How to make blinking puppet eyes: Part Three
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Continuing on from Part Two I wanted to improve my building technique in making blinking eyes on muppet-types. You see, I had made one last year for my show, City Head, and it worked well, all except for the fact that the eyes were set into the head, and on profile, the eyes actually aren’t seen by the audience. (You may want to read the post about placement of eyes on a puppet, or making puppet noses)
So I set out to test Tom Stewart’s (from Puppeteers Unite) blinking eye tutorial, shown in Part Two. I had a leftover mouth made up from my failed film commission, and had decided to use it to test out a new muppet fleece I had bought (more on that later). Because it was half-finished, I quickly set out adding some blinking eyes. You can find the video of my experiment below, and underneath that I’ve included some comments about the building technique, my experience using it, and the video itself. There are five shorts clips, most of which is in order of me shooting them; which means the performance does get ‘better’ over time (the best parts are at the end). Do keep watching after the credits roll for a little easter egg of my first blinking eye muppet-type, and you can compare building techniques between the two.
Ok, so here’s my comments:
First, I want to mention that I screwed up the trigger switch. I made it too small, and afterwards had to add on a piece of wood to the trigger so that I could properly flip it up and down. Unfortunately, this bandaid solution didn’t make things easier, which is why at moments you can tell I’m struggling to move the eyes. Next time I will definitely remember to make the trigger longer.
Secondly, apologies for both seeing my hand and my head. I haven’t gotten around to adding a neck or body yet. I probably won’t, since I’ve got other things to do.
I did also change something from the tutorial; instead of completely covering the top of the head with extra material (and therefore covering the eye mechanism), I only covered the eye mech, creating a nice little eyelid piece for the head. I do like how this turned out, however, next time I think I will try to make the lids cover more of the eye, as when you ‘close’ the eyes, the material doesn’t go down far enough and it makes the puppet look like it’s squinting.
Muppet-type patterns and parts available here.
I used some really crappy ping pong balls for the eyes (from a $2 shop, very flimsy), and was showing it to a film maker when I accidentally squashed one of the eyes. I thought, ‘oh no, there goes my nice paint job on the eyes’! Worst of it was I couldn’t get it to push back into shape. So I squashed the other eye, thinking it would just add a little ‘character’ to the puppet’s face. I went home and put the puppet down, and didn’t look at it for a week. When I did, I was amazed: both eyes had naturally returned to the original shape, and the paint job didn’t seem at all cracked or peeling off. Just goes to show you can never underestimate the power of your materials…
On the other hand… The fleece I used was a new offering from Spotlight, about $AUD 14 a metre, and was really gorgeous. The colours are fantastic, and the texture is very soft. But the fleece isn’t antipill, and in cutting it, heaps of the fleece would come off from the back in pill form. It wasn’t enough to stop me from using it, just that it was like trying to carve with foam; bits and pieces everywhere! So if you buy something similar, be warned.
You can’t really tell in the above film, but the head pieces are attached so that the top of the head meets the edge of the mouth; but the bottom of the head is attached in a way that makes the lower jaw appear as though it has a ‘lip’ or overshot. Pause the video at 2min 56sec and you can get a glimpse of what I mean. I like this particular alignment of the jaws, because the way I’ve been attaching them previously, the jaws appear to have lips or gums, but they actually don’t. And so making one jaw align higher than the actual mouth, means that when I close the puppet’s mouth, there is no lip/gum showing, only the head material. Pause the video at 3min to see what I mean.
In terms of performance; yes, I know, I’m crap. But no one ever said I was a performer. I know that most of the time I was working too close to the bench, and that I didn’t have the eyes focused on where the camera lens was (sometimes hard to do when you’re working with a small digital picture camera). But here’s the fun part: by accident, on my first filming (clip two in the film), I had squashed up the face of the puppet. I didn’t know it could do that! When I looked over the film, I realised how great it was - a real character appeared from the puppet - and on my second take, I played with the idea of scrunching the face up. As you can see at the end of the film, it works quite well. I also mucked around a bit, and instead of focusing on trying to do a ’serious’ proper performance (ie. a good one), I just had fun. And that worked out even better. So a big tip of puppet performance is to have fun, and to use what the puppet shows you it can do.
I also love the serendipity of the reflection on my white desk. It was my new workspace, and so it was the clearest spot in the house to set up a little filming. I worked from ‘under’ the desk - or rather, between the desk and the wall of the house, sitting down on the floor. The reflection on the desk is so perfect at times, especially when the head is appearing from below, and you get those lovely eyes peering back from on the desk. (Oh, this works so well in the last clip… The last clip is my favourite bit of the whole thing)
The music for the film, ‘Secret World’, is beautiful. I love how it changes pace right when the fourth clip starts. (I did not edit any of the music, or the clips, I just placed the clips in a vague order, added the music, and let it go) Speaking of the fourth clip - you can see how I played with the scrunching up of the face here, and it works so well going from scrunched to smooth.
Overall, I wasn’t quite happy with this technique. Though it was my first time using it, my other set of blinking eyes - the very first blinking eyes, without using a tutorial to help me - worked much smoother. The eyes moved on a piece of dowel, which was triggered by a small knot in between each eye (move the knot with your finger). For some reason, I just prefer my original method because it’s easier to operate; although I still need to improve it, given that dodgy profile view. I was planning on using this new technique for human muppet-types, but I personally think this way of doing blinking eyes works much better on a monster puppet. (Do read the comments for info from Tom about what might be wrong with the method and my test puppet)
My next step is to try something more like this:
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