Puppet build step 3.0

Well, after I got the foam foundation down I decided to try my hand at dying the fleece and covering the head. This is a fairly easy process but for those who have never dyed fleece before like myself it was a bit confusing. I ordered my lite flesh-colored colored mix from Billy at SSpuppetFactory a great place to get all your puppet supplies (a little plug there for ya Billy). I added the dye pack to the water dropped in the fleece, agitated it for 30 minutes(poking it, making fun of, calling it names and so forth - haha-). When I removed the dyed fleece it was TAN?!? not light flesh color as expected. I'm thinking , great I just ruined 2+ yards of Muppet antron fleece that's now colored medium oak?!? Well, as you veterans already know, as I allowed the fleece to dry overnight, when I checked it in the morning it had lightened up considerably. And now actually looks like a light flesh color as required.

So with flesh colored fleece, not Pinocchio wood colored, I began to cover the head/neck. This went well without any hitches. Then I created a template out of old material, for covering the nose and cut that out of the fleece. Then I sewn by hand the nose pattern around the carved foam nose I had made earlier. Let me stop a minute and say here..... I'm not that sold on the seam hiding properties of this antron fleece. I'm using the Henson stitch (aka baseball stitch) but I'm not getting the results I'd expected. Even after picking out the seams as you can see in the pics, the seams are quite visible. What to do? Maybe I'm not doing something right.Would like to hear your opinion/suggestions regarding this.

After I had the nose completely covered I cut out the eye openings in the head, and an opening for the nose(I wanted the nose to sit back into the head a bit). Stitched the nose in place. I added the eyes in (temporarily) just to see what the finished head might look like. With some scrap flesh-colored fleece left over from the head pattern, I sewn two small ears and pinned them in place. I had a tongue carved out of foam I did for another puppet but never used and stuck it in there.

So, the head is pretty much completed. I need to get some darker flesh color material and create the circles around the eyes as shown in the sketch. I'm not sure how I am going to get his 5:00 shadow look in his lower jaw, still debating that. In the pic below you can see his eye placement is all jacked up, well I was going for that Marty Feldman look. His left eye will be in a fixed position, while his right eye has a wire on an axis that runs thru the center of the eye and into the foam. This will allow me to rotate that eye and have him "look" around while performing!

Check back for the next installment, building the foam body and arms....

News Flash!!

Dateline Deerfield Township, Ohio USA........I just wanted to tell everyone, They posted an article I submitted about the latest news at the ToonAsylum studios on our local Cincinnati.com community website. Check it out here.

Thanks -


Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.....

Puppet build step 2.0

Okay, had some time today to work on the foam head shape. I'm trying out the ProjectPuppet Rotondo pattern for the first time. It seems to be a good shape so far.

The photo above shows the head with a few "ears" that I pinned on just to see if I was going in the right direction.

I then carved out a rough shape for his big nose out of 3" thick block foam I had and pinned that in place. Starting to look like a human now huh?

Next I dropped in a couple of ping pong eyeballs. And now he looks kinda like the Jeep from Popeye the sailor cartoons...I'm hoping this will change once I get the flesh colored fleece over the foam.

Puppet build step 1.0

OK, time for a new puppet build. This is going to be a series of blogs walking you through the steps that I take when I build a new character.

Step 1.

I always start with a drawing or sketch on paper of what the character I want is going to look like. This way I always have a reference to guild me during the build and make sure I stay on track. The character I've decided on is Viktor. He is a shortorder cook from the former Czechloslovakia. He speaks with broken english with a strong Czech accent. Oh and he's also an HUGE fan of David Hasselhoff....LOL

I like to flesh out my characters background too, his personality , his likes and dislikes...I know it's strange but it's what I do. So, here is my initial drawing of Viktor.

CafePress custom merchandise

Here are a few Toon Asylum cast member pictures I created for my CafePress account. It's a website that you can design custom printed items t-shirts, mugs, clocks, cards, etc. I'll be posting a link as soon as I get my shop up and running.

www.thetoonasylum.com

Coming soon the ALL NEW ToonAsylum website...

http://TheToonAsylum.com

ToonAsylum becomes a blogger

Hey everyone, this is Ran from the ToonAsylum studios. I've finally jumped onboard the blogger express with my very first entry. I really never thought I was much of a blog person(I guess we'll find out soon enough). Since I'm kinda new to this ....what exactly is a "blog" anywhy???



Well Wikipedia states " A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. " Ok, so here's to hoping I can make this an exciting place to tell everyone the latest news and to keep up on what my fellow bloggers are up to.