The Trials of the Pumpkin Head (Building Jack Pt1)
Hey readers,
I am starting a brand new puppet adventure! I want to do a whole monster series of puppets to try out some new things I have learned, and try to do things I haven't done before.
I would like to do: a witch, a vampire, a zombie, a mummy, a scarecrow, a sea monster and a werewolf. Perhaps I was inspired by my time watching the Netflix original series (for children) Super Monsters. The world may never know. That is a lot of puppets so I am going to take them one at a time and work slowly.
I am starting with a scarecrow. I went looking around online for reference images. I had planned on doing a burlap looking face, but then I thought that a pumpkin head might be more visually interesting. It would also allow me to do several things I have never done with a puppet before. First, the eyes would be cut out of the head like a jack-o-lantern. I also wanted to make the teeth clearly part of the pumpkin rind, and not teeth in the jaw. Normally, my teeth are made from makeup sponges but these teeth are part of the sculpt. Lastly, I want to try intentionally sewing seams into the face to mimic the lines in a pumpkin. It will hopefully make for a cool design that is nothing like the kinds of puppets I have made before.
I went out and got myself a hefty stack of supplies for the first new creations. I was particularly excited for the sale of black velvet. I am excited by sales, what can I say. The orange will be my pumpkin face, the dark green is for stem and some accents, the black is for mouths, the line green is for the upcoming witch, and the sort of tie dyed looking beige is my approximation of burlap in puppet form. I also grabbed matching thread for each color. I don't have plans for sewing yet, but something tells me I will be happy about that later. I also got myself some new rubber cement and elastic. Pretty productive trip to the hobby store.
I even got into a fun conversation with the woman who was cutting my fabric. Picture it: I was number 80 and there was no number 77, 78, 79 or 81 in the vicinity, so we got to talking. She seemed cautiously optimistic that my puppet plans would prove fruitful. Here's hoping she slipped me some extra black velvet after I showed her pictures of Grizwald.
Mistake 1: My whole first head turned out to be a big mistake, so I will walk you through what the problems were now. I started by trying to make a pumpkin shape using the cuts I would make in the foam. There are many reasons this was a mistake. For one thing, I attempted to split my puppet face pattern up into beach ball like segments. In doing so it completely changed the mouth shape and the final product's mouth plate was impossibly small. My design looked good on paper though.
Notice the funky extra bits at the top of the points, the idea was that those could be turned inward to give my head an oblong shape. It sort of worked int he final product - actually it didn't. If I was counting all the individual ways this head didn't work, the mistake counter would be super high. I can't be certain (since I didn't get this far) but I also think this would have made sewing my pumpkin lines into the fabric difficult. Since the seam lines are weaker, trying to sew into them might have caused more issues. The head I wound up with is better, though more in line with my normal pattern. There are still lots of ways to make it unique that I want to try out.
The process for making a head is the same, even if my pattern wound up being less than stellar. First, use your pattern to cut out the parts of your head out of half inch foam. Using contact cement, glue along the edges you are planning to stick together. Your first instinct will be to then slap those parts together, get yourself a mimosa and celebrate completing the first step of your puppet build. Not so fast you plausible alcoholic. Contact cement sticks better if it is allowed to become tacky first. I wave the parts around in a silly fashion to expose the edges to as much air as I can, then push them together. I know it is ready if there are stringy bits when I try to pull the two bits of foam apart again. Then I use my pins to hold the seams shut. As you can see in the picture, your puppet head will look like a horror movie villain for a while.
Let it get completely dry, and then its time to carefully remove every pin. You don't want to stumble upon one later while shoving your hand up in the puppets neck so work carefully. I have never had this problem before, but several of my pins' heads detached from the pin in the process of removing it. My pins aren't the newest, but I have never had that issue. I suspect more glue managed to get on the pins then other times, but regardless, I grabbed from pliers from a previous bead working project and got them free.
Now for something new. Mouth plate's are super important in giving your puppet's mouth structure. I have always used foam core board because that is what I saw in an early tutorial I watched. I think it works well, but I know that isn't great for long term use. The material gets flimsy, and with the heat inside a puppet it can become damaged from sweaty hands. After watching Adam Kreutinger's puppet mouth plate tutorial, I wanted to give his method a try. He uses sheets of plastic! I had bought a big white bin for storing all the fabric for this project, and for harvesting the lid for plastic mouth plates.
Since I already gave you spoilers that the first head does not wind up working out well, I am going to move forward to the mouth plate on the final head. I wound up using a more traditional puppet head pattern. Adam has some great ones on his website, but there are also some great patterns on Pinterest. I looked a few pictures and made my own patterns that I use for all my "standard heads."
Anyway, once I have the new head made, I start by curb stomping my puppet. Not really, but sorta. I position my puppet head at the edge of the table and then trace the mouth shape onto the paper. I have done more pointed mouths at this point by manipulating the foam. Since the plate will be the firmest part of the final structure, you can use it to make some pretty drastic head shape changes. For a pumpkin, I let the foam sit naturally. I marked where the teeth were so that my plate could go around them. This is not normally needed since your teeth aren't attached like this. Clearly I am just making things complicated now. Fold the mouth plates in half to cut them symmetrically, then do a quick fit test to be sure you didn't just ruin your work by trying to be a even and symmetrical like.
I traced the pattern onto my plastic bin and carefully cut it out with a razor. Then I covered it all in black duct tape (to be sure no white shows through the black velvet) and began sewing elastic to form grips. I used my awl from the book project, but then I discovered that my needle could get through the plastic without pre-pressing holes. I used my pliers to pull the needle in and out. I chose to sew channels into the elastic for each finger (as Adam did), but I had created similar things with just a bar of elastic to go over all your fingers. It isn't as secure but it does the job.Notice that I put hot glue along the stitching to make sure it didn't move, and on the other side put another piece of duct tape.
The head is nearly done! I attach the two plates together with duct tape - leaving a small amount of space to allow them to bend freely, then hot glue them right into the puppet mouth.
Tada, a puppet head! Check to make sure it feels comfortable and that everything is bending appropriately. If it is not, better to fix it now! Obviously, I had to do that once this build, you can too! I really like the resting look of the first design better. It reads pumpkin much more. This guy will look like a pumpkin, but I am going to have a little more work cut out for me making him convincingly a pumpkin - as convincingly as a puppet can trick you into thinking its a pumpkin.
Anyway, lots more work to be done on him!
Make something cool and leave a comment!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
I would like to do: a witch, a vampire, a zombie, a mummy, a scarecrow, a sea monster and a werewolf. Perhaps I was inspired by my time watching the Netflix original series (for children) Super Monsters. The world may never know. That is a lot of puppets so I am going to take them one at a time and work slowly.
I am starting with a scarecrow. I went looking around online for reference images. I had planned on doing a burlap looking face, but then I thought that a pumpkin head might be more visually interesting. It would also allow me to do several things I have never done with a puppet before. First, the eyes would be cut out of the head like a jack-o-lantern. I also wanted to make the teeth clearly part of the pumpkin rind, and not teeth in the jaw. Normally, my teeth are made from makeup sponges but these teeth are part of the sculpt. Lastly, I want to try intentionally sewing seams into the face to mimic the lines in a pumpkin. It will hopefully make for a cool design that is nothing like the kinds of puppets I have made before.
I even got into a fun conversation with the woman who was cutting my fabric. Picture it: I was number 80 and there was no number 77, 78, 79 or 81 in the vicinity, so we got to talking. She seemed cautiously optimistic that my puppet plans would prove fruitful. Here's hoping she slipped me some extra black velvet after I showed her pictures of Grizwald.
Mistake 1: My whole first head turned out to be a big mistake, so I will walk you through what the problems were now. I started by trying to make a pumpkin shape using the cuts I would make in the foam. There are many reasons this was a mistake. For one thing, I attempted to split my puppet face pattern up into beach ball like segments. In doing so it completely changed the mouth shape and the final product's mouth plate was impossibly small. My design looked good on paper though.Notice the funky extra bits at the top of the points, the idea was that those could be turned inward to give my head an oblong shape. It sort of worked int he final product - actually it didn't. If I was counting all the individual ways this head didn't work, the mistake counter would be super high. I can't be certain (since I didn't get this far) but I also think this would have made sewing my pumpkin lines into the fabric difficult. Since the seam lines are weaker, trying to sew into them might have caused more issues. The head I wound up with is better, though more in line with my normal pattern. There are still lots of ways to make it unique that I want to try out.
The process for making a head is the same, even if my pattern wound up being less than stellar. First, use your pattern to cut out the parts of your head out of half inch foam. Using contact cement, glue along the edges you are planning to stick together. Your first instinct will be to then slap those parts together, get yourself a mimosa and celebrate completing the first step of your puppet build. Not so fast you plausible alcoholic. Contact cement sticks better if it is allowed to become tacky first. I wave the parts around in a silly fashion to expose the edges to as much air as I can, then push them together. I know it is ready if there are stringy bits when I try to pull the two bits of foam apart again. Then I use my pins to hold the seams shut. As you can see in the picture, your puppet head will look like a horror movie villain for a while.Let it get completely dry, and then its time to carefully remove every pin. You don't want to stumble upon one later while shoving your hand up in the puppets neck so work carefully. I have never had this problem before, but several of my pins' heads detached from the pin in the process of removing it. My pins aren't the newest, but I have never had that issue. I suspect more glue managed to get on the pins then other times, but regardless, I grabbed from pliers from a previous bead working project and got them free.
Now for something new. Mouth plate's are super important in giving your puppet's mouth structure. I have always used foam core board because that is what I saw in an early tutorial I watched. I think it works well, but I know that isn't great for long term use. The material gets flimsy, and with the heat inside a puppet it can become damaged from sweaty hands. After watching Adam Kreutinger's puppet mouth plate tutorial, I wanted to give his method a try. He uses sheets of plastic! I had bought a big white bin for storing all the fabric for this project, and for harvesting the lid for plastic mouth plates.
Since I already gave you spoilers that the first head does not wind up working out well, I am going to move forward to the mouth plate on the final head. I wound up using a more traditional puppet head pattern. Adam has some great ones on his website, but there are also some great patterns on Pinterest. I looked a few pictures and made my own patterns that I use for all my "standard heads."Anyway, once I have the new head made, I start by curb stomping my puppet. Not really, but sorta. I position my puppet head at the edge of the table and then trace the mouth shape onto the paper. I have done more pointed mouths at this point by manipulating the foam. Since the plate will be the firmest part of the final structure, you can use it to make some pretty drastic head shape changes. For a pumpkin, I let the foam sit naturally. I marked where the teeth were so that my plate could go around them. This is not normally needed since your teeth aren't attached like this. Clearly I am just making things complicated now. Fold the mouth plates in half to cut them symmetrically, then do a quick fit test to be sure you didn't just ruin your work by trying to be a even and symmetrical like.
I traced the pattern onto my plastic bin and carefully cut it out with a razor. Then I covered it all in black duct tape (to be sure no white shows through the black velvet) and began sewing elastic to form grips. I used my awl from the book project, but then I discovered that my needle could get through the plastic without pre-pressing holes. I used my pliers to pull the needle in and out. I chose to sew channels into the elastic for each finger (as Adam did), but I had created similar things with just a bar of elastic to go over all your fingers. It isn't as secure but it does the job.Notice that I put hot glue along the stitching to make sure it didn't move, and on the other side put another piece of duct tape.The head is nearly done! I attach the two plates together with duct tape - leaving a small amount of space to allow them to bend freely, then hot glue them right into the puppet mouth.
Tada, a puppet head! Check to make sure it feels comfortable and that everything is bending appropriately. If it is not, better to fix it now! Obviously, I had to do that once this build, you can too! I really like the resting look of the first design better. It reads pumpkin much more. This guy will look like a pumpkin, but I am going to have a little more work cut out for me making him convincingly a pumpkin - as convincingly as a puppet can trick you into thinking its a pumpkin.Anyway, lots more work to be done on him!
Make something cool and leave a comment!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
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