#puppet wip

A puppet? In the works? Yes, indeed!

Lately, I've been plugging away at making a mascot for my various accounts. I'm reviving an old puppet I had made ages ago with a fresh, new, 2.0 version, and he'll soon be the face of my little brand! Here's a quick doodle of what he looks like...

His name is Smarty Cat, a friendly, know-it-all tabby who likes to teach, learn about, and collect zany things. A bit too smart for his own good, he occasionally jumbles up his fun facts, and is always on the hunt for something new to learn. He also loves bubble wrap! I have no clue why, you might want to ask him.

Designed by Mistake??

Smarty was designed 13 years ago in a sculpture class I took, where we had 90 minutes to design and build a puppet out of scraps. In the rush of the project, I accidentally mixed up "alley cat", "smart alec", and "scaredy cat", misremembering the phrase as "smarty cat". Smarty went through an entire art show before I realized my mistake. Reading his namecard on the night he was displayed, it dawned on me! Whoops...

Here's some progress up until this point:

This 2.0 version of Smarty started off as a small clay sculpt I made patterns for. I then blew up the patterns, did some test mockups, altered the patterns, and settled on this size for the final:

I was happy with this! During this mockup stage, Smarty 1.0 was busy deciding on what colors of fur he wanted for his 2.0.

I had a sudden urge... to create a handpuppet. Specifically one of the Norway-dragon I made a while ago. Why this one specifically? I don't know... but I wanna try!

I started by looking up tutorials on Youtube and it did not disappoint... Puppet Nerd had some great tips to get me started though I didn't follow his advice 100%... I still wanted to make this my own.

It all started with this sketch...

I moved on to making this base. Then I had to take a break because for some reason nobody sells blue fleece anymore for some reason?? At least not of the kind that actually fits with the red and white I already have...

Until I found a fleece carpet. Its not 100% the right type of fleece but its blue! So finally I was able to get started on his "skin"

Then came the question about how to make his mane... now making it out of faux fur... but then how would I make the stripes???

Well I decided to instead make things a whole lot harder for myself... and made it out of yarn...

Each strand is basically just tied up in knots on the inside of the fleece... yes it took forever...

Afterwards I went over it with a pet brush to make it look smoother and...less like yarn.

I then created his body, and did the same yarn method on the top of the front, to create a lion's mane.

This is where I'm at right now. He is constantly asking for hugs, as someone who doesn't like hugs its a bit uncomfortable...but I accept it because he's so very soft... (I stuffed his body and face with cotton filling in addition to the foam "skeleton" to make him look less pointy and more plump. That was a good call...except it makes his mouth a tad bit harder to move...but its still perfectly usable.)

His paws are biiiig... Armrods have been ordered.

I debated with myself I should give him more traditional puppet eyes, I even got some styrofoam balls to make them out of... but after checking how it would look with just pieces of paper I decided I prefer my usual method of creating puppet eyes... painting on a piece of fleece. The freckles are made with needle felting.

I also intend to give him legs, wings and feet, as the sketch implies. I haven't quite decided if I'm gonna do the antlers yet...cuz I haven't entirely decided what the best method to do that... For a while I pondered if I should do his crown too and if so how...then I remembered I have worbla-plastic, a heat gun and gold paint...I can easily make him a custom crown!