to give the ear an ridge. Hopefully things will start to move quickly!
Just a quick, pictorial update on the giveaway puppet. It didn't originally start as a rabbit. Truthfully, I had no real plan for this puppet. But as I went, it began to lean more towards an animal, and then a rabbit. As with all my puppets, the head and neck are separate from the body to give the head more movement. This is a very simple, small puppet that will be good for beginners. I included some closeup shots (you can see that I swapped out his black dots for whiskers) to show that just by adding some design flourishes, it is easy to make a very simple design stand out; you don't always have to have a complex shape. Anyway, be on the lookout on my Facebook page for a chance to win this little guy!
So, by now, hopefully you know that I am working on 2 puppets at once. 1 special puppet and 1 puppet that will be a part of a free giveaway as soon as it is finished. So when I update this blog, there will pieces of both being documented, not just one at a time.
History lesson: Jim Henson figured out that if you stitch the puppet a certain way, using a certain material, then take a needle and pull the fibers away from the seam ("picking the seam"), the seam will almost disappear. In the first picture you can see the results: the bottom half of the face has been picked, and the top hasn't. The second picture is a concept for the logo of the "super secret project." That's all I can say about that haha! In the last picture I wanted to show you how simple it is to make really nice puppet eyes. These particular eyes are made of nothing more than a ping pong ball that has been cut in half. A lot of people use felt circles for the pupils, but I like using solid black doll eyes because it gives the eyes a little more dimension. |
Jesse Moorein this blog you'll get a small glimpse into what goes into the puppets I design and create. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. Enjoy! Archives
May 2024
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