Body Transplant...

For some time I've been mulling over changing the look of the puppets, and going for a Large Head/Small Body aesthetic, which is more in line with traditional drawn caricature. To that end, on Christmas day I made a small body using foam sheets glued together and cut to shape, and children's clothes I'd bought some time ago with this use in mind. Here are the results with Boris Johnson and Benjamin Netanyahu...

Sibling Rivalry...?

Some time ago, my Rubber Balls collaborators Jon Rist and Ian Buchan asked if I could make - wait for it - a talking belly creature for a short film they were planning. The upshot was that I found myself one day slathering Ian's midriff with a load of soft-soap mould release, and then bandaging him up like an accident victim, so I could produce a mould of said body section.

From this I made a hard polyurethane foam 'plug' conforming to the shape of Ian's belly. Slap a load of clay on that, sculpt a weird face into it, fling a ton of plaster onto that and voila! You end up with an open mould of the belly creature, from which a latex skin is made. Using foam sheet cut into shape, I made a substructure for that onto which I attached a 'chassis' bearing cable-operated mechanisms to operate the creature's eyes (left and right movements) and mouth, the lower jaw being sprung and capable of moving up and down.

Although appearing to be a radical departure from my usual subjects,  the belly-brother's face was modelled vaguely after Ian's features, my concept of it being that it was kind of a Siamese Twin gone wrong...

Anyway, here's the film:

And here are some photos which are, hopefully, fairly self-explanatory (mainly because I can't be bothered to explain them)...