Manufacture... Bugs and the Hands!!!

I now have the puppets made and a set to film them in! But what I forget is my large versions of the hands aswell as large bugs to do my close ups with!!

So firstly how I made the Hands

They were very simple design they had to look like what was already on the puppets, so a rough triangle shape with three fingers and a thumb put simply. What I did was to cut the triangle from pine and the fingers were made out of two pieces of dowel, that were cut to 2cm long, and the tips were chiseled to be a rounded tip. I then twisted copper, and aluminium wire together to go through the fingers and hand to connect them all. I drilled through them all linking in the center of the hand, and coming out at the end of the hand. At the end of the hand I then wrapped them all together and cut the excess off. The middle strand of wire remained long and thats what I then place half a wooden Pine arm on, to help make it look as if its part of the actual puppets. I glued the fingers into place, varnished and was done! Very quick and easy, but it made animating hand actions so much easier and neater =)

Heres photos of the plans, process and finished product!





Next is the Bugs!

I already had them planned out, not much had to change when it came to the design, I think i added an extra leg, but they were same aluminium/copper wire skeleton. I then used snip foam to bulk them out. I then cut that to shape them into a bug shape. I also made sure when I was making the first legs to put a wire hook there, that protuded through the foam for me to hang the bugs from when filming them flying. Once I had them shaped with the snip foam, I went on to cover there bodies in the right colour plastercine to finish them. Once they were covered, smoothed they were finished ready to film with!

Heres photos of the plans, aswell as me making them and a finished look at them! I will get some better photos of them done shortly when I do the main puppets at the same time =)