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Advice needed on puppet building
Advice needed on puppet building
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the site and to building puppets for stop-motion animation. I've spent a lot of time searching the site and I found an overwhelming amount of information already, but I still could use some advice on what fabrics work best and the best place to purchase them online. I looked around locally at craft and fabric shops, but I didn't find anything I could use. They sold a lot of grandma patterns.
For a better idea of what I'm trying to build, here's the character I plan to eventually animate:
I think I would like to use a burlap material for the hat, but with a finer texture and lay it over some sort of bendable mesh so the hat can be manipulated as well. I found some textured floral wire and waxed thread for the hair, but neither comes in the shade of brown I need. I tired to use acrylics to change the color, but it smooths a lot of the texture in the hair that I'd like to keep. Here's a color test I did last night:
Does anyone know what they used on the corpse bride to animate her hair? I'd like to capture the same fine details.
- Champlain
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- 7 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
hi Champlain ,i have the same problem 
,maybe you could use thin wire?
- Thescottishanimator.
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
Hi Thescottishanimator,
I thinking that might be the best way to go too. What type of wire do you suggest? The florist wire shown above is 24 gauge and is covered with paper. I also have a spool of black painted 24 gauge wire, but it doesn't last long under stress tests and it doesn't take acrylic paint very well. Do you know of a flexible adhesive I can use with the wire?
Another idea I had was to link several strands of waxed thread together with tape and place a thin wire here and there to make it easier to shape. I'll have to experiment with it a little more.
Thank you for your help.
- Champlain
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- 7 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
They threaded very fine wire through her. Not sure what thickness though.
Watch some of the "making of" videos for the Coraline movie, in one of them they talk about the hair (similar to what you are looking for).
- JesseOffy
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- 168 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
Hi JesseOffy,
I've been watching Corpse Bride over and over, trying to figure out what materials they used for her hair. I have a few guesses. I have Coraline on DVD too. I'll check out the special features. Thanks for the tip!
- Champlain
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- 7 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
I'm not sure if this helps but here is a link for waxed thread. http://www.thethreadexchange.com/miva/m … bAodICTd3Q The waxed thread with small strands of wire hidden in it should do the trick.
- Trevor_T
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
Awesome, thank you for the link! I'm having trouble keeping the stands of waxed thread together with the wire. The glue I'm using doesn't stick with the wax. I'm going to look into latex and try to find a solution there.
- Champlain
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- 7 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
There's an extra large image of the Corpse Brides hair here:
http://www.halloweenweb.co.uk/wp-conten … nWeb-4.jpg
To me what it looks like, is that the single strands that are sticking out with the curled ends are nothing more than painted strands of "most likely lead" wire where the tips have been sanded or filed to a point. Then they seem to have just sculpted the rest of the hair. The strands just aren't uniform in thickness. I don't mean the hair is clay, but sculpted, molded and adhered in place.
I'm not saying it can't be done with the waxed nylon, but you might have a harder time adhering a waxed string onto your wire hair armature. Not much will stick to wax except more wax.
- Marc_Spess
- Creator of Animateclay.com
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- 232 Posts
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
First off, you character's design and art look brilliant, Do you need the hair to move in almost individual strands? If you don't, you could sandwich a peice of car body aluminium mesh between two layers of the waxed thread, so that it's more animatable.
- Marc_H
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Re: Advice needed on puppet building
@Marc_Spess
Hi Marc, Thanks so much for the hi res photo of the Corpse Bride. The amount of detail on her is amazing. I recently bought <em>Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding</em> and they briefly touch on what the Corpse Bride's hair is made of. According to the book, her hair is made of several different tendrils of mohair and silicon. I ordered some silicon last night and I hope to experiment with it soon. And you were right, waxed thread doesn't stick to anything. I really like the texture of it but nothing I tried lasted long. I think I'll also test out bend and bake clay with a few wires. I'm open to try anything.
@Marc_H
Hi Marc, Thank you for the compliment! My plan is for the hair of the Scarecrow Princess to move as one unit with individual strands animated separately near the bottom. I like your idea of using mesh to hold the hair together. I'll try that too. I just need to find a place that sells fine aluminum mesh...
Thanks again for everyone's help!
- Champlain
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- 7 Posts
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