The wooden puppet bodies are looking great - but, being wood, they are a little heavy. The puppets will be manipulated by a one-handed control system, which means that weight is going to be very important to pay attention to. Also, since the heads of our puppets are going to be the most visible part of the puppet body, we want to find a material that will give us the nicest sculpture as well. Function balanced with Aesthetics! That's puppetry.
We made each character head out of a different trial material to help us decide which we like best:
*Cece's trial head is CARVED WOOD,
*Rose's was designed by Sarah in a computer program
called Maya and is 3D PRINTED,
*Lars' head was sculpted by Nicky in clay and
cast in NEOPRENE in a plaster mold.
This is how Rose's head looks like printed in 3D! The Puppet Lab has a fancy 3D printer that takes an image digitally sculpted in an editing program like Maya or Sculptris, and prints it out in little ribbons of plastic. This is a great option for Rose's head, as he is the heaviest puppet of them all.
Here is the process of making Lars' Neoprene head: