That damned back burner.

It's been sometime since my last blog and my last tinkering with the old stop motion and that's mainly been due to a return to my studies. The last two weeks have been pretty busy what with exams approaching at the end of May. This has meant I've had to put things on the backburner but I will be doing bits here and there whenand if I get the free time.

So about two weeks ago I dressed my puppet, only now have I got round to a post and photos. The process was laborious to say the least and took me much longer than needed but I'm a stickler for perfection. However, the time it took for me to sew a simple jumper and trousers combo has lead to me feeling that it will sensible to use contact adhesive in place of sewing on future dressed puppets. To be honest I'm not greatly pleased with the outcome... some of the stitching is a bit dodgy here and there and I fear it wont withstand animation. But for now it will do as this is my first puppet and it is solely for practise use.

Above is an image of my dressed puppet with a green jumper, white T-shirt and blue trousers. All materials were recycled from old T-Shirts I no longer wished to keep. I glued the T-shirt detail directly to the puppets chest rather than make it whole to save time.

Next I will be sculpting the hair, face, hands and feet. These will be made with English plasticine (Newplast) except for the hair which I will sculpt in Milliput and then paint. I have considered casting the feet in silicone which would make them more durable and would reduce the need to re-sculpt the foot after handling. Silicone would give the flexibility to animate with but would withstand the constant handling. I've discovered an online site in the UK - Tiranti - which stocks a range of pourable RTV silcones at reasonable prices under £20 and dental plaster for moulds under £5. Its very tempting and I'd love to experience working with this but unfortunately right now I don't have the time nor money. Another experiment I'd love to try is using latex to form durable hands too. It would be a process of dipping and re-dipping the hand in liquid latex to build up a flexible skin over wire fingers and a Milliput palm. But, this is where the ingenuity of plug-in armature parts comes into play, if ever in the future I wish to explore these avenues of puppet fabrication I can do so without having to start from scratch and build a full new armature.