Matt
With the scratches now past, this was our second of 2 days back in the workshop before rehearsals. The main aim was to work on the puppet, adjusting and re-designing parts that had been an issue or could be an improvement on our central character Ted.
Whilst Will worked on reshaping the hands and then covered them in reno-flex to give them extra strength and durability, I turned my attention to the detail of the head mechanism on Ted. Now that his character has been established, I could begin to work with a mechanism that both fitted my hand perfectly and also would allow me the control to create the puppet's head movements with ease. I had established that the old system of a central head rod, raised one issue: when the head turned left or right the body would also turn as it was attached to his lower body. After some pondering over design to solve this problem (it was in fact a keyring that gave me the idea) I decided to cut the rod and the lower half would now be attached to the body and the top half would be attached to the bottom half with a simple twisting mechanism, which meant when the head turned left or right, only the head would move and not the entire upper body.
This work took up the best part of the day and the day was finished off with re attachibg the head, and tidying up the mechanism inside the head and body, so it was free in movement. It was little touches like adding candle wax to the slide bar which moves the head up and down, which will make the puppet fluid in movement and comfortable for the puppeteer to use.
Onto rehearsals tomorrow with our updated puppet, Ted.
With the scratches now past, this was our second of 2 days back in the workshop before rehearsals. The main aim was to work on the puppet, adjusting and re-designing parts that had been an issue or could be an improvement on our central character Ted.
Whilst Will worked on reshaping the hands and then covered them in reno-flex to give them extra strength and durability, I turned my attention to the detail of the head mechanism on Ted. Now that his character has been established, I could begin to work with a mechanism that both fitted my hand perfectly and also would allow me the control to create the puppet's head movements with ease. I had established that the old system of a central head rod, raised one issue: when the head turned left or right the body would also turn as it was attached to his lower body. After some pondering over design to solve this problem (it was in fact a keyring that gave me the idea) I decided to cut the rod and the lower half would now be attached to the body and the top half would be attached to the bottom half with a simple twisting mechanism, which meant when the head turned left or right, only the head would move and not the entire upper body.
This work took up the best part of the day and the day was finished off with re attachibg the head, and tidying up the mechanism inside the head and body, so it was free in movement. It was little touches like adding candle wax to the slide bar which moves the head up and down, which will make the puppet fluid in movement and comfortable for the puppeteer to use.
Onto rehearsals tomorrow with our updated puppet, Ted.
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