Dragon Puppet Pt 3 - Mouth and Eyes
Hey reader!
We have had so many puppet posts lately! This is going to be another one, except we are going to be doing something I haven't ever attempted before - vacuform eyes! I feel like a ringleader at a circus. Hold your gasps and those with weak dispositions should exit the blog now (That's not even a lie because the eyes look really creepy for a while).
Mouth assembly was like most of my puppets where I used the foam head to guide the size and shape of the plastic and the velvet. I sewed in a strap for my hand as you have seen me do a few times. I added a bit of foam to the back of the head so that it would look more natural - if a blue furry dragon can ever look natural.
Now for the really fun part, making the eyes! I have been working up the courage to try a vacuform eye for a while now. I have seen the crew on the SyFy series Faceoff use the vacuform to make awesome hand painted eyes for their custom makeup creations.
I started by making a vacuform mold of two of my cast eyes that I made a while back.
Since they are clear, you might struggle to see what is happening in that picture. Fortunately, I am here to paint a word picture. I could refer to the eyes as gentle hills in the plastic, set off from the jadded bumpy ground formed as the plastic is sealed against ball bearings. Or I could just tell you to put on your glasses and click the photo for a full screen view. Really it is a choose your own adventure.
Confident as I might pretend to be on a blog about my painting skills, I don't think I have hand painted eyes in my repertoire of skills just yet. Instead I cut out cat eye shapes in a dark construction paper. Then I wet some green tissue paper with a little bit of green paint and began to lay it as flat as I could inside the eye.
As I write this blog, I ask myself, "why didn't I just use the cast eyes like always?" If I am asking myself, then I feel like it probably warrants an explanation here. The idea is that when everything dries, the outside will remain shiny and so you will get a "wet" look that is in theory more lifelike. Again, super concerned that my blue dragon puppet look as real as possible.
I had a really hard time avoiding folds in my tissue paper. A single fold makes the lines on the eye much darker and really just ruined it for me. I knew that not all of the eye was going to be visible through the fur, but it was important that it be right.
As you can see in the picture of the vanished eye, I still wound up with a few small folds near the sides, that's just a consequence of trying to put a flat thing in a rounded thing. I am pretty happy with the way they came out, and I am glad to have an alternative to eye making that isn't so focused on plastic molds. Certainly my vacuform sheets are less expensive overall, though on a regular puppet the shine would make them reflect a lot of light and that isn't always ideal.
Anyway, I placed the eyes in the foam head to get a sense of how things were coming along and I was horrified. This creature truly is the stuff of nightmares.
As much as I want to kill it with fire at this point, I have invested a lot of time and maybe fur will make it look better. Maybe squinting and looking at literally anything else might help too. I glued the eyes firmly in place so that they wouldn't move around during the next steps.
I sewed the black mouth plate to the fur for the head and began the process of wrapping the foam head in fur. The big issue here was trying to line up the eyes. I would need to make cuts in the fur to create the eye holes and this is really a "one try" kind of situation. I started by poking the eyes from the outside and trying to feel where they were. Then I cut super small slits into the fur and began to pull them away to get a look at the eyes.
Normally, I resist making cuts like this, because it can lead to fraying, not to mention having an unfinished seam showing on the final product. Given that this was covered in fur and I could really think of no other way to do it, this would have to work. Plus, I put hot glue along the edges and it actually looked like a water line on the puppet's eyes so maybe my hesitation
was unwarranted.
This puppet no longer looks hellish at all, the eyes look almost normal. I did cut the eye a little wider, but I was already on the next step when I did so you will see that later.
I am struggling a bit with the fur, the repeated dying to get it to look the right way, namely green, has left it prone to matting. I brush it out and four seconds later it bunches up again. That's ok though, it is a learning adventure that I am taking with you, kind reader!
You should definitely try making things yourself, it is super fun and you learn alot. I might not be great in a zombie apocalypse, but I am sure capable of making some crazy stuff.
I am on Instagram now, posting pics as I work on things, check it out!
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
We have had so many puppet posts lately! This is going to be another one, except we are going to be doing something I haven't ever attempted before - vacuform eyes! I feel like a ringleader at a circus. Hold your gasps and those with weak dispositions should exit the blog now (That's not even a lie because the eyes look really creepy for a while).
Now for the really fun part, making the eyes! I have been working up the courage to try a vacuform eye for a while now. I have seen the crew on the SyFy series Faceoff use the vacuform to make awesome hand painted eyes for their custom makeup creations.
I started by making a vacuform mold of two of my cast eyes that I made a while back.
Since they are clear, you might struggle to see what is happening in that picture. Fortunately, I am here to paint a word picture. I could refer to the eyes as gentle hills in the plastic, set off from the jadded bumpy ground formed as the plastic is sealed against ball bearings. Or I could just tell you to put on your glasses and click the photo for a full screen view. Really it is a choose your own adventure.
Confident as I might pretend to be on a blog about my painting skills, I don't think I have hand painted eyes in my repertoire of skills just yet. Instead I cut out cat eye shapes in a dark construction paper. Then I wet some green tissue paper with a little bit of green paint and began to lay it as flat as I could inside the eye.
I had a really hard time avoiding folds in my tissue paper. A single fold makes the lines on the eye much darker and really just ruined it for me. I knew that not all of the eye was going to be visible through the fur, but it was important that it be right.
As you can see in the picture of the vanished eye, I still wound up with a few small folds near the sides, that's just a consequence of trying to put a flat thing in a rounded thing. I am pretty happy with the way they came out, and I am glad to have an alternative to eye making that isn't so focused on plastic molds. Certainly my vacuform sheets are less expensive overall, though on a regular puppet the shine would make them reflect a lot of light and that isn't always ideal.Anyway, I placed the eyes in the foam head to get a sense of how things were coming along and I was horrified. This creature truly is the stuff of nightmares.
 |
| pictured: hell on earth |
I sewed the black mouth plate to the fur for the head and began the process of wrapping the foam head in fur. The big issue here was trying to line up the eyes. I would need to make cuts in the fur to create the eye holes and this is really a "one try" kind of situation. I started by poking the eyes from the outside and trying to feel where they were. Then I cut super small slits into the fur and began to pull them away to get a look at the eyes.
Normally, I resist making cuts like this, because it can lead to fraying, not to mention having an unfinished seam showing on the final product. Given that this was covered in fur and I could really think of no other way to do it, this would have to work. Plus, I put hot glue along the edges and it actually looked like a water line on the puppet's eyes so maybe my hesitation
This puppet no longer looks hellish at all, the eyes look almost normal. I did cut the eye a little wider, but I was already on the next step when I did so you will see that later.
I am struggling a bit with the fur, the repeated dying to get it to look the right way, namely green, has left it prone to matting. I brush it out and four seconds later it bunches up again. That's ok though, it is a learning adventure that I am taking with you, kind reader!
You should definitely try making things yourself, it is super fun and you learn alot. I might not be great in a zombie apocalypse, but I am sure capable of making some crazy stuff.
I am on Instagram now, posting pics as I work on things, check it out!
Keep making cool stuff!
Until next time,
JoshPrime
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