Zulu Zombie Puppet Body

I started to fixing my body together and made shore I had the right movement I wanted, and I had figured out how to tackle the movement, from doing the legs the week before and I wanted a nice back bone movement but not so his all floppy so I attached the fabric to stiffen it up slightly, I also placed a piece of string running through the middle of the body to help keep the structure.  I then went about attaching the hands to the body, I did this by attaching small metal hoops to the ends of the hands and the body I did this by super soply and reinforcing it with fabric. I also padded out the legs with wodding ready for doing the costume.

I went off and researched simple trouser patterns, from this pattern I adapted it to what I needed and set about making my tiny pair of trousers. I draw out the pattern with chalk onto the fabric and cut it out and sowed up the edges following the guide I have found. The trousers where a little big for the puppe,  I bought them in to fit the poppet and sowed it in place, it was a happy coincidence that where I so don’t it look like a little fly.

Zulu Zombie Puppet Body

started off doing a quick life size drawing of how the body would be laid out like, we then took some hard would and stripped it down into smaller lengths we then worked out our sizes for each individual part, after cutting the pieces to size we gave them more shape by sending and cut in the joint angles and the slots to wear the material will fit in

  sculpted up hands out of super sculptie and cook them in the oven we did this by making a wire frame to sculpt round also the wire will help others when we do the cast, I also shortened the arms of my puppets body as I had realised the proportions weren’t quite right

 








jointing up puppet using fabric and wood glue, place the fabric into the grooves I had cut into the pieces of wood and glued them into place. I also added “ kneecaps ” and “ elbows “ this was just to ensure that the joints didn’t over bend the wrong way, it was added a nice natural movement to the joints. Also added fixed feet to the body ready for shaping into boots.  

Zulu Zombie Puppet Head

Today we aimed to have a fibreglass cast of our puppet heads, to do this the first of all had to vinamold our heads, we made a wooden frame around the two parts of the head and made sure that the edges were fully filled with clay so that the vinamold would not leak out. We then melted vinamold and poured it into the section waited for it to set and then released the clay heads.

After doing this we fibreglass the vinamold to get the positive out ready for when will be fixed in two parts together and filling and sanding our heads.  

I attach the two parts of my fibre glass head together with car body filler and sand it down to a smooth finish  

base coat colour on to my puppet head and wanted a dried out skin colour with a very blue timid, the blood I wanted very dried out dark, I still need to do the highlights and the shadowing to bring out the features and more this will also enhance the character.

Zulu Zombie Puppet Design

After receiving this information we started on research for our puppets I went home and researched the uniform of an English Zulu fighter, I also printed out pictures of Pandora’s face so I could get started on some drawings, and then research some images of zombies. I spent the evening doing some drawings to try and figure out where I wanted to go with this unit.

Some key points we needed to think about when designing our puppet e.g. a small back story, how the character died, where it died this influenced the decomposition of the body which in turn would change the colour of his skin, and any bloating.

The person we had picked out on Monday we could use their face for a guideline i.e. that face shape. I have used the pictures of Pandora I have printed out the other day I inked in her key features I laid thin paper on top and trace the outline, this gave me a good shape to get started on, I emphasised the cheekbones to give it more of a skeleton feel and exaggerated dents her head, I wanted to play around with the conventions of a zombie e.g. you need to hit them in the head to kill them, I did this by having the injury that had killed my character be a Zulu spear through the head.

  We can’t use a wire frame inside the head as we have 2 cut the clay sculpture in half so we can mulled the two parts.  We also got to work out the sizing of your puppet, it has to be one quarter of the body size.  We then spent the rest of the day sculpting up our puppet heads.

Scenic Canvas

- brain scan canvas flats we used stencils to make the brain shapes 
- panited base coat
- stencil detail
- black in the background
- toke a week 

 

Padded Walls

 

 

- 6mm ply to make the flats gluing, stapling, and screwing the 2” by 3” to the ply,  the same again but with 2” by 1”

- insulation to make the padding and we stapled the sides to get the shape   

- marked up the padded flats then painted in the red line we did two layer and left to dry
-  wrote the information out in pencil on to the flats and I filled it in with black maker 
- toke 2 weeks  

Ice Cube And Glass Cube

We spent the morning with Jeff witch I sadly missed last Monday, he set us the challenge of making a 25mm cube like of ice and another look like glass, so would see the different between the two. We did some research in to how the industry would do it, the research showed that for the glass they would use sugar glass and for the ice cubes craft beads. I decide to us resin in a mould we started off doing a vac form mould but the seal went on the vac former so we used super scolpe and pushed the cubes made out of wood in them, for the glass we use clear resin and for the ice cube we added more catalyst in to make it slightly cloudy and some strips of fibre glass to give it a sort of cracked look, we will open them tomorrow and see how they look.

steel filing cabernet look like walnut wood

We spent the morning with Jeff like we did last Monday, he set us the challenge of making a steel filing cabernet look like walnut wood, we did this by first cleaning the cabernet then filling the wholes and the joints to make it all smooth and to eliminate the metal look. We then added a coat of paint then a coat of wood stain then dragged a dry brush over.    

sheet metal look like bamboo

We spent the morning with Jeff like we did last Monday, he set us the challenge of making a bit of sheet metal look like bark. I chose to do something a bit different from everyone else, I chose to do bamboo, I did this by finding some pipeing and cutting it on the plastic ban saw in the different sizes then cut in half to give a straight edge, to make the iconic raised parts to bamboo I used hot glue gun. I then painted it I still need to do the final detailing.  

Quick Problem Solving with Jeff Bruce-Hay

We had a 3 hour lesson on problem solving / creative thinking with Jeff Bruce-Hay (the co-owner of the Prop company 'Prop-star') he gave us the challenge of making wood look like brick, it was really interesting to see how people did this so differently, some used Artex, sand and PVA. I choose to do the quick and simple approach of using sand/grit and PVA. I still need to pant it    

2 Part Plaster

Two part plaster casting on our armature head, we then mixed the plaster we had to work really fasted to the plaster goes of equal on the mould. When doing the paster you have to place it on the mould with a sort of vertical motion. After the 1^st side is dried you repeat the process. Once it has all set you need to crack open the cast.

Clay puppet head

 Armature heads ready for a two part casting, started off with a metal frame stapled to a board then built up the head in clay from there making sure we kept turning it.

Scenic Art

Painting the flats I had made a few weeks before, we learnt how to recreate different forms of wood just by using colour, different techniques and tools. I decided to do oak wood effect on my flat, first of all I had to prepared the flat by putting down a background colour which was almost a flesh tone and then vanished that layer one that was done I could get started on the main colour, I mixed the colours I wanted, then built it up with layers so when u dragged the rocker over it it showed the colour underneath

Poly Coasting

We where told we are going to make a bug out of polystyrene so we went off the research the bugs. I sectioned the pieces into three sections and using the image as reference I worked out the rough scale of each piece, We then drew up the shapes on to paper and began using a variety of tools from files, wire brushes to knifes to cave the polystyrene.