So, with the head nearly completed, I moved on to the body. I cut and glued his torso together and found an infants gray t-shirt which I modified to get the sleeveless shirt look from my original sketch design. I spot glued the shirt in a few places to keep it in the shape I was wanting. I noticed his body would be showing through the underside of the armholes when they were raised. I cut a few swatches of flesh fabric and attached them to cover the foam beneath.
From there I moved on to the arms. I wanted him to have these big, heavy, beefy arms with chubby little fingers, so I sketched out a rough pattern that I thought would work. I then cut and sewn a "test" arm out of scrap fabric I had laying around. I was pretty pleased with the over all look and tweaked it a bit, then cut/sewn the actually arms from the Muppet fleece. I created a wire armature for the posable fingers, then poly filled the entire arm to the desired fullness. I wasn't sure how I wanted to attach the arms to the body. So I decided to use the "doll-joint" method (you can see the doll-joint stem in the above photo). Now here is where we divide the professionals and the amateurs. In my haste to get this build completed, I neglected to plan for my arm rod in the one finished arm. (I never really considered myself in the pro category anyhow...)
So, currently I have the entire ToonAsylum staff in an emergency meeting to determine how I'm going to solve this dilemma with as little re-working as possible... Stay Toon'd for more hilarity puppet building techniques and blunders!!
