This is the puppet I am currently creating for the student film I am working on with my fellow stop-motion classmates. I've been tasked to create a puppet that resembles an older gentleman who will sit at a piano throughout the majority of the film. The puppet is a wire armature that is bonded with epoxy that holds four rigging points (front, back, left side, and right side) as well as tie-down for its rear end to keep it in place as it is seated.
While this is not the final product of the head design for the final puppet design, I created this head for a potential puppet head design and to use as reference while creating the body of the puppet.
The first two photos are practice hands for the final creation of the hands on the far right. The hand on the far left was to test the length of the fingers and wrist for the puppet while the hand in the middle is the same hand but sealed with a silicone, cornstarch, and food coloring mixture as a way to decide the final look of the hand design. The pair of hands on the right are made of wire and epoxy with brass tubing for its wrists that will allow for removable hands.
This puppet was designed after a personification of my cat and was crafted as a wire stop-motion puppet. Along with wire, I used epoxy to hold the arms and legs to the body firmly then wrapped the arms and legs with foam tape, the feet are made with brass square tubing that have been tapped so the puppet may have tie-downs. I handstitched the inside of this puppet with felt and cotton stuffing used masking tape and paper mâché to create a hollowed-out head and ears. The head is laid with black and tan yarn and the puppet's sweater is crochet while its pants are handsewn.
In this video I worked with a classmate of mine to practice our stop-motion walking cycles. We used our handmade wire puppets and Dragonframe to animate and capture this exercise. I animated my wire puppet on the right.
