Making Skin for Joints

Victor_E

Hi! This is my first real realistic animatronic project. The goal is a costume for a character with super long fingers. I’m trying to make giant puppet hands that’ll be manually controlled via mostly internal strings to match the movement of a person’s hand inside of them. I’ve got what’s essentially a working hollow plastic skeleton, but I have no idea how to give it realistic skin! I’ve done a ton of research, and I can’t seem to find any information for how to give realistic human-like skin to animatronic joints. I need a stretchy material that won’t wrinkle weirdly, and a way to mold it and attach it to the skeleton. Does anyone have any advice on what material and process to use?

Here are some photos of the skeleton of a finger, before I've added the internal string mechanism and proper joints (I used clothespins as a placeholder for joints during construction).

Alexander H

One of the best materials to use for skin, when it comes to stretching properties, is silicone. There's a few courses here that show how to work with it. It can be on the more expensive end, and can be a little tricky to make, but it's very close to a skin texture, can be painted, and is really durable.

Latex, or foam latex, are both also commonly used materials for skin properties, which are cheaper and slightly easier to work with, but don't have the same stretching properties as silicone - and being latex, will start to break down before silicone does.

Since the bones in the fingers look quite small, when designing/casting the skin, just make sure they're thick enough around the knuckles that the bones don't start to stick through!

Victor_E

Thank you! I'll look into using the silicone. What thickness do you recommend I make the silicone skin for the joints vs the rest of the finger? Much appreciated!