PUPPET BUILDING- HUGH

The first thing that I decided this year in my pre- production planning was that I was going to cast my main character, Hugh, in silicone. Although it requires alot of planning and problem solving, casting in silicone will make the animating a lot easier and quicker. If I were to sculpt a head out of clay then I would have to constantly re-sculpt my character in between shots whilst animating. Silicone will allow me to move body parts and will maintain its shape.

Sculpting Hugh’s head and arms

To start with I really wanted to get the bone and muscle structure of my character right. On the realism to caricature scale I wanted to lean a little bit more towards realism. The trouble with this aim was hours of muscle research and sculpting. It got to a point that I was so focused on my realism goal that I stopped sculpting for a few days. My turning point was to ditch the research and to just continue sculpting. I was then able to get over my sculpt block and focus on the character and his personality which resulted in a happy medium between both aims.

Another consideration that I had trouble with was that I had to think about the silicone process for the head and whether to sculpt the mouth and eyes open or closed. Proportions was also a tricky factor especially since I wanted slightly larger hair, eyes and hands than your average person.

Originally I was sculpting all three body parts separately but found it hard to proportion them all together. So I built a chest and connected the three parts which made my sculpt alot more consistent. I then detached all three parts so that I could silicone cast them all separately.

After researching good smoothening techniques I found that baby oil works well with wax based clays such as monster clay.

Casting the cast

Casting the pinkysil cast was a very exciting time. It took awhile to neatly sculpt the correct barriers around the body limbs but I was finally making some progress with my puppet. I only had one little hurdle. I made my barrier around Hugh’s head a little too wide and I ran out of pinkysil to fill the second half of the cast. I had to think on the spot as there was no more pinkysil in the house and made the risky decision to bend my delicate plasticine walls in making the volume smaller and therefore covering my characters head. This risk payed off and thankfully no walls broke in the process.

Making the armature

I started off by constructing my Aardman armature and permanently glueing all the necessary joints together (a blowtorch can be used to detach any glued joints). I then glued some foam to the armature as I didn’t want any silicone seenping into the joints and blocking the armature‘s movement.

Making eyes

After looking at a few animator and doll maker’s Instagram pages I found this technique on how to make puppet eyes. Firstly I carved out a small circle in a plastic bead using a dremel. Then I painted the inside with a variety of shades of blue using a bent pin (I found a paintbrush to big). I also painted the white bead a cream colour and added some tiny blood vessels. I then stuck a pin in each eye’s pupil and poured resin around it. I also added a thin layer of resin around the eye To make it look watery. Once dried I polished the resin using the dremel.

Silicone casting

This is the first year that I have cast a silicone head for a puppet, so I found it a very difficult process. Whereas I cast arms last year and they have a simple armature so they were pretty straight forward. That being said my second arm casting didn‘t line up properly and I had to recast.

SILICONE HEAD 1- I created a Bolsa wood skull, added wires for the eyebrows, chin and mouth. I used polymorph beads to create teeth and to bulk up the eyebrows to prevent the wire from piercing the silicone after lots of movement. I also put some plasticine in between the mouth skeleton so that once it was cast it I could cut open the mouth and take out the plasticine a bit at a time resulting in a hole for the mouth. I also put pins in the pinkysil cast to hold the eyeballs in place.

RESULT- it casted well and the skin looked great at first glance. The problem lay within the functions. The mouth and eyebrows were too far up the face due to the con being too large. Eyelids however worked perfectly and confirmed my crazy theory. The theory is that by cutting the outer edges of the eyelids except the axis I can slip the eyelid under the forehead or chin and the silicone will hold it in place. I can’t therefore animate The one set of mov eyelids without the hassle of replacements. It also allows me to make my own eyelashes by hair punching.

SILICONE HEAD 2- I cut off the head of my puppet and decided to start from scratch. This time I didn’t want any faults in the placement of the armature so I poured some monster clay into my cast to make a thin mask that I then used as a guid to check the placement of my skull and wires. I used the dremel to carefully carve a thin chin and smooth skull from bolsa wood. I made the eyebrows more flexible by connecting it to the skull with one wire instead of two. I remembered that my character needed to smile during my film so I created movable cheeks out of wire. I created malleable lips from hard foil from a croissant packet which was harder than aluminium foil but softer than aluminum flashing.

RESULT- The positions of armature and wires was off and nothing moved as it should.

SILICONE HEAD 3- I was in denial that my armature didn’t work and decided to strip the silicone off Head 2 and cast again. to help with positioning I decided to turn my cast right way up. This meant that the rest of my armature pulled the head down causing the mouth to close. The trouble was though that a lot of silicone cane out of the bottom. RESULT- The cast wasn‘t very neat but half the wires were in the right spot. I was devastated, however, and decided to abandon the traditional bolsawood and wire technique completely.

SILICONE HEAD 4- I thought back to last year and my head sculpting method, depressed that I would have to use the same method this year. I remembered, however, a crazy test that did in my experimenting. Trying to make a thin silicone mask over some clay so that I could have more freedom and flexibility in moving the silicone. It didn’t work as the silicone didn‘t stick very well to the clay and kept falling off. I decided to try that method again but with some adjustments.

So I created a bolsa wood skull as I knew that it would still work solid but light core. I poured in a thin batch of silicone into my casts but didn’t join them together. over the next half an hour I moved the silicone round with my fingers thinning out areas that required the most movement such as the eyebrows and lips. Trouble was that these were the lowest points of the cast and was where all the silicone kept gravitating towards. Once dried I then joined my two cast halves together with my armature inside. I melted som Monster clay down and poured it into my cast. I didnt know how long it took mobster clay to cool down so I tested some leftovers before releasing my cast. Splitting the cast I found that the two silicone halves hadn’t joined together of course so I mixed up a small batch of silicone and seamed the edges.

RESULT- Excellent. Better than I thought possible. I now have the ability to move any part of his face.

REPAIRS- I used a syringe to fill any bubbles or holes with silicone. Also after cutting off the excess silicone I smoothed any blemishes with some silicone and Isocol.

PAMPERING- I painted Hugh’s nails with clear nail polish. I also brushed on some baby powder to matte his skin. I them cut open his eyes and cleaned the resin with a cotton bud.

Costume making

I refined the shape of his foam body. I then printed off some free clothes patterns and cut out the shapes of my materials. I then used my miniature sewing machine to sew some mini clothes. This was a fun process and I was relieved to move onto a different medium. The hardest process was probably getting the scale right and sewing little pockets for the double sided vest. The little buttons on his sleeves and bracers as well as the material choices really determined his style.

I also made a golden pocket watch with some chain, wire, and a bell.

Hair

The most anticipated moment of the puppet making process Wig making and hair punching.

WIG- To begin I covered his head in hot glue gun glue. I then created 150 strands of hair by glueing (all clear selleys) a piece of thin wire (picture frame wire painted with black nail polish) with a piece of stipped raffia, blonde hair fibers, red hair fibers, black hair fibers and mostly dark brown hair fibers. I brushes some icing sugar and coco mix onto each stand to matte the hair. I then glued each stand to the glue scalp using the model of the hot glue gun. I then bundle 4-6 strands of hair together bend them and burn them into shape using the hot glue gun nozzle.

HAIR PUNCHING- To create the eyebrows I hair punched different hair coloured stands into the silicone and melted them together using the hot glue gun nozzle.

To create the whiskers and nose hairs I again hair punches individual hair fibers into the silicone. However, instead of melting them flat I just lightly curves the strands with the hot glue gun nozzel.

For the eyelashes I used the same technique but used fake eyelashes strands as they were already nicely curved.

To create the chest hairs I wrapped the hair fibers around a metal rod and put the stick into hot water to maintain their shape. I then pulled out the individual fibers with tweezers and punched them into the silicone skin.

For the arm hairs I did the same thing but wrapped the hairs around a needle does for finer curls.

Mostly finished puppet

Now I just have to make some shoes, glasses and fix up the eyelashes.

#production #puppetbuilding #silicone #hairpunching