11/10/2018 - LARGER VELOCIRAPTOR PUPPET

So after my experimentation with puppetmaking and a visit to the puppet theatre I wanted to try and get a bit more creative with my design. The particular thing I was interested in, was the seperate control bar feature in allowing precise control of head and body movements. I also felt intruiged by Molly's use of felt feathers in Rainbow Goose as a way of increasing surface texture and realism, and a Velociraptor felt like a good place to explore feathers from within the dinosaur kingdom.

In this puppet I also wanted to dramatically increase the parts and complexity, segmenting the form to allow for extra flexibility and movement. Working as before to sculpt the head before anything else, and embed the string foremost to increase strength, I also used the flexibility of plastecine and felt to simply embed each feather one by one along the scalp. 

I split the neck into 3 parts to allow it to flex and bend more easily much like a true velociraptor's, which would be particularly effective when the head is also mounted on a control bar of it's own. I was reffering back to my t-rex puppet at points to look at exactly where each thread enterred and left each piece, but also knew when the time came to the legs, I would have to create them differently to represent the unique shape of velociraptor.

Looking at reference images, I realised the leg was made of 3 sections which could flex in quite a variety of unique ways to run and jump, aswell as tear at food, attack and slash, with the largest muscular part the thigh to power the long jumping strides, and the thinner, strong boney lower sections, scalier and full of sinews and tendons for bolt like effectiveness.

The only thing that I knew would be more problematic with these puppets was leg action, as without a control mechanism running from the bottom of the foot,they would be prone to spinning and losing control. To counteract this I extra-weighted them with metal bolts in each foot and also a strip of felt on the lower knee joint to hopefully lessen spinning.

Before connecting the legs to the body I was able to test the movement of the main torso by holding them in the air, allowing me to look at the neck and head proportion and check the puppet puppet had character.

The next step was to add a tail, which I had also fletched in felt, and was segmented from the rest of the body, and the legs. It had almost entirely taken shape by this point.

All I had left to do was add arms and fletch them, and in this picture you can see the two different control bars between the body and head a bit more clearly.  After that the puppet was complete. Leg operation was a bit clunky and problematic during the walk cycle, however when stood still the puppet could bounce up and down on the spot, and looked very effective.

What also had worked incredibly well was the implementation of soft sections and different colours and tones to increase the lifelikeness. As well as the comprehension of movement along the tail, neck and head, giving additional life the dancing bobbing motions in the video at the pottom of this post. I think if I can perfect the leg locomotion, this could be a very convincing puppet indeed.

 Please scroll to the bottom for a video