Getting Smarter

Why, look who's making his first real appearance in the making me department. It's Urhu, the serpent sage musician. In a Halfland speed record breaking performance, his armature and body build-up was made one night, his costume design decided, his head sculpted the next day, and the day after that (today) a new type of mold-material was used to successfully mold that sculpt.

Above is a montage of how the puppet currently looks with a audition sketch of concept I have for the finishing his scales.

Urhu was to be the only major 1/2L character that would be made with the build-up method vs. sculpting/mold making/casting. In hunting for what to use as his armature, I selected a length of Loc-Line. I fussed with it until I worked out how to configure a neck stem and arm with fittings. I added coated wire inside to firm his position holding and lengths of dowel for straight bones.

I caged the whole thing in multiple strands of wire(s) to hopefully keep it together should the Loc-Line fail, wrapped it in multiple layers of foam wrap, teflon and floral tapes, and building out bulk with layers of foam packing material secured with glue and masking tape.

I decided to have all the big characters use the same sized hand(s), all equally crude and articulate. Lower right shows it being bulked out with wire and more packing foam pieces.