I don’t quite know what to write this week, but know that it is important (for me at least) that I write something! I feel as though I achieved very little this week, and yet, at the same time, I know I was productive. Quarantine realness. I struggled this week with both my mental and physical health (nothing serious), so found it difficult to push myself to be productive. I try to be kind to myself in the current situation with You-Know-Who running rampant, but of course I do berate myself for not working harder. This is not a cry for help by any means… I acknowledge that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself and I promise I am trying.

I continued to work on my personal project, my little self portrait stop-motion puppet under the guidance of my amazing housemate and colleague Mattzilla Duron. Daily I thank my lucky stars that I am in the living situation that I am right now. Not only do I have two wonderfully supportive, kind and fun housemates to keep me safe and sane, but the fact that Zilla is also working on the production, has over a decade’s worth of experience in stop motion for me to absorb and has a home studio… I THANK MY LUCKY STAR! And really that lucky star is our amazing producer Melanie Coombs who initially put us in touch. Thanks Mel!

But back to my puppet…

I built an armature for her: A fairly basic wire armature, similar to that used for the background characters in the production. I learned some new techniques, which I will outline as I am sure many of you reading along will be interested in the process.

To begin I created two cube-like shapes out of epoxy putty, one for the hip and one for the shoulder. You want to measure these against your mould to make sure they are not too wide or too deep. You want there to be space around them for the casting material.
While these set, you can create your armature wire*. Line up two lengths of armature wire and one length of florists wire, then bind these three together tightly using a nylon thread. This process can be tricky, it is best to have your nylon thread attached to some kind of reel. Once they are bound, go over the thread with some prosthetics glue to hold everything in place.
*I had access to two different thickness armature wires, so used the thicker wire for my characters spine and legs and the thinner wire for the characters arms. It is worth wrapping a full length though and then cutting down your pieces, as you will undoubtedly find a use for it later.
Drill a hole in the centre of both of your epoxy blocks for your spine to go through. And 2 holes in the bottom block and top block for your arms and legs. Once you have these pieces ready and lined up in the right place, glue them in using a two part metal epoxy (I used a product called J-B Kwik)
Now create a round ball for your head using the epoxy putty. You can make the ball and drill in to it like with the hips and shoulder, but I chose to mould it on to the wire as I was confident enough in my placement. You can mould the hips and shoulders straight on to the wire as well, but it gives you a lot less margin for error.
Lastly I needed to create an armature for my hands. This was the most fiddly bit, as my puppets hands are very tiny. I created the armature for the hands using only floral wire. I created a loop with a long tail so that I could attach it to my arm using the same nylon thread and glue method. Then I used two lengths to create 4 fingers (or 3 fingers and a thumb) to fit within my mould. A lot of trial and error here. Once you have your length about right, you can add some J-B Kwik (or equivalent) to the finger tips to stop the floral wires thread from unravelling and also prevent your finger armature from puncturing through your puppet.

And that is how I created my puppets armature. I am quite paranoid that the fingers will not be right. But we shall see when she comes out of her mould!

Once I had my armature, I used some dense foam to create a bit of padding around her thighs, hips, waist and chest. As she is so small, the use of soft expanding foam seemed a little unnecessary, so I simply carved her a little 1920’s swimsuit out of foam. We considered using some upholstery tape to wrap her (something common in stop motion puppets) but as her limbs are so small, there is not a lot of room for it.

I also cast her this week, though I have not yet opened her mould to see the result.

Getting ready for casting, I released both sides of the mould (using a product called Ease Release 200).
I then attached my armatures feet to the foot plate of my mould. After a bit of trial and error here, the way I did this was to drill two holes through each foot and place a wire loop over the foot and through these holes to hold her in place. The purpose of this is to make sure your armature sits centred in your mould, rather than having it’s back pressed against the back side of the mould. I am also a little worried I may not have succeeded in this pursuit, but time will tell!
After this, I mixed some tin based silicone with an ultra-fast catalyst and brushed this on to the foam covering my armature. This acts as a sealant for the porous foam.
Once the foam part was dry, I mixed some tin-based silicone with it’s regular catalyst and added in a skin colour pigment. You need to make sure to mix it extremely thoroughly, scraping down the sides and bottom. I then evacuated it in the vacuum chamber. Evacuation is a process that takes all of the air out of the material which reduces the risk of bubbles in your work. Now it was time to get the silicone into the mould!
Using a syringe, I first covered the back half of the mould, putting a thin layer all over every part, paying special attention to smaller areas like fingers and ears. I then put my armature in overtop and lined up the foot plate. Then I covered the armature in silicone still using the syringe. Then I did the same to the front half of the mould.
Once I felt I had fairly good coverage, I poured the rest in direct from the bucket, making sure every part of my mould was covered and nice and full.
Now the tricky part, flipping the front half over and connecting it to the other half! This is very hard to do first try! But I managed without too much incident and we clamped her together and left her to set (with fingers and toes crossed).

Tomorrow I will pull her out of her mould and we will see if I was successful in this first attempt!

Apart from this, I helped Zilla with a few bits and pieces for the production, boxing a few things up and pouring a few things. And I mucked about with a Monster-High doll…

I want to practice my stop motion animating (something I have almost no experience in) and in the past had noticed that the Monster-High dolls have pretty amazing joints. I bought a doll second-hand online and when she arrived I was a little disappointed in some of her movement (or lack of). And so I have been updating the doll for my purposes.

Her ankles had her in a permanent tippy toe (for wearing heels l suppose) and had no joint, so I sawed off her feet at the ankles and added in some wire. Her mid section had this amazing back-breaking curve which was insane (and no movement) so I sawed her apart and fixed that up as well. I also dislocated her elbows, and broke her neck! I have been having fun!

Now she is functioning a lot better for what I want to use her for. I will be posting updates on my instagram @thepuppetsmithery if you want to see how she is coming along. There is a before video up already. I also gave her a new hairdo and removed her makeup. I will likely make her a costume at some point too, which will be good practice for when I eventually get to work with the costume team on the production (once we are back working in the studio).

And that was Week 10. Lot’s of ups and downs for me, but overall a pretty good week. This weekend I am feeling good and ready to tackle whatever next week throws at us! It is likely we will be continuing to work from home for the next month (or more) so I am eager to find my rhythm in this new-normal. We are still having our 9am puppetry department morning coffee every day via Zoom which is always a great way to start our work day.

Till next week! Stay safe and sane out there!