I think I can help you with that. I built myself a nice little vacuum former. PM me and we can sort it out.I wonder if anyone here can make 35mm vacuform domes? I’ve been looking to get something like that done as they’d be a touch lighter than the plastic ones i’ve Been using!
I use the same ‘Henson’ or also known as a ladder stitch for all the stitched parts. It’s hard to see after the fleece is fluffed up to hide the seams.
But here is a photo of a leg that i was stitching up. This stitch technique is highly versatile; you can very easily attached just about anything, like the limbs, easily onto the body. When stitching the arm or leg to the body, just use the same technique, going back and forth between the edge of the leg or arm to the body. The stitch will appear as a kind of zig zag pattern before you use a needle to pull out/fluff the fibers to hide the seam.
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Here’s a pic showing the bottom of—Kermit build #5–where you can kind of see where the legs attaches to the body.
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Wasn't the original made using ping pong balls? They're 40mm around the middle and I believe were cut just below the half way point where they start to curve back in.I wonder if anyone here can make 35mm vacuform domes? I’ve been looking to get something like that done as they’d be a touch lighter than the plastic ones i’ve Been using!
Jim Henson said that the myth of the ping pong balls was some what correct but not entirely. It’s more likely that they molded some spheres and cast them to be thin.
In contrast, I have been trying some other ways to attach the eyes, I glued some extra fleece to the inside of the eye. I left one row of the fleece exposed and sewed that to the fleece on the top of the head. It worked until my dad used him too roughly and the seam popped out. I still haven’t figured out a good way to glue on the fleece. My objective is to make it so that there is nothing inside the head to affect the performance.
The only thing I could think of is to trim the fleece in a circle on the head where the eyes should be and then glue to the liner. But I don’t think that will turn out well. Also with the post and other methods the eyes sometimes have a gap between the fleece and the eye. I am going to try to lift some fleece around the eyes to try to make that go away. But I am unsure how well that would work.
I don’t like the post in the head because when I move my hand to give like an uneasy expression I bump them and move the eyes slightly. There aren’t many other characters out there where the eye need to be on the fleece and there isn’t something behind it to attach to. In fact I don’t know of any others at all that need to attach eyes like Kermit does.
Sorry, I still dont quite understand how to deal with the wires around mouthplate. Is there no wire on the upper jaw? I drew a picture, are the wires in the right position?The way I made my ‘photo puppet’ version was actually super simple. I drew a quick and messy sketch below that kind of shows what I did. Basically, like a human body, the spine acts a support and the arms and legs on Kermit are just connected to the spine. I made the spine out of about three bendable wires which I used some duct tape to keep together (holds surprisingly well and flexible also). The wires are attached to the bottom of the mouthplate. Unfortunately I didn’t really take photos of the process when I made him; I only made one photo puppet version as I prefer to make the functional performance puppet versions.
You really only have to make the arms and legs bendable, as his body doesn’t bend, being so round and large. So the spine in this case only acts a place for the arms, legs, and mouthplate to connect to. The mouthplate also has additional wires on the back edge so that it can also be posed opened and closed.
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Sorry, I still dont quite understand how to deal with the wires around mouthplate. Is there no wire on the upper jaw? I drew a picture, are the wires in the right position?
I found the seam of the bottom of my photo puppet's body is quite wired. What it is look like of your photo puppet?
Thanks.
When using the puppet version of your Kermit do you have anything inside of the head to make it more triangular in shape? I ask this because I recently viewed some photos of Kermits head and it kind of looks like there's more in there than just the puppeteers hand. Like perhaps a small triangular styrofoam topping of some sort
Did you use the black velvet for his pupils? I'm having a heck of a time using the velvet as pupils. Every time I get close to the correct shape little pieces of the velvet will flake off thus altering the shape and then I have to start from scratch. The velvet I'm using doesn't have the adhesive backing on it so I believe that might be making it more challenging. I'm thinking about going with regular old black felt but am afraid it would compromise the end result. Any suggestions ECL?