Baby raptor puppet
My daughter wanted to make a baby raptor (to match her brothers full raptor costume) and wanted to control it. We decided to make it a puppet that she could control. We settled on a design where it would look like she's holding the raptor egg with both hands and the dino would move. We needed three parts: A fake arm/hand, egg and dino puppet.
For the fake arm, we wrapped her arm in saran wrap and duct tape then cut it off her and taped it back together and filled it with GreatStuff foam. We put the arm in a cut off sleeve from an old shirt and pushed a strip of elastic through the top to attach it across her chest. We cast her hand in alginate and poured color matched 00-50 silicone in the mold. She painted the finger nails to match her real hands. We didn't really have time to paint up the hand, but it always passed as real. The fingernail polish made it for the night, but didn't stay on much longer than that. It did pickup every bit of lint and dust.
For the dino head I scaled a raptor pattern to a size that would fit her hand and made from upholstery foam. In retrospect, it could have been smaller. We made the eyes out of glass gems she had in her room. The teeth were made of sculty clay. The only painting she wanted done was to cover the exposed upholstery foam.
The egg was made from EVA foam and I basically freehanded a pattern and tried it. It seems like there should be an easier way to calculate this... I didn't have time to research it. It was spray painted with a couple of different white and off white textured paints then blue paint was thinned and 'thrown on' with a brush.
Lessons Learned:
- 8 yr old girl hands are very small scale everything appropriately.
- I could have had her hold her fingers straighter in the alginate or burped the mold better so no air bubbles on finger tips
- For something he size I should have made a rod puppet instead. I thought about it too late in the process.
- Pouring excess skin color silicone on packing foam makes cool looking skin textured something
For the fake arm, we wrapped her arm in saran wrap and duct tape then cut it off her and taped it back together and filled it with GreatStuff foam. We put the arm in a cut off sleeve from an old shirt and pushed a strip of elastic through the top to attach it across her chest. We cast her hand in alginate and poured color matched 00-50 silicone in the mold. She painted the finger nails to match her real hands. We didn't really have time to paint up the hand, but it always passed as real. The fingernail polish made it for the night, but didn't stay on much longer than that. It did pickup every bit of lint and dust.
For the dino head I scaled a raptor pattern to a size that would fit her hand and made from upholstery foam. In retrospect, it could have been smaller. We made the eyes out of glass gems she had in her room. The teeth were made of sculty clay. The only painting she wanted done was to cover the exposed upholstery foam.
The egg was made from EVA foam and I basically freehanded a pattern and tried it. It seems like there should be an easier way to calculate this... I didn't have time to research it. It was spray painted with a couple of different white and off white textured paints then blue paint was thinned and 'thrown on' with a brush.
Lessons Learned:
- 8 yr old girl hands are very small scale everything appropriately.
- I could have had her hold her fingers straighter in the alginate or burped the mold better so no air bubbles on finger tips
- For something he size I should have made a rod puppet instead. I thought about it too late in the process.
- Pouring excess skin color silicone on packing foam makes cool looking skin textured something
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