Facing Rana

After rice paper and matte medium layers in her face mold, reinforcement with wire in lips and rims of eyes, I filled in her chin, cheeks, nose, and horn stubs with hot glue to make her face rigid in parts. I took the eyes that looked good for her, formed metal mesh sockets for them, and taped them in place. They look as I'd like, but I doubt this will be the final puppet solution because the eyes are flat on the back and don't roll smoothly via holes in the front. And ultimately, the tape with lose adhesion. But at this point I'm just trying to work out my methods and materials for these characters.

I masked her eyes with thin bag plastic and proceeded to paint an all over cream coat as base color. After tinting and shading with paint and chalks, I really love the results! This paper texture suits the rest of the Halfland world and hits the mark.

I found that even though she has human ears sculpted into the mask, that I could get a bit more emotion from her limited facial motion if I added wired, soft, goat ears to her, shaped from foam that will be machéd over and painted to match.

I sculpted a couple sizes of horn forms out of light-weight air-dry modeling clay for her, the larger size, that better matches her initial sketch concept, takes to much focus away from her face to me. But I don't want the smaller size horn to indicate that she is too young to be wise. Will paint them up and see which are better to go with.

Continuing to make puppet skin tests and trying many things, finding what works for which part of which character. Paper works for the faces but NOT for hands, fingers, nude bodies, etc.

Stabilized Gelatine casts are working for those things[!!] See next post! Meanwhile, say hi to Rana.