Creating Puppets

On the 17th of April we were given a square block of foam. From this block, we had to draw on a face and cut it out. This was a tedious task, however, once completed, looks good. Below is a photo of the head that I cut out. The photos below show the block after I cut out the face.

I began to cut out the eyebrows, when I realised that I wasn't meant to, which is why the eyebrows have a gap around them. This process was tiresome and long. Ellie, our teacher, showed us other ways of creating puppet heads by making moulds of the faces. I believe this process is more accurate as it is able to get every detail of the face, and also its not such a hard process, even though you have to wait a few hours for the mould to dry. The one con to this, is that the head may break, whereas with the foam head, it will not break. 

On the 24th of April, we began creating bodies for our puppets. I was given a 50cm length of material to create a sack like body. I glued the seams together to create the sack. I also glued a little of the material at the front together so as to give my puppet a figure.

I put a few handfulls of sand into two bags to create weights for the feet. The photo below shows the sandbags i put into the feet. Above, you can see what it looks like from the outside with the sandbags in the actually puppet.

Then I added stuffing in the middle. As we ran out of stuffing, I used tissues to stuff the body of my puppet. This is a picture of what the inside of my puppet looks like.

To give my puppet a more 'human' figure, I cut a small line through the bottom of the sack and stuck those seams together to create two legs for my puppet.

 

Overall, I enjoyed creating this puppet, however, cutting out the face was a very long process. If I were to create this sack puppet again, then I think I would take more time on the face, as compared to other peoples, mine isn't so much of a 'head' shape. Having said that, I do like the features on my puppets face, and I think they look rather like a humans.