It Is Done

POSTDATED 17/04/12

Don't ask.

There's a reason he looks pissed off...

 ...and also embarassed.

Success! No Wait... Failure.

POSTDATED - 15/04/12

Unfortunately, this method also turned out to be utter horse crackers.

 And swiftly ended in failure.

At this point I was quite worried that I wouldn't be able to finish my puppet at all. The methods I was trying were probably all fairly achievable in theory, but not being seams..ter? seamsmaster? seamsman? I don't even know what to call it, never mind do it. So yes, I was pulling my hair out (oh, the irony) trying to work out what to do. I even ventured out and asked around some tailors to get a price on how much it would be for someone to take care of it for me I was that desperate to stop wasting time as my animating days were slowly dwindling. As it turned out I could find no-one who could do it in less than a week, so I had only one option. Be a man. Conquer that furry beast. I had to do unspeakable things. Awful things. Ahead of me lay two days of pain, frustration; physical, mental, spiritual... spheroidal terrors (I may have curled up into a ball and wept at least on one occasion). But I persevered.

Taxidermy Is Creepy

POSTDATED - 14/04/12

A new day and a new method. Thinking somewhat laterally I decided to try a more logical approach. I had a look through the UK Taxidermists' Guild website and decided that maybe a good way to add fur to a wolf would be to first make a wolf pelt, since this is the rough shape that would cover a wolf anyway.

I found a few spread out wolf pelts and took my pattern design from there.

What I found was the basic pattern worked quite well, the only problem was that there was never quite enough material to wrap all around the limbs and bottom of the torso because of the gaps that had to be opened up to fit onto the foam.

Again, my methods were failing me, but luckily I had an idea after university had closed and I was lying awake tossing and turning because I just care that much (I'm actually serious, it's kinda lame...).

Fluffed It

POSTDATED - 13/04/12

The next stage, after having taken off the cling film and tape in one piece, was to cut it into several smaller pieces. Here I was going to create seam lines along shoulders, hips, neck - essentially, any area of the puppet where there would be movement.

 After this I took the 3d impressions of the puppet's surface and cut darts into them, trying to flatten them out so that I could make a pattern from the raw material. This was where I found this method tricky because, unlike making human clothes, there are no readily available patterns from which to take reference as the fur needs to be custom fit around the contours of the wolf's body. The problem I found was that I couldn't find strategic enough places to put the cuts unless the shape was very simple - like the tail. The result being that I was left with complicated patterns that were flat, but near impossible to put back on to the puppet, and even so were so full of gaps they would take too long to stitch back together.

 I decided to abandon the cling film and masking tape method and tried another, admittedly terrible, idea whereby I glued the fur on in strips. This did allow me to cover the contours of the body, but left many gaps between strips that looked fine when the wolf was in one position, but as soon as it moved would pull apart at those gaps. Again, this would require far too much unnecessary stitching so I slipped on my thinking face and went hmmm.

 After considerable hmmm-ing, and various permutations of the phrase 'how the bloody bollocks am I going to do this?' I started pinning fabric to a leg, pinching the excess fabric into triangles around the contours and then cutting 'darts' into the fabric (on the recommendation of the lovely Fiona, our fashion lady helper) to remove it. This involved lots of pinning and snipping, and I was worried the pattern was again going to be too complicated to reassemble. This time I put on my hmmm face with added aarggg!

Oh, This'll Be Fur-ly Easy

POSTDATED - 12/03/12

While it looks like I'm pranking up my puppet good with the ol' cling film 'n' tape, I'm actually entering into the final stages of puppet making. And as it turns out, my puppet is more likely pranking me, because while I thought adding the fur would be relatively straightforward. Turns out, it was not. Thus began five days of near constant swearing.

I tried many methods to create a template to make the fur fit the contours of the wolf's body, the first of which was to cover the body in cling film, then masking tape, then cut the tape off the body and flatten it out with a series of strategic 'dart cuts' - leaving me with a pattern for the fur. Or, at least, that was the theory.

The process of adding cling film and masking tape on it's own actually took far longer than I expected. Partly because the strips of tape needed to be cut and trimmed so there would be no wrinkles or folds in the pattern; partly because I somehow owned the only roll of masking tape that refused to stick to itself for longer than half an hour, which meant I had to keep smoothing it over so that the trimmed strips of tape remained in their correct position.

After Easter Beastie Crafting

POSTDATED 11/04/12

After a swift Easter break, while uni was closed, I came back to do the finishing details before moving on to the next stage which was adding the fur. Firstly, I took out the eyeballs because I noticed you should see a little bit of the insides of his eyes, and that was still the Milliput colour, and painted them pink.

Using the same method as for the eyelids, I spread out a sheet of latex this time coloured with some red enamel, so that I could create a flap that would be glued into the back of the mouth, so that the armature wouldn't be seen.

Next, I painted up the claws similarly to the teeth to give them some more texture.

Then I painted in gums using some red enamel, and once that was dry added some latex mixed with more red enamel to give the gums some depth as the latex would be semi-translucent.

 Finally, I painted up the rest of the face with some more black enamel paint, so that should there be any gaps in the fur or where the mouth opens, no blue foam should be visible.

 N'aww, isn't he terrifying.

Face!

POSTDATED - 05/03/12

Today I got to work on adding details such as the nose and eyelids. First off, I made the nose using some cotton wool, black acrylic paint and latex. The same method used to sculpt the feet. I simply shaped the nose on to the end of the snout and waited for it to dry to see if it would adhere strongly.

Next, I began work on the eyes. My method was to create aluminium wire coated in black latex for the cusp of the eyelid, then cut and glue sheets of thin black latex for the eyelid itself. I began this by dipping the aluminium wire in latex, as well as painting out a thin sheet of latex onto a spare block of flat plaster and waited for those to dry. While I was waiting I drilled small holes in the corners of the eyes to give the latex covered wire something to slot in to, giving the glue a stronger grip.

 Below you can see the finished results, giving me fully articulated eyelids. Personally I think this is a much more elegant way of animating blinks, because it gives you the option to add expression and speed into them, rather than relying on a set number replacement parts.

 Next, I sculpted a tongue using some more cotton wool, latex, and red enamel paint. The paint didn't mix immediately with the latex, which allowed me to get some great detail in to the tongue. There are some spots of red which look like tastebuds, and other areas where there is no pigment at all, which gives the tongue a yellow-ish hue. Kind of disgusting, but it worked great!

 Finally for the day I glued on some more blue foam for the lower jaw, to finish fleshing up the face. I also found that I had some extra latex, so decided to paint this on to the head. The ears would be partly exposed anyway, so they needed painting.