Building Puppets Progression

Puppets is something that I am still new to now and this year I decided to develop my skills in this so that I could practice making some other puppets over the Summer, knowing the materials needed and the best method. Even though I don't want to be a puppet maker, I still want nice puppets for my future animations!

This was this first puppet I had made in first year. As my first ever puppet it wasn't too bad, however the arms were way to bulky and she was completely off balance!



I wanted to try plasticine again, just because it's fun to mould and animate with so I made this character for my COP2.



This character was a much better puppet and I kept him super simple so that he was easy to animate. I wanted him to look a little rough and not completely perfect, which is why I left fingerprints on him, as the message was the imperfections of stop-motion.

I also learnt a new method of puppet making! Felting.



Needlefelting was completely new to me but I really wanted to try it as I loved the effect and I was really inspired after seeing 'Oh Willy'. I have made two puppets in this method now as I like it so much! It's actually really simple, but it looks really refined and effective in animation. I had the issue of it possibly boiling in animation, however if you trim the puppet with scissors before animating this helps keep the stray hairs down.



My future plans for making puppets is to possibly make a human character next and try making some costumes and see how I can progress in that side of puppet building as I have so far only made characters that have no clothes.