Tag: Little Angels Theatre

Miniature Model

Markus has been making a model farmyard for an external film project. The plan is to show the landscape now as a pig farm then 400 years prior as a lush and biodiverse forest.


It’s interesting talking with him, I assumed miniature makers were very specialist but he said he’s not necessarily had any training or done this extensively before. He’s worked with the theatre and Oliver a lot before and has learnt as he’s done various projects with them.

Me and some other interns who were on a production course were asking how Oliver got into puppet making and this work of theatre making. He said he slowly fell into it and developed his skills. He recommended if we want to get more into puppet and theatre making that we should just do what we can in our own time and offer our skills to friends or local projects, talk to others about it, post about our work online and generally let it be known that we do this kind on work.

Pattern cutting for puppets

I was asked to help out Markus making the bodies for the mother and librarian puppets as he was having trouble figuring out how to pattern an hourglass form. I used my costume cutting knowlege to sketch a basic bodice bloack for the pattern, as if making a mannequin. I adjusted the shapes to match the design and proprtions compared to the father.

Mother pattern ver1; darts at the shoulder and waist to create the hourglass form.
Darts taped closed to create shape
Pattern ver 1 compared to fathers body – its too narrow as the father has side pannels meanwhile mother is based on a bodice black made of just a front and back
Pattern version 2 ; still needs to be a little wider and slightly less sloped shoulders
Final pattern for the mother.
Final puppet body
Body with costume – i draped the fabric over and sewed on the turtle neck collar

For the librarian character, they wanted a similar shape to the mother, but a little fuller and with a slight hunch back. I remebered on of the tailoring books i used at kingsleys had an extemsive section on pattern adjustments for different body types so referenced that to create the hunchback pattern.

Headteacher Puppet Process

Digital design reference
Full puppet design
Paper pattern created by sculpting the face in reusable oil based clay, cover in cling film, cover in tape, mark out pannels, cut and enlarge by 150% on a photocopier
Cut out pattern in plastazote
Glue pattern pieces together using contact adhesive
Face before being heat gun shaped – looks too round and undefined
The lips needed building up further, it took many attempts to get the expression right
Finished face – I used the heatgun to define the shape of the nose, bridge, forhead, cheekbones
Sketching ideas for the shoulders – it needed to support a graduation gown and a neck support
I used the hand drill to cut out a large hole to feed the coping saw blade through
Cutting out internal shape to make the structure lighter. Later I switched to a handheld jigsaw
Dremel to sand all cut edges smooth
I used disks of plastazote to build up the shoulders
My work on the puppet complete! She will have her face covered in pleather, painted and her hat attached