Kermit the Frog here! V2 finished. V1 patterns posted!

[bk85]

It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights, it's time to build a Kermit on the RPF tonight!

Fair warning to all that this thread will be more like a live build diary as I try and make a Kermit replica for the first time, warts and all. I've spent enough time pouring over ECL's threads and various Muppet builder groups/websites to know that I am going to fail many many many times in the hope of eventually getting it right. I am literally starting with no practical knowledge of puppet building, dyeing, sewing, etc. It's about to get real ugly real fast. But that's part of the fun! So please, don't waste your money on materials thinking I know what I'm talking about.

I'm really going into this with the intention to do my best to post my mistakes, corrections, patterns, dye formulas, fabrics, glues, etc. all the way to the end. One thing that I keep seeing in the Muppet builder community is lots of little hints but I think the amazing and generous ECL is the gold standard with knowledge sharing, and even then later patterns were not shared (and that's totally understandable!!). I'm never planning on regularly selling these as a business, nor am I one to ever take my secrets to the grave, so just about the only thing to stop me would be "the Mouse" himself. I am someone who just hopes to help people save some time and money if they want a starting point a bit further along than is available right now. Alright, enough jibber jabber!

Since I don't want to waste money on good fleeces for my early builds, I bought a ton of cheap, close enough fabrics from Hobby Lobby until I get close enough to work on the real puppet fleeces. Cheap fabrics are on the left, the more final ones are on the right (F3 fleece, Nylafleece, and Fuzzelle, both white and factory dyed when available).

I also bought a copy of "Of Muppets and Men", as well as a 1978 Kermit hand puppet that used the same Malden Mills fleece that Henson started using at this time, as it was cheaper and shinier than Antron fleece, thought not nearly as stretchy. Also awaiting a real swatch of Kermit's fleece that I recently grabbed in the Junkyard, but the specific year is unknown.

Fun tidbit- from what I've read, Jim made sure that the deal that allowed Malden Mills to use their fleece on 70s/early 80s merchandise included a stipulation that the Muppet Workshop be given lots of free fleece from Malden Mills. That started a relationship that lasted decades. This is also why Kermit becomes shinier around the time of the Muppet Movie, which is the era that I'm going for.

Now it's time to clean off my desk and get to work!!

 

[bk85]

Key Posts:

Start of prototyping phase- post #5
Last step of prototyping phase and final pictures- post #49
v1.0 patterns and .stl files- post #50
v2.0 started- post #57

 

[nick daring]

Watching this with great anticipation. I'll go down this road myself someday. Such a great project.

 

[bk85]

Watching this with great anticipation. I'll go down this road myself someday. Such a great project.

Thank you for that and I totally agree! I grew up on Muppet Babies, Muppet Show reruns, and the Muppet Christmas Carol ties for first place on my list of favorite Christmas movies, so to have my own Kermit will mean the world to me. As much as I love props as objects and how they help tell a story, this build already feels totally different to me. I think it's because the child in me believes that the Muppets are living breathing creatures so there's a relationship that they've built with us over the years. And for me, that relationship has grown much deeper over the past few months of full Muppet immersion.

 

[bk85]

I couldn't wait and got on a bit of a roll last night. I made 3 heads in quick succession to just get a feel for how different sizes, patterns, and sewing techniques influence the final product. As expected, none of them looked like Kermit but I learned so much. I have watched every YouTube video by Adam Kreutinger, Swazzle Productions, Adam Savage's Muppet/puppet related videos, and so many others but until I got my hands in, I didn't realize how much a little tweak can make such a difference to the end product.

ECL did recommend making the body before the head due to the body's influence on the shape of the final product but I will hold off on that until I get to the close enough phase. This is just about tests and getting a feel for things.

Let's focus on build #1, which was ECL's original pattern using a 9" circle as a test. I do want to flag that ECL did suggest an 8 1/2" circle, but I've got long fingers, and figured I'd start big. This was a mistake . Just to clarify, the original pattern is mostly a circle that has a wedge cut out of it, the diameter of that circle is what I'm referring to when talking measurements. For these early tests, I'm just using cheap, basic anti-pill fleece from the fabric store. I'll also be using cardboard from Amazon boxes, cheap flimsy felt, red flocked fabric, hot glue, and basic green thread. These tests are just about making as many versions as possible for as little money as possible.

First step was printing the pattern, cutting it out, and then tracing it on to the fleece. I cut off a more manageable piece of fleece to work with. The fleece below is folded in half and doubled up so that I could cut both pieces at once. I also did wrong sides out so that the tracing lines wouldn't be visible when the puppet is assembled. I used a green sharpie for marking the fabric. Not sure why the 2 photos have such drastically different colors, but the real color is somewhere in the middle of these 2.

Next I pinned the two layers of fleece together and started cutting. Fleece will stretch and shift just by breathing on it the wrong way, so pinning is definitely the way to go! I tried cutting with a rotary cutter and that didn't work out very well, so I recommend sharp scissors for this. I'm using some super heavy duty 11" shop shears from Harbor Freight and they're doing a great job so far. After cutting, but before removing the pins, I used some small clamps to hold the pieces together.

I sewed the top head/neck and bottom jaw/neck. I think I used about a 6-7 foot long piece of thread that I doubled over, in standard sewing practice, for each side. You want to leave the mouth (the wedge shape) and the neck hole open and un-sewn. I just did a quick whip stitch by hand. I'm not worried about seams or longevity at this point. I don't have a sewing machine but that's fine because a lot of puppet sewing is supposed to be done by hand so that you can use specific stitches to hide the seams (I'll go into more detail when we eventually get to the good fleece). If you do have a sewing machine and choose to use it, you will want to sew directly on the pattern line. There is usually no seam allowance in most puppet patterns.

Next I cut out the mouth plate from cardboard. The mouth plate is then cut in half and a piece of gaff tape is put on the front and one on the back to help make a hinge. You want to leave about a 1/3 to 1/2 inch of space between the pieces so that the hinge can work well. Cut off the excess tape from the sides. I'd recommend The Creature Works Studio's video "Puppet Building Episode 4" on this to help make sense of it, if needed.

Originally, I was just going to leave the plain cardboard but I decided to go ahead and finish up the inside of the mouth with some red/black/pink felts that I just hot glued to the cardboard. This pic is from build #2 as I forgot to take one from build #1

The next step was hard to take pics of, so apologies for that. I'll figure out a way to do it in one of the future tests. I had to secure the head to the mouth plate. I just used hot glue on the edge of 1 quadrant of the mouth at a time. A bead of hot glue goes down on the outer edge of the red felt and the inside of the fleece is put down on top of that. You want green fabric to be bordering the inside of the mouth. Here is a pic of the end result. And no, it's not supposed to look this sloppy...

Now it was time to put it on my hand. Turns out 9" is WAY too big. Like, it might even be too big for Andre the Giant's hands. Don't do 9".

That about wraps up test build #1. Lessons learned:
1) The original pattern had way too much extra fabric around the mouth. Kermit is supposed to have some excess fabric folding in the corners of his mouth, but not this much.
2) The neck is a little too bulky.
3) The top of the head is a little too bulky for the proper proportions.
4) Don't go big. If somebody is a master at their craft and they tell you something, just listen to them.
5) Hand sewing is much more calming and therapeutic than I would have thought. It was nice just getting lost in the rhythm of it.
6) Even on the cool setting, hot glue is evil.
7) Pin, clamp, do whatever it takes to prevent the fabric from slipping around.
8) Buying cheap supplies in bulk is still expensive.

 

[bk85]

Now for tests 2 and 3. The process was the same as above so I'll just put some notes and pics here.

Test #2 ECL pattern 8.5"
Same pattern as above, but scaled down a bit. The overall fit was much better but it was still pretty baggy in some places. As expected, this will most likely be the base pattern that I do modifications on. Kermit looks kinda disappointed in me in the first pic . Sorry buddy, I'll get it right eventually.

Test #3 Facebook pattern
There is a pattern that I grabbed off of a Facebook group, and the maker did make it as a theoretical pattern as it had not been tested yet. I wanted to give it a try and see what the results would be to compare. It had some aspects that were good, but was a little baggy in areas that ECLs wasn't. I will take some of the things I liked and try to use them to adjust the ECL pattern.

The other thing that I did while making this head is stitching tests. I tried a more exact whip stitch, a ladder stitch, and a stitch that I saw on a Swazzle video. Anti-pill fleece does not hide seams well at all, which is apparently why it isn't usually used in Muppet style puppet building. Because of this, I figured that if something worked well on the anti-pill it would work all the better on the better fleece. Hopefully. The Swazzle stitch won by a landslide. The seam was barely visible. I used it for half of the top of the head. The video for this is titled "Sewing puppet fleece with an invisible seam, Live Puppet Building Tutorial". It's basically a whip stitch but you only sew in and out of the middle and very bottom of the substrate of the fleece, kinda weaving the 2 pieces together. I also think doing it side by side means little to no bunching effect.

Now, I do want to mention that puppet fleece hides seams REALLY well, so sewing like the demonstration shows is not required. I'll do more tests of various stitches and how they affect basic fleece and various puppet fleece seams.

Since this stitch was supposed to be sewn with the 2 pieces of fabric side by side rather than on top of one another, I put little lines to make sure alignment was correct as I went along. I think this is something I will carry through future builds regardless of sewing method.

Normal stitch

Swazzle style stitch (top half of seam)

That's it for today. Tomorrow I'll enter the world of pattern modification. I still want to try the Master Replicas pattern and see what results that yields but I am out of ink, so it'll have to wait.

Lessons Learned:
1) Small changes yield HUGE results
2) Thimbles exist for a reason
3) Using an iPhone in one hand to take pictures of a puppet on your other is difficult AF

 

[bk85]

Today was all about adjusting patterns. This is definitely something that I forgot to learn about, so I just winged it.

Pattern modification attempt #1:
For my first attempt, I just took scissors to ECL's pattern, made cuts where I thought appropriate, added on some paper where I thought it needed it, etc. I used ECL's original mouth plate. This is what resulted. I attached some 35mm half dome eyes that I purchased when gathering supplies, just out of curiosity. Kinda makes it look like Kermit's distant zombie relative.

I gotta say that I didn't hate the result. I definitely over trimmed a bit too much in some areas. I had to FORCE my knuckles up because there wasn't nearly enough slack int he fabric. It still wasn't right, but I thought it had promise. I changed tracks on how to modify patterns.

Pattern modification attempt #2:
Since there were things that I liked about both of yesterday's patterns and some things that I thought needed adjustment on both, I figured that the best way to do this would be to trace each pattern on a piece of card stock one after the other. I tried to line up major landmarks of them so that I could have the best representation of where they differed. The scale wasn't exactly 1:1 but it was close enough. I then took another color marker and made my own pattern by taking some things from one, some from the other, and sometimes just made my own way. I didn't take a pic of that, but I just quickly mocked up what I originally did to help explain the process. This is NOT a pattern to use. I have no idea what it would look like. I also did this same process when making a mouth plate for this version.

ECL is in yellow, "Facebook" is in orange, and the approximate path I made is in blue. I think this really highlights the subtlety of changes that need to be made.

Next I cut along the blue line and used that as my pattern to get this. I had the idea to try and use some painter's tape to tape the neck to my arm to try and simulate the tension that the body would put on it.

Turns out I overcorrected the sizing a bit because this one turned out pretty baggy. I think a big part of this was due to my mouth plate modifications. There were some minor areas of improvement though. Also, I realized that the head needs to be less rounded on top. My mind went back to a Master Replicas pattern that is floating around the web. I've heard mixed reactions about it, but thought it might contain a secret or two. By the way, the MR version refers to what the result was of somebody taking their Master Replicas poser Kermit apart and seeing how it was put together. They posed a pic of an exploded view and somebody in the community traced it out.

Pattern modification attempt #3:
I used my 2nd pattern as the base that I made adjustments to. I don't have the MR pattern printed but I decided to pull it up on my laptop and just kind of guessed where I should draw a line that combined my attempt with the MR one. I took a pic just after I started cutting along the pencil line, and this is what it looked like:

Using that pattern gave me this guy:

I feel like this is the best one so far, but PLEASE tell me if I'm just delusional. I know when I use the gasket rubber for the moth plate, it'll affect the shape of the mouth a bit, so I'll probably have to keep chipping away at slight modifications but I think I might be at a point where I should try to use the puppet fleece for the head moving forward. Please feel free let me know your honest thoughts, good, bad, or otherwise. I would really like some additional eyes/opinions!

Lessons learned:
1) Don't move paper around your sewing needle, loose it, not realize it for 5 minutes, search your carpet to find it, come up with nothing, only to have the needle find your foot about 30 minutes later.
2) Don't be scared to modify patterns to make them your own, just make very small adjustments.
3) Adjusting the mouth plate has a HUGE difference on how the face is shaped.
4) Painter's tape can still rip your hair off.
5) Safety pin patterns to the sewn item to keep track of what pattern produced what shape. When you're 6 heads deep, tracking becomes very important.

 

[bk85]

Over the past few days, I've been tweaking here and there. I'm up to version 9 of my pattern. I've been trying to make 1 new head each day after work.

I feel that somebody much more competent in pattern making would need to make fewer incremental changes than I have but I'm just not well trained in the relationship between a 2D pattern and its 3D product, but learning is half of the fun! I'm also sure it would be MUCH easier to trim, pin, re-sew a previously made head that is close but I would rather learn by adjusting the pattern and seeing what results rather than taking apart a modified head and tracing the pattern as I feel it will better help me to understand the cause/effect relationship of pattern creation/modification. I've also recently gotten a couple of hints from a few folks on Facebook, including an actual decades-long Muppeteer who, since The Great Muppet Caper, has puppeteered Kermit on occasion!

I've been following the same process as earlier- pattern, cut, sew, glue mouth plate, put on hand, rinse and repeat. Here are versions 4-8 and I'll be sewing up pattern 9 tonight. Patterns 4 and 8 used Fuzzelle fleece so that I could familiarize myself with how it folds and drapes on the hand. It ain't cheap, but I feel like I'm getting close enough to use it for the last few patterns since it stretches/clings/drapes so differently from the cheap fleece. I think this each time, but I think pattern 9 might be the one. I was very happy with 8 but there was too much folding around the corners of the mouth.

Version 4

Version 5

Version 6

Version 7

Version 8

And just to show what the modifications have been, here is a diagram of each pattern overlayed atop each other with some geometry as well as ECL's starter pattern for reference. I traced pattern 4 in Illustrator and have been doing all of my modifications in there since then, and it has made things so much easier. It also let me easily make this cool graphic! I'm running out of distinct colors, so I'd better get this pattern figured out soon!

The final test will be adding eyes, and then probably scaling the pattern to make sure everything is proportional. I don't know how many patterns still lie ahead so I ordered some magnets and will be creating and printing magnetic half dome eyes so that I can move them from pattern to pattern without damaging anything. I'll post that STL once I create it.

 

[KOMakesThings]

Really cool to see all the iterations! Goes to show how tiny changes can have a huge impact on a build like this. I forget how many heads I went through for my Kermit, but I definitely tapped out way earlier than you. I've been thinking about redoing my Kermit to see if I could get him a bit more accurate so I'm really interested to see where you end up with yours.

 

[bk85]

Really cool to see all the iterations! Goes to show how tiny changes can have a huge impact on a build like this. I forget how many heads I went through for my Kermit, but I definitely tapped out way earlier than you. I've been thinking about redoing my Kermit to see if I could get him a bit more accurate so I'm really interested to see where you end up with yours.

Thanks! Yeah, I was surprised how small changes are exponentially reflected in the puppet. It's even more apparent in person. That being said, I have also come across 2 public patterns where they also showed off the final Kermit and while the patterns are VASTLY different, Kermit still ends up looking like pretty accurate! So yeah, I don't understand it.

Btw, your Kermit and Robin are awesome! I have read ECLs threads at least 5 times, and enjoyed your posts there. I have been planning on stealing your foam hand idea for a while now. As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with the concept and execution!

 

[bk85]

Just a minor update. I have finished version 9, and I am very happy with how it came out. It's a bit too big and I need to scale it down some, but I think the proportions are great. He's shaping up to be a bit more 90's Kermit but I'm fine with that for now. I actually was just watching Muppet Treasure Island while sewing him, and I held up my Kermit to the screen and it lined up almost perfectly. This is the first build where I used 1/16" rubber gasket material for the mouth plate which allowed me to scrunch the face. I had to slip a piece of fleece inside since it was too big for my hand.

I printed out 38mm half dome eyes, and embedded some magnets mid-print so that they'd be fully encased. I then slipped some other magnets on the inside of the fleece to hold the eyes in place. Once I did that, it became pretty apparent that the eyes are a few mm too small. This is more noticeable in person than pictures. Since I'm shooting for 38mm eyes (the standard size of ping pong balls pre-2000), I'll need to scale my pattern to match the eyes. I plan to print out a few different sized eyes, see what works best and then figure out the percentage to reduce the pattern.

The STL for the eyes is attached below. It's made for 38mm eyes, and 29.5mm x 2.7mm round magnets. I paused the print just before the magnet slot was going to be encased, put a dab of superglue to secure the magnets until they were covered by the PLA, added the magnets, and resumed the print. I was going to make 38mm collars for the paired magnets inside the head in order to keep the fabric close to the entire perimeter of the eye, but I held off on that for now as it would have been a bit bulky and rough where my hand goes.

Here's my latest attempt in motion. Yes... my puppetry needs some work, haha.

 

[SFPROPS]

The graphic with the multiple patterns and photos of your prototypes is super-helpful in seeing how the slight changes to the pattern effects the overall look. I did not know that pre-2000 ping pong balls where smaller by standard, and was trying to use 40mm because it seemed obvious that they (at least at first), wouldn't be agonizing over eyeball size when designing Kermit - they'd use what was available like the toy stacking shapes Salin often used for the eyes for other Muppets.

That is helpful as well. THANKS!

 

[bk85]

Just a check in. No major progress updates for now. After testing various eye sizes, I found that my most recent head iteration is scaled to 40mm eyes. I'm going to carry this 40mm version through the prototyping phase and then once I've got everything patterned correctly, I'll scale patterns down to 95% and then make my v1 Kermit.

I was going to start working on the foam body this weekend but apparently I wasn't paying attention when I bought the foam and got 1" thick foam rather than 1/2". I did try to make a body out of it, but I couldn't get my hand in. Also, it was too wide by 1" on all points of the torso.

I would love an expert opinion, but I think the fact that it was fatter by exactly 1" (when I know my math was 100% on point) leads me to believe that when you pattern something semi spherical in foam, the thickness of the foam yields a final product that has a radius of pattern+(foam thickness/2). This tells me that my pattern size needs to account for that. For example, if I were to make patterns for a perfect sphere 6" in diameter, and I used 1" foam, then the outer diameter of the sphere would be 7" (and the inside would be 5"). If I used 1/2" foam, it would be 6.5" and 5.5" repsectively. So the pattern applies to the middle cross section of the foam. I never had to think about this before as this is my first time patterning foam, but I guess it makes sense? The inside curves would be compressed a bit, and the outside would be stretched a bit, meaning that the only size that remains unchanged is the direct middle of the foam panel itself. Granted I have a sample size of 1, so I could be totally off my rocker and overcomplicating things!

Regardless, I have set aside the fabric store soft 1" thick PU foam and ordered some 1/2" reticulated foam online. Just have to wait for that to come in. I was going to just use PU foam for the entire prototype phase and only switch to reticulated once patterns are finalized, but I'm getting much more reticulated foam than I need (24"x116") due to minimum order size so I guess I'd might as well give it a shot from the get go.

Anyway, that's it for me today. Just in a bit of a holding pattern until I receive the foam.

 

[bk85]

Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody

The foam has arrived! While the internet was crashing and burning today, I made the most of some down time and started patterning out the body. Kermit's body uses "petal" shaped pieces that, when glued together, form the rounded oval shape. This is the case for most arm rod style puppets. By modifying the shape of the petal, you can create different rounded shapes. It's a really awesome technique because you can end up creating some pretty complex forms. You take a few foam shapes similar to the one here, and glue the sides together, and they'll form into a rounded tube like shape. You can also use cone, trapezoidal , or other shapes to modify proportions as well. The possibilities are endless!

One thing that I had to keep in mind is that Kermit's body is not symmetrical front to back. His back is a bit hunched and forms a consistent curve top to bottom along his spine. His front chest/belly is a bit more egg shaped, being widest around his stomach area, giving him a bit of a belly. My man's gotta lay off the dragonfly ice cream.

I have a few thoughts on how to how to best achieve the shape, but I'm going to keep it simple for this first prototype. I'm basically going to combine 2 different shapes, using a total of 8 petals. I know some folks use 6 or 7, but 8 sounds good to me for some unexplainable reason. From what I can tell in pictures, his front shape goes just past the center line of his side, so I'm breaking it up into 5 front shapes, and 3 back shapes. I took some diameter measurements at various points of the body of a 1:1 size print out of Kermit, figured out the circumference of those areas, divided by 8, and using those numbers, came up with a general average shape, which was similar to the not-a-pattern above, then I took that shape, made it a touch wider but still symmetrical. I then took that new shape and made a steeper curve towards the top, giving me these 2 shapes. Red is back, blue is front.

I then cut the shapes out of card stock, taped them together, and kept adjusting. I'm currently up to attempt 4, and I'm going to make this one out of foam tomorrow. It's not 100% but I want to see it in actual foam before I make additional adjustments. One of the things that I played around with was not having individual shapes all glued together, but a long shape that basically "glued" all the shapes together at the middle point so that I just needed to take care of taping where the darts are. Like this:

As I got to pattern 4, I started playing with the sloped line from the back of Kermit's neck to the front. Here are straight on and profile shots of the 4 mock ups. Keep in mind that the foam will naturally curve more than the card stock does. That's it for today, but I'll return tomorrow. Same frog time, same frog channel.

 

[KOMakesThings]

Best of luck with the torso building! Kermit's body size fluctuates so much (super relatable), it makes it hard to settle on a specific shape. I'm curious how you'll find cutting the torso out in one strip, I've thought about doing that for my next build to streamline the cutting/gluing. Might make it easier to add the final fleece layer as well, if you use the torso pattern as a pattern for the fleece?

 

[GamerMechanic81]

maybe this will help for reference or something

Kermit and Miss Piggy Smithsonian Display by GamerMechanic1981

This is a scan of the original muppets on display at the smithsonian museum of american history. Its not complete but should be useful as a way to determine some measurements for anyone who is trying to create replicas. Maybe someone more skilled in 3d models can use it for reference too.

www.thingiverse.com

 

[bk85]

Best of luck with the torso building! Kermit's body size fluctuates so much (super relatable), it makes it hard to settle on a specific shape. I'm curious how you'll find cutting the torso out in one strip, I've thought about doing that for my next build to streamline the cutting/gluing. Might make it easier to add the final fleece layer as well, if you use the torso pattern as a pattern for the fleece?

Thanks! So, it actually worked out fine. My next post will go over the process I went through today. It's way past my bed time so I'll post tomorrow.

Regarding using it as a pattern for the fleece, it's definitely an interesting and logical thought. Somebody had asked about that on one of the Muppet building Facebook groups. The guy asking would have had 1 back seam, 2 top darts, and 2 bottom darts. Rick Lyon (former Muppeteer, designer/maker of Avenue Q puppets, etc.) responded saying that it would cause too many seams. Another guy brought up the fact (which I learned when I tried a body with 1" foam) that the thickness of the foam increases the bulk of the body, which would make the fleece too tight, even though it's from the same pattern. In another answer, another builder said that his Kermit only has one seam along the back. I don't know how he manages that, but I'll try it out when I get to that step.That being said, I know ECL had to use a couple of darts- and you can see darts in the real 70s and early 80s Kermit. Gotta love the conflicting answers everywhere you look!!

 

[KOMakesThings]

Thanks! So, it actually worked out fine. My next post will go over the process I went through today. It's way past my bed time so I'll post tomorrow.

Regarding using it as a pattern for the fleece, it's definitely an interesting and logical thought. Somebody had asked about that on one of the Muppet building Facebook groups. The guy asking would have had 1 back seam, 2 top darts, and 2 bottom darts. Rick Lyon (former Muppeteer, designer/maker of Avenue Q puppets, etc.) responded saying that it would cause too many seams. Another guy brought up the fact (which I learned when I tried a body with 1" foam) that the thickness of the foam increases the bulk of the body, which would make the fleece too tight, even though it's from the same pattern. In another answer, another builder said that his Kermit only has one seam along the back. I don't know how he manages that, but I'll try it out when I get to that step.That being said, I know ECL had to use a couple of darts- and you can see darts in the real 70s and early 80s Kermit. Gotta love the conflicting answers everywhere you look!!

Wow, only one seam is crazy to me. I guess depending on the shape of the body/stretch of your fabric it might be a lot easier then you'd think.

Kermit's been around for so long I imagine that certain building methods are correct for one era and incorrect for another. Would be really cool to have a display with a bunch of different Kermit's from each decade to show the evolution of his build. There's probably a lot of very subtle differences that you'd only notice if you have a side by side comparison.

 

[GamerMechanic81]

Wow, only one seam is crazy to me. I guess depending on the shape of the body/stretch of your fabric it might be a lot easier then you'd think.

Kermit's been around for so long I imagine that certain building methods are correct for one era and incorrect for another. Would be really cool to have a display with a bunch of different Kermit's from each decade to show the evolution of his build. There's probably a lot of very subtle differences that you'd only notice if you have a side by side comparison.

Yeah. Im afraid I didn't pay enough attention to the signs at the Smithsonian to know exactly what era the one I scanned came from, and I had to be quick but I figured someone here could use it somehow. It is possible to take measurements directly from the scan. Things like the length of arms and legs and even the size and shape of the feet should be something that might be gleaned from it.

 

[bk85]

Would be really cool to have a display with a bunch of different Kermit's from each decade to show the evolution of his build.

That would be the dream! If I ever move back into a 2 bedroom, I could totally imagine having a row of Kermits through the years sitting atop a wall of bookshelves in a home office. I have a loooooooong way to go before I'm good enough at replicating the nuances. This page is a pretty cool, simple breakdown of the major changes over time. It would be awesome to have 1 of each. Kermit the Frog Through the Years

Yeah. Im afraid I didn't pay enough attention to the signs at the Smithsonian to know exactly what era the one I scanned came from, and I had to be quick but I figured someone here could use it somehow. It is possible to take measurements directly from the scan. Things like the length of arms and legs and even the size and shape of the feet should be something that might be gleaned from it.

Thanks for making the scan and pointing me to it!! I used my extremely rudimentary skills in blender to try and take some measurements, but didn't have a lot of luck getting the tool to snap to the points. I did get a few though, and (assuming my measurement attempts were accurate) it pretty much confirmed some of the measurements out there. 3.5" width for the mouth plate, about 7 inches for the body height, etc. so it seems like some of the key measurements I've gleaned from the community or extrapolated myself have been pretty on point