UPDATE: Even though I never got around to finishing this puppet, I do now have shadow puppet patterns on sale in my online store. They’re very cheap, and easy to make, and best of all, use proper methods and not the crappy one listed below! Check them out here.

I had planned on posting this over Mon/Tues, but things got a bit hectic. A different kind of hectic than normal - I was asked by an art coordinator from Channel 10’s Thank God You’re Here to possibly hire out one of my moppets. Jeff to be exact. However, they wanted him to look like Chatterbox from Hi-5. And so I spent much of Tues night trying to mock him up for the director to look at. Unfortunately, I lost out to an ex-puppet from Polyglot. 

On the one hand, I’m disappointed, because it’s a great opportunity for someone like me; who’s only been doing puppets for a short time, and who never made a ‘muppet’-type puppet before Jeff, Doc and Amy. But I started to think it wouldn’t be that great after all - I’d love to see my puppet on TV, but not someone else’s design on my puppet on TV. It’s a huge difference - it’s like saying to Michaelangelo, yes, we love your paintings, but can you do it like Picasso instead? (I’m not comparing my work to either of them, just stating that I put a lot of hard work into Jeff, and would like my own designs aknowledged, instead of covered up). 

Anyway, the art coordinator found my contact details from googling this blog, so at least I know I’m getting some good press from all these posts! 

Back to the real reason why I’m posting today. Which is that last week I started my very first shadow puppet. I’ve been wanting to do some shadow puppets since late 2003, when my company (Sticky Apple Legs) finished our debut show. We had hoped that our second show would include shadow puppets, but alas, never got around to doing it. So I bought a book recently on shadow puppets, and got inspired. 

UPDATE 24/04/09: It seems I’ve deleted the photo of the puppet from my computer as well as my site. If I find time, I will replace the link. On a side note, since learning proper shadow puppetry techniques last year, I consider this particular puppet a failed experiment in the genre.

I found some great silhouette artwork on the net (not knowing exactly what I wanted to make) and printed off a stack of images. One included a fantastic Victorian woman silhouette, which I turned into a shadow puppet. I wanted to give her some functionality, so I created her in three pieces: a head, a bottom lip, and an eye. The bottom lip will pivot on the jaw, so it looks like she can talk, and the eye will ‘open’ and ‘close’. 

Unfortunately, I am utterly and completely stuck at how to do her jaw, so I have not yet finished the puppet. So here’s what I’ve got so far (click image for larger view): 

The shadow puppet pieces are mounted (for photographic purposes) to a sheet of frosted plastic. This is also the material used for the puppet; the plastic was about $1 each from Spotlight, and is roughly A3 sized. 

I used tracing paper to get an outline of the original artwork. I then traced onto another piece the jaw, and another the eye. I then transferred the outlines onto my plastic sheet, and carefully cut out the shapes. 

Using the traced outline on the head piece, I painted certain areas black; not painting the ‘cut-out’ of the line in the bun, the swirls of hair, ear, eye, and ruffles of the costume. (In other words, every white area on the head piece is in fact, just the plain plastic, everything else is painted) 

This process of painting left the puppet looking very streaky, so I ended up doing two coats of paint, one varnish layer, two more coats of paint, and a final varnish. The varnish double functions in that it doesn’t just protect the paintwork, but also makes the paint job look smooth. 

Once the head was done, I did the same thing for the eye piece and the lip. You can see a small piece of the eye (the bottom left of the piece) not coloured, and that’s only so that I knew where the ‘hinge’ point was for attaching it to the head. 

Hopefully once I’ve sorted out the hinge pin issues I can finish the puppet and post it here. I think though for a first shadow puppet, this design is gorgeous. She’s so simple, and against a backlight, she is very effective.