Hello, It's great to be part of the community! I've been interested in puppets for years now, and just got up the courage to try and make my own marionette. I've only made the head so far, I'm new to sculpting as well

I was hoping that someone could help me with the controls and strings? I've never actually operated a marionette so I'm working out the design as I go, but I'm at a loss when it comes to stringing it...

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff................ looks like you are off to a good start. Shawn and the others will help you with the stringing.

What a wonderfully bizarre looking head. Welcome to the family, and as Billy said, there are folks here who are all about marionettes. This is the place to be.

He is awesome! But don't get tied up...
Welcome aboard!

Oh wow. I just adore him! So much character and very professional for your first puppet. I look forward to seeing your progress. I know nothing about marionettes (sorry) but no doubt, as mentioned, the others will be along shortly to offer their advice.

Welcome to P&S!

Welcome to the forums Danny! So happy you decided to join in the fun!

You have a great looking guy there! Are you going to cover that with papermache' for a hollow head or is that the finished head?

For you first marionette I would keep the stringing simple. 11 strings would be a good number. The weight of the puppet is suspended from the shoulder strings, then you add two to each side of the head, two to the hands, two for the elbows, two on the knees, ending with one on the lower back or butt.

I prefer what is called an airplane control. It looks a lot like a plane with a bunch of wings. I really need to do some diagrams of a basic controller. Until then as a reference let's use an even simpler control that is often found on children's marionettes.



This kind of gives you an idea. The differences in an 11 string control would be this. First on the front/top of the control you would have another cross bar that is detachable that you would be used for the knees/legs. Then behind that is the hand bar that is actually a run through (see image below) for the hands. It is a static bar and is glued and nailed to the control. Next in line is a control bar for for the head much like you see here. Below that hanging from a cord is a cross bar that is for the shoulders. right behind that is a hole in the main control much like the one seen in the photo for the mouth but it is used for shoulder strings. Then on the back is the hole for the butt string.  That is just a general overview of what is needed for the strings. Like I said there are other types of controllers but since I don't use them, I'll leave it to others if they want to explain what they use. It might be worth your time to take a trip to the library and see what they have in the way of books on the subject. I'll try to get some diagrams made up that explain this better but it may take me some time. One last thing. Sometimes I add one more string. It is a nose string. This gets tied off to the front of the controller. I normally put a small screw at at the front for this. That allows you to help balance the head if your puppet has a large nose. Actually even if your puppet isn't nose heavy I like it because it allows the puppet to look up as something or nod.



 

Ok this is pretty crude but I think it illustrates what I was talking about.  BTW: I realized when I was plotting this out that the shoulder bar is not really right under the head bar. As a rule it is set back just a bit. You can see this in the illustration below. I normally set my shoulder bars about 3 or 4 inches below the main control. You drill a hole through both the main and the center of the shoulder bar then take a piece of cord and pull through each hole. Knot on top of main control and on the bottom of the shoulder bar. One simple square knot then I trim the excess off as close as I can without losing the knot. Then I take the glue gun and really glue the knot in place and cover it with the glue.


P.S. If you click on the image you can see a bigger version of it.

I just realized you have pictures in your Gallery of how you made the head. Duhh...  So what type of clay did you use over the foil base?

Love the puppet so far. It has great exaggeration of the features, something so necessary for both puppets and sculpture.

The eye focus though would worry me. The puppet would be looking straight up when viewed face on by an audience; or worse, if the audience is sitting below it would make it seem like it was staring at the sky all the time. This isn't a bad thing, but it does make for an unusual puppet.

thanks for your comments everyone ^_^

Thank you so much for your help with the controls Shawn! I can't wait to try it out, and in answer to your question I just used Original Sculpey, I plan to try higher quality materials once I'm more experienced.

Na, I didn't think about that when I painted the eye >_< luckily this little guy is just for practice, I'll try and keep eye placement in mind for the next one!

There is a product called Creative Paper Clay that you might want to give a try some day instead of Sculpey.  Instead having to bake it you simply let it air dry. You can use it over a form like you did with the Sculpey. In fact I sculpt over things like papermache' eggs you can get at the craft store or even styro foam. I made the heads for a set of hand puppets this way and did at least a start of a tutorial of how I did it here. You can also see examples of this process on my BlogTV account. All the heads in the Painting and Ball Joint videos where made this way. In fact the Ball Joint heads show the base I use.

Danny, these are things you'll learn about as you go. Eye placement is important because the direction of the eyeline helps the audience understand not just what the puppet is looking at, but also its emotions and reactions to things around it.

A little trick puppeteers use is to place the head at your own eyeline, or on par with how the audience will see it. Then you paint/attach/whatever the eye, and it should match up pretty well with how the puppet would be seen on stage.

There's an art to getting it right, and like I said in your case it's not bad (heck, it looks fantastic), it would just make for an unusual performance. Maybe the character can't see straight anyway? It has one eye after all...

Regarding stringing, I like the 9 lines vertical control. you can find a diagram, as well as a further information regarding marionette controls here:
http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php/topic,4222.msg37946.html#msg37946

I've decided to use cloth for the arms and legs, the arms are finished and attached actually, but my camera battery died before I got the picture. I'm still trying to work out the leg pattern though...

Looks great so far!