More Muppety Goodness

Here's the scoop:

First, I found a place in Milwaukee that sold foam rubber (which I'd never worked with before, but found oddly compelling). I picked Foam Rubber Products, a little shop somewhere near downtown. The journey was harrowing: we got lost and accidentally ended up in south Milwaukee before making our way back and finding the place just in time (fifteen minutes before they would've closed up shop). Mind you, this was in some pretty horrible torrential rain, with that lovely Milwaukee wind that only really blows in one direction: right in your face.

Anyhow.

I bought a big ol' bag of scrap foam rubber from the place's scrap foam rubber bin for around twenty or thirty bucks. (Apparently, artists from MIAD came in moderately frequently, and so they were prepared.) The salesman I originally spoke with told me he'd let me have the whole bin for fifteen dollars, but then his manager came by and raised the price. It's alright- I couldn't have gotten it all in the car, anyway. I would say I received approximately enough foam rubber to sculpt a full-sized cow for my buck, though, and that is definitely a decent amount. Stuffing it in the trunk while hail poured down was not super-fun.

Once I had the material to work with, I set about learning to sew. Various needles and types of thread were used; I settled on a combination of fishing line and some sturdy thread. I used toothpicks to mock-up where I wanted the different pieces of foam I had cut to fit, then sewed them (with help from my friend, Rachel) onto the main cores of the beasts. The camel puppet is one layer of thin foam rubber "skin" over a foam rubber armature; the puppet of a more "human" appearance is made up of three layers of "skin" wrapped around each other. Details were added with scraps of foam rubber (sick of typing that now), and eyeballs were created from ping pong balls and Sharpies. I left the "human" puppet's eyeballs whole, so I could rotate them in their skin "sockets" for the pictures I'd be taking.

After everything was sewn together, I began (again with Rachel's assistance) to coat both of the creatures with theatrical makeup. I chose it for its ability to coat without soaking in or sitting on top of the material (something I was afraid any type of paint I had might do), and for its more "natural" appearance. (I was, after all, trying to make these appear as if they'd come to life.) I used to do a bunch of miniature painting (Warhammer, 40k, et cetera), and found that it was pretty much the same thing, except that the makeup-caked sponges I had to use did not provide nearly as smooth, nor as forgiving, an application process as did tiny little 12-hair brushes.

And then, after maybe 20 hours of work, I was done. I had my roommates model my creations for me, set up some shots, took them, touched them up in Photoshop, printed and presented them. One photo was selected for a student photography and film show. Pretty sweet.

Take a gander for more of the series. Unfortunately, free flickr accounts do not allow for more than 5mb pictures, so the whole thing is not up at this time.