In The Puppet Pit section of the most recent podcast I talked about the plans for this week’s builds, and how I was just going to tinker with a head shape I’ve been trying to dial in for a little while.
If you’re familiar with my work you know I love three things: minimalism, early Don Sahlin era Muppet designs, and monsters. All of those things come together in the loveable Grover, and I wanted a design that has a similar feel; without, I must point out, just being a replica of Grover.
There are several ingredients that make this design work: the gangly thin arms, the floppy fingers, the thin torso and little round belly, and, of course, the spherical head shape with the loose jaw. That was what I wanted to focus on and dial in. I’d made a few attempts at it before, but it never quite got to the point I was happy, and after the mess of last week I wanted to give myself a little breathing room and just play. Here is the result:
I’m pretty happy with it, and think this will be the final production model. Without the fur trimmed and/or styled it’s a little hard to tell, but the head has that nice deep spherical form, and the jaw hinge is a reinforced strip of fabric that makes it quite loose. The mouth plates are 1/8” plywood and slot together nicely. It’s pleasing to just look at, and that’s always a goal for me.
What I don’t think comes across in the photo is how small it is. As I’ve talked about many times before (and will definitely form the body of a blog post and/or podcast segment), I always aim to make my puppets as small as they can be and no bigger than they need to be. This critter is just big enough to fit snugly on the hand without being cramped, which makes it feel very nice and expressive to perform. In fact, despite having internal finger loops on the top and bottom jaw, I’m finding I prefer to not use the bottom loop.
It went so well yesterday that I’m not sure where it’ll go today, but I’ll be sure to show this on the build stream tomorrow (Wednesday at 11am ET on Twitch and YouTube)
And now, you guessed it, coffee.