I’ve made three versions of the Colonel puppet: two full-bodied versions and one without legs that can fit in the landrover model.
To make the heads, I have used ‘Smooth-On Ecoflex 00-35’. I first made the sculpt using ‘Super Sculpey’. From this I was able to make a silicone mould. I first experimented with a cheap tin-cure silicone which I bought from Ebay, but this did not achieve the results I wanted, so I tried ‘Smooth-On Mold Star 20T’ which was expensive but was more suitable to capture the detail of the original sculpt. It also sets in just 6 minutes, whereas the tin-cured silicone takes 24 hours to cure. I then melted ‘Chavant NSP Plasteline’ in a saucepan and poured the contents into the mould, making sure to brush plenty into the ears of the mould, and left it to cool and set (this process is explained in detail by Hani Dombe on the brilliant website https://www.tomandhani.com/single-post/2016/04/02/Making-Silicone-puppets-Part-1-%E2%80%93-The-head). I repeated the process several times until I had 12 identical heads. The ‘Plasteline’ was soft enough to enable me to alter the mouths, so that each has a different expression. I was then able to make a new mould for each head. For these I used the remainder of the ‘Mold Star’ and then plaster of paris. I found that the plaster of paris gave an inferior result to the silicone and gave the eyelids a much softer appearance. It was also necessary to destroy the sculpt in order to free it from the plaster moulds as plaster is rigid. The ears were a particular challenge throughout the process and the finished silicone heads needed some patching after they were released from the moulds. At the final stage, I put some wire and a small piece of rigid ‘Plastazote’ into each head mould and poured in the ‘Ecoflex silicone’, making sure that the moulds were first covered in ‘Vaseline’ so that they could be opened again (an alternative for this, though expensive, is ‘Mann Ease Release spray’). Whilst the heads were still curing, I brushed more ‘Ecoflex’ over it with acrylic paints added to lend some colour to the hair and lips. It was important to do this when the silicone was still curing so that the layers would stick. Finally, I applied baby powder to remove the tackiness and shine from the silicone and pushed ‘K and S square tubing’ through the neck, which I araldited to the ‘Plastazote’ inside. ‘Araldite’ will not stick to silicone, so the ‘Plastazote’ gave the ‘K and S’ something to fuse to. The small house is for the background of the garden set. There is a scene in my film where a thorny plant suddenly emerges from The Colonel's flower bed and engulfs his entire garden. To make these stems, I have used upholstery foam, with a wire armature, coated in a liquid latex/acrylic mix. The flower pods will be attached to some of the stems. I based the look of these on Titan Arum. Cupid also appears briefly in the film, so I have made him from super sculpey before casting him in silicone.
I needed to make plenty of replacement hands for my Colonel puppet as the wire armature inside the hands will inevitably eventually snap after repeated use. To make these, I first sculpted the hands in Sculpey oven-bake clay and, once baked, put them onto a layer of Sculptex. I then used a palette sculpting tool to build a further layer of sculptex around the perimeter of the hands, burying them up to the halfway point. I created keys in the clay to help the two halves of the mould to fit together. I then built a toy brick wall around the clay bed and sculpt and poured plaster into them. Once set, I removed the brick walls and sculptex, flipped the plaster mould around, rebuild the wall, covered the mould in vaseline so that it could be separated easily and poured in more plaster to create the joining half. I was then able to place wire into the moulds and pour in the silicone before clamping them. Once cured the hands could be released and excess silicone trimmed off with fine scissors around the seam. I used 'Ecoflex 00-35 Platinum Cure Silicone', which is soft and flexible and cures quickly, mixed with Flesh coloured Silicone pigment. Finally, I brushed some talcum powder onto the hands to remove some of the tackiness from the silicone.
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AuthorAnimator/Model Maker/Puppets/Sets Archives
December 2023
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