For this film, I had to make two puppets- which in hindsight was slightly more of a challenge than I had anticipated as it was the first time making a quadruped and even a puppet with working legs (before I had made just a torso and a mermaid) so probably should have anticipated the issues I ended up having.
I started the making process for the main puppet very early on in the pre-production as I knew I would struggle to work on a scale smaller than I was used to. Despite trying to get ahead with the building, I still ended up falling behind my intended schedule as I had to keep making adjustments to both puppets as I went along. I think the issue stemmed from general inexperience but also as I tried using K&S more in the builds which is not something I had done before. After weeks of trying to get the scale of the models right (arms and legs often were too long or too short), I ended up reverting back to making the armature mostly out of wire.
I ended up using a Domestica course by Adeena Grubb for reference, whose puppets were the first inspiration for my characters. Along with her course, I used a mixture of techniques we learnt from Jim Parkyn to get the final puppets. I’m planning on working on more puppet designs and models over the next few months to improve and experiment a bit more with different techniques.
Wanda (the human puppet) was still throwing up issues as I wanted her to be a nude fabric puppet, and as I was already running behind schedule I had to consider how to make her skin. In my previous project, I had worked with a costume designer who had been eager to get experience designing for stop motion puppets so I got in contact with her to see if she would be interested in making the character’s skin, or failing that a dress I could put on the puppet that would hide any rough seams that would inevitably occur if I made the skin. Much to my relief, she was up for doing both, and Wanda turned out looking so good that I didn’t end up using the dress.
