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Trash Guy Puppet

For The Ascension of our Great Oracle 2024

I was invited to participate in a cabaret show to surprise my high school teacher who was retiring this year. A group of her former students got together and prepared a bunch of small acts, and as someone who makes puppets now I was offered a little puppet bit. I decided to make a little puppet guy who would be a collection of old scripts and bits of tape that had been lost in the theater over the years.

I got to run on, do a little bit of banter, and end up running into a projector screen and falling flat on my back.

Gallery

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Process

Since I had limited time to make and rehearse with this puppet, I decided to do make it as simple as possible.

Sketch by helloladder

I started off with a basic face structure out of cardboard, then used felt to build the rest of the body.

Basic face structure

Feet

Feet and felt legs

Finished felt body

With the base done, I started covering the body in layers of crinkled paper and tape. Everything was hot glued in place.

From the bottom up, covering one leg

His arms are made out of tubes of felt, with cardboard hands attached to arm rods.

Mostly covered body

I had some issues near the end with running out of supplies and not being sure how I wanted to finish off the face. I ended up just covering the front in a layer of tape, so that it wouldn't distract from the eyes.