Blubottle
New Member
Hi there!
This is my first time posting to the RPF after a few months of casual browsing without an account. I wanted to share my recent attempt to build a Snerf from the Muppet Show
I haven't found anyone else who's built one yet. I'd love to hear from anyone who has. Also if anyone is inspired to have a go after reading this, I'd love to build an army of them. The world would be just a bit more amazing with more Snerfs in it.
Either way, here's the story of my build:
I was inspired by the Snerf's only appearance on the Muppet Show, although my research suggests there have been a number of versions over the years on Sesame street etc
Here's a link to the original video if you haven't seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9YhW1vOIBc
The original design seems to be a sort of black light puppet in which the performers are hidden in the black abyss behind the puppet. I'd seen versions of the technique here and there and tried boosting the brightness and contrast on the original video to try and catch a glimpse of the puppeteer and figure out how to operate it but to no avail.
I was then lucky enough to find a few behind the scenes photos of Jim Henson controlling a Snerf in full light:
So now we know the feet are controlled by hand and the body seems to be held upright on some sort of pole, likely controlled by either another person under the table or a fixed point. I suspected the former. The outer fur also seems to hang freely from the head, meaning the Snerf body can squash itself to a fifth of its height as seen in the video. It's a simple but incredibly inventive design.
So now I new the basic concept behind a Snerf, I started building one
I knew the head would need to be super stable since the body wasn't attached to much else. I acquired a plastic bowl for a skull along with an air-horn for the snout and classic ping pong balls for eyes. I eventually swapped the balls for yellow ones since that's the colour the originals had. Since I was scaling the puppet off the eyes, I knew it would come out smaller than the originals but that was fine by me.
The air horn was built in such a way that I could simply glue the base to the inside of the skull, drill a hole in the side and friction fit the horn part to the skull. It was a good way to secure the snout to the head without too much engineering.
As for the eyes, I simply glued them to some screws which I could then twist into pre-drilled holes on the correct part of the head (The pupils are self adhesive foam circles used for chair legs I think).
I also attached a wooden dowel to the top which I would later wrap in green fur to create a plume of hair similar to the original puppets. I imagine the official Muppet Snerfs simply used long hair but I didn't have any so wrapping shorter hair around a central column was the way forward
The feet were EVA foam bases which matched my hand. I initially used a dowel for extra grip but when I added the fur, I found I had more than enough control without them slipping off so I scrapped the handles and gave myself more space. Ideally I would have stitched fur on to some mittens or something. I'd love to hear any other ideas
Then it was time to stitch. I saved a bit of money by only buying sample sheets of green since I only needed it for the feet and hair plume. The body is just like a big sock so the overall complexity was low enough for me to make it without patterns. I just eyeballed most of the dimensions and the fur covered up a lot of my amateur sewing.
If anyone's interested, I used a chain stitch but I'm sure there are better methods (trademark Muppet Stitch anyone?). Also I would have preferred to use blue and green thread but I didn't have any to hand. Like I said, the fur hides most of it all the same.
Naturally, I left holes for the eyes, hair column and snout. The bottom was left open so the Snerf could slide up and down the central pole and the feet were attached to the bottom of the body.
Turning the fluffy sock inside out, I test fitted the assembly and found it pretty good for a first try. I'm also proud to say that I consciously made the decision to have the 'lay' of the fur upside-down to add an extra messiness. Thanks very much to Adam Savage's Totoro One Day Build for that little tip!
And there he is finished.
The motion of the puppet is just what I hoped. You can see from the pictures that he can squash and stretch almost as much as the originals could. Snerfs are also fairly easy to puppet, although you do need an extra person controlling the pole so it can look around and lean from side to side. Me and my sister made a pretty good puppet duo and spent hours figuring out the nuances of the character. We were astounded at the range of expression you can get out of him and we eventually decided to call him Herb (after Herb Alpert who wrote the original music from the Snerf clip)
And that's about it. I might make more Snerfs in the future since I have a fair bit of blue fur left over. Or I could branch out into other fluffy blue puppets? Cookie Monster? Maybe...
This was my first puppet project and I'm really happy with how it turned out and I'm grateful to be able to share it with people around the world. Thanks so much for taking to time to read all this if you got this far.
I'd love to hear any feedback and let me know if there are any other Snerf lovers out there!
-Michael/Blubottle
This is my first time posting to the RPF after a few months of casual browsing without an account. I wanted to share my recent attempt to build a Snerf from the Muppet Show
I haven't found anyone else who's built one yet. I'd love to hear from anyone who has. Also if anyone is inspired to have a go after reading this, I'd love to build an army of them. The world would be just a bit more amazing with more Snerfs in it.
Either way, here's the story of my build:
I was inspired by the Snerf's only appearance on the Muppet Show, although my research suggests there have been a number of versions over the years on Sesame street etc
Here's a link to the original video if you haven't seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9YhW1vOIBc
The original design seems to be a sort of black light puppet in which the performers are hidden in the black abyss behind the puppet. I'd seen versions of the technique here and there and tried boosting the brightness and contrast on the original video to try and catch a glimpse of the puppeteer and figure out how to operate it but to no avail.
I was then lucky enough to find a few behind the scenes photos of Jim Henson controlling a Snerf in full light:
So now we know the feet are controlled by hand and the body seems to be held upright on some sort of pole, likely controlled by either another person under the table or a fixed point. I suspected the former. The outer fur also seems to hang freely from the head, meaning the Snerf body can squash itself to a fifth of its height as seen in the video. It's a simple but incredibly inventive design.
So now I new the basic concept behind a Snerf, I started building one
I knew the head would need to be super stable since the body wasn't attached to much else. I acquired a plastic bowl for a skull along with an air-horn for the snout and classic ping pong balls for eyes. I eventually swapped the balls for yellow ones since that's the colour the originals had. Since I was scaling the puppet off the eyes, I knew it would come out smaller than the originals but that was fine by me.
The air horn was built in such a way that I could simply glue the base to the inside of the skull, drill a hole in the side and friction fit the horn part to the skull. It was a good way to secure the snout to the head without too much engineering.
As for the eyes, I simply glued them to some screws which I could then twist into pre-drilled holes on the correct part of the head (The pupils are self adhesive foam circles used for chair legs I think).
I also attached a wooden dowel to the top which I would later wrap in green fur to create a plume of hair similar to the original puppets. I imagine the official Muppet Snerfs simply used long hair but I didn't have any so wrapping shorter hair around a central column was the way forward
The feet were EVA foam bases which matched my hand. I initially used a dowel for extra grip but when I added the fur, I found I had more than enough control without them slipping off so I scrapped the handles and gave myself more space. Ideally I would have stitched fur on to some mittens or something. I'd love to hear any other ideas
Then it was time to stitch. I saved a bit of money by only buying sample sheets of green since I only needed it for the feet and hair plume. The body is just like a big sock so the overall complexity was low enough for me to make it without patterns. I just eyeballed most of the dimensions and the fur covered up a lot of my amateur sewing.
If anyone's interested, I used a chain stitch but I'm sure there are better methods (trademark Muppet Stitch anyone?). Also I would have preferred to use blue and green thread but I didn't have any to hand. Like I said, the fur hides most of it all the same.
Naturally, I left holes for the eyes, hair column and snout. The bottom was left open so the Snerf could slide up and down the central pole and the feet were attached to the bottom of the body.
Turning the fluffy sock inside out, I test fitted the assembly and found it pretty good for a first try. I'm also proud to say that I consciously made the decision to have the 'lay' of the fur upside-down to add an extra messiness. Thanks very much to Adam Savage's Totoro One Day Build for that little tip!
And there he is finished.
The motion of the puppet is just what I hoped. You can see from the pictures that he can squash and stretch almost as much as the originals could. Snerfs are also fairly easy to puppet, although you do need an extra person controlling the pole so it can look around and lean from side to side. Me and my sister made a pretty good puppet duo and spent hours figuring out the nuances of the character. We were astounded at the range of expression you can get out of him and we eventually decided to call him Herb (after Herb Alpert who wrote the original music from the Snerf clip)
And that's about it. I might make more Snerfs in the future since I have a fair bit of blue fur left over. Or I could branch out into other fluffy blue puppets? Cookie Monster? Maybe...
This was my first puppet project and I'm really happy with how it turned out and I'm grateful to be able to share it with people around the world. Thanks so much for taking to time to read all this if you got this far.
I'd love to hear any feedback and let me know if there are any other Snerf lovers out there!
-Michael/Blubottle
