A couple of weeks ago I got an inquiry through Etsy about purchasing some of my shadow puppets. The person wanted something for a school performance, but was concerned about the sizes - mine are about A4, and she wanted something for a 500 seat venue - and through the course of discussing options with her it was decided that she really needed some custom puppets made. So that’s what I did.

(Even though I said I’m not doing commissions, I don’t mind doing custom orders on shadow puppets. I think if I limit myself to something I actually enjoy doing - as compared to making muppet-types or other styles - then I’ll be better off. Also, this was a natural progression and discussion, and was simply an ‘upgrade’ of what I already sell)

The whole idea was to have some fish and turtle puppets made up, that would work under blacklight. My first thought was to do what I did with my blacklight butterfly (which by the way, I’ve removed from sale as it doesn’t really fit the theme I’ve been doing and doesn’t sell very well) and use white cardboard and neon paints.

View all of the pics of the puppets using the gallery at the bottom of the post (if you’re having trouble, go to Flickr directly).

The puppets were fairly easy, but time consuming, to make. With the blacklight butterfly, I actually cut away the cardboard where the paints would go, attached the cardboard to a laminating pouch (ie. opened the pouch and laid the cardboard down, without closing the pouch up) and then painted the actual laminate - this works ONLY if you make sure the paint dries completely before laminating.

However, I knew that the puppets would be too big to fit into my A4 laminating machine and would have to be done at my local Officeworks. I knew I didn’t want to buy A3 pouches and then paint them at home, so I just used an idea I’ve had for some other puppets - painting the cardboard itself. I found some rather thin cardboard at Riot Art, and using my turtle and fish patterns (the blue fish pattern I sell, and the pattern for my strawberry fish) at larger sizes, cut out the pieces. There are seven puppets in total, three turtles and four fish (two of each pattern).

Once everything was cut out I traced on the design for the paint; with the turtle, it had to be made up, since the turtle materials have the design already on it (patterned paper). Then it was a matter of painting. For the strawberry fish design, I used two coats of yellow as the base, then an orange/red paint for highlights (see the bottom of the body in the above photo; you’ll see a slight darker area of red in the left bottom fin). A second coat of watered-down orange/red was added to give the puppet texture. I wanted the puppet to be clearly visible from the back of the venue, but still have texture enough to make the puppet more interesting than a one-dimensional figure. The paints appear clearly from behind using a normal shadow puppet light/screen, but work really well using a blacklight from the front.

The other fish are made much the same way; one coat of blue (the blue doesn’t work that well under blacklight, but with a coat of yellow over the top it comes out bright green… and much brighter than the green paint that I had for some odd reason) and one of yellow. The turtle however just had two coats of paint according to whatever colour each spot or circle is - no secondary colour over the top.

The best part of this build is that I got to test out a new rod attachment. Instead of putting holes in the puppet, which I do for the transparent ones, I used a slight variation of the attachment on my mermaid and merman; to attach the rods, each part that requires a rod has a loop of elastic running through the laminated part. This loop allows you to slide the hook on the end of the rod onto the puppet/loop and is incredibly simple to use. However, using white elastic - as discovered on my blacklight butterfly - doesn’t appear as white as the cardboard under blacklight conditions. It ends up looking grey. With the blacklight paints on these custom puppets, I wanted to avoid cutting holes or making really obvious grey areas where the rods attached. So I used some clear plastic elastic instead (basically what’s used for invisible bra straps). Check out the close up of the puppet and you’ll see what I mean. There is a slight shadow behind the puppet of the rod, but that occurs whether or not I use holes, elastic or the clear plastic. I also tested it out and the clear plastic should be quite durable, so long as people aren’t trying to pull it too hard when attaching the rods. This new material is something I thought of while in Atlanta and I’ve been wanting to try it out ever since I got home. This will be used in the future, and I know just what to do with it to add in an even better function for my shadow puppets - complete reversibility. At the moment, you can remove the rods to make the puppet face whichever direction you like; but what I want to do is get the puppet to reverse as you perform with it. To do that, I need to change the placement of the rod attachment, and this clear plastic will allow me to do just that (it makes sense to me, and more will be explained in the future).

The worst part of this build was trying to ship them. The two green/blue fish didn’t quite fit into the largest parcel at Australia Post, so I ended up having to buy a box to put them in. The box was so huge I ended up filling it with other boxes and whatever. Unfortunately, the other two fish (even with the parts folded over each other to conserve space) didn’t fit in the box. So I had to ship those separately - and then Officeworks screwed up one of the laminates on a turtle and I had to redo it, making me send a third package a day later.

I haven’t heard back yet from the customer, since she would have received everything by the end of last week - so I’ll post an update here if I get any feedback on the puppets and her show. I am really in love with the giant version of the strawberry fish, the texturing came out extremely well. The turtles too came out prettily.

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