UPDATE: This post is old, and the icons are no longer being used on my site. However, I keep these posts archived for fun and because they?re puppet builds.

At last, a new icon. For those who know what I’m talking about, skip to next paragraph. For those who don’t read on. A while ago I decided I needed new navigational icons for my blog, and needed puppetry-themed images to use. I came up with the idea of creating puppets, which could be used as icons. Each icon will have two moving parts; one for the roll over image, and one as an ‘easter egg’/hidden feature. So here is the second one. (Read about the first here.)

My second icon, for my ‘about’ page, was actually designed based on the image of a puppetry hood - puppeteers wear this black hood when trying to be ‘invisible’ to the audience. However, because my theme is ‘creatures’, I made it look a little like it was a jellyfish thing. Click on images for bigger view.

So basically, this icon is a shadow puppet. Using my technique from my recent experiment with shadow puppets, I got some acetate and drew out my design onto it. I cut out the acetate, and then painted it black (two coats paint, one varnish, two coats paint, one varnish again), leaving a part unpainted. This is the mouth of the creature, and the part unpainted will allow a ‘open/close’ mechanism to be seen from behind it.

I then cut out a small rectangle - this would be my mouth piece - and painted half of it black. The other side I covered with some orange/pink material.

I then added a rod to the bottom of the orange half. The theory was that this black/orange piece of acetate would sit behind the creature; the black piece behind the gap in the creature’s black paint, making the gap invisible. Then pushing the rod up, the orange piece would be visible in the gap, creating an ‘open’ mouth look. (This mechanism will become clearer as you see the rest of the photos)

On the back of the creature, I made ‘walls’ - pieces of rod glued to the back of the acetate - which would house the orange/black mouth piece. A small gap is left to allow the mouth piece’s rod to run smoothly through.

I put the mouth piece inside the ‘walls’ and then glued a piece of acetate over the top (only gluing to the ‘walls’ ). The mouth piece is now securely fitted to the back of the shadow puppet, with plenty of room to move up and down.

From there, I just added a rod to the bottom of the creature - which would act as a stand - and fitted that rod to some stacked core flute. I painted the top halves of the rods, mainly because I forgot that it would end up black as a silhouette anyway. You can see that one of the rods in the below image is not inserted into the core flute: that is the rod to move the mouth piece up and down.

Here are the final images used:

And here’s the icon images:

The easter egg is of course, not available until all icons have been made. Now… off to enjoy what’s left of my Sunday night.

UPDATE: Read about the third icon here.