Georgie & Company, Part 2...
Blogger seems to be having some problems with uploading lots of pics at once, so I'm trying for smaller installments to get all these pics posted. Here are some closeups of Grandpa's handsome kisser (no drooling on the screen...you know you want to...) which was made out of Super-Sculpey with a separate lower mandible (also made of Super-Sculpey) that I formed over a single piece of aluminum wire, the ends of which were stuck into the skull where the jaw would naturally connect. I baked the whole thing and after cooling attached it to the freshly beheaded armature of Adam Wellsbrook (a.k.a. "Mouthless Boy") who was ripe for a new head anyway.
The whole thing was painted with acrylics, and then given a thin coat of latex and cotten (pigmented with acrylics the same color as the base coat) which I picked at and smooshed around to give it that mummified flesh look (or what I imagine it to look like, anyway). It seems like mixing acyrylic paints into the latex before it goes on the puppet seems to make the latex dry faster. Anyone else notice this? I didn't give Grandpa too many lines because with only one wire holding the jaw in place too many back and forth moves would have caused it to break off, and there was really no way to fix it without major headaches.
Grandpa's hands have held up really well, having been thru several films now in different incarnations. The fingers were made of twisted green florist wire, which I find lasts a long time without breaking, and in this instance I added tiny Super-Sculpey finger bones so that they would bend where the knuckles would be. I dipped the hands in latex (pigmented with acrylics) and they turned out pretty well, providing very fluid movements but NO grip strength at all. Holding props requires a small piece of Stick-Tac (the stuff you use to make picture frames hang straight) or Sticky-Wax (which they use extensively on ROBOT CHICKEN but I've been unable to find yet...) My only qualm is that they were a little long and spidery for the earlier films this armature was used for, but they fit Grandpa's spindly frame just fine...
More to come!
The whole thing was painted with acrylics, and then given a thin coat of latex and cotten (pigmented with acrylics the same color as the base coat) which I picked at and smooshed around to give it that mummified flesh look (or what I imagine it to look like, anyway). It seems like mixing acyrylic paints into the latex before it goes on the puppet seems to make the latex dry faster. Anyone else notice this? I didn't give Grandpa too many lines because with only one wire holding the jaw in place too many back and forth moves would have caused it to break off, and there was really no way to fix it without major headaches.
Grandpa's hands have held up really well, having been thru several films now in different incarnations. The fingers were made of twisted green florist wire, which I find lasts a long time without breaking, and in this instance I added tiny Super-Sculpey finger bones so that they would bend where the knuckles would be. I dipped the hands in latex (pigmented with acrylics) and they turned out pretty well, providing very fluid movements but NO grip strength at all. Holding props requires a small piece of Stick-Tac (the stuff you use to make picture frames hang straight) or Sticky-Wax (which they use extensively on ROBOT CHICKEN but I've been unable to find yet...) My only qualm is that they were a little long and spidery for the earlier films this armature was used for, but they fit Grandpa's spindly frame just fine...
More to come!
posted by Michael Granberry at 1:11 PM
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