has anyone tryed to cover there puppets in rubber latex?? i know that you can mix coloured paint in with the latex, but has anyone tryed painting it over the top of a foam puppet ??

Hi:

Never heard of that being tried. 

The opposite technique is very effective.  Make a mold, slip cast it in latex and then cast foam inside the latex skin.  It's pretty complicated, but manageable once you've got a couple of projects completed.

Painting latex over foam would leave a lot of texture (i.e. brush marks) so if that is acceptable, go for it.  Kind of like a used car a buddy of mine once bought.  It had a hand painted finish that was done with a brush.  It looked like crap, but the prior owner worked at an auto parts store, so there was a complete set of spare parts in the trunk!  That made the funky looking paint acceptable.

Marty

has anyone tryed to cover there puppets in rubber latex?? i know that you can mix coloured paint in with the latex, but has anyone tryed painting it over the top of a foam puppet ??

lol I think im about to my friend.

Replacing Fleece with latex skin. Im making some puppets for as close to zero dollars as possible and I got to use the materials i have yknow!

I'm pretty sure that Sonny Vegas discussed this within the last couple of months - I know that he has been experimenting with different materials and processes. A few of us have talked about covering foam rubber with Plasti-Dip spray-on vinyl tool dip, liquid latex, and silicone rubber here in the past. Stop-motion animation puppet builders often "skin" their foam latex puppets. You could try using the search feature here to find previous discussions on P&S, or check out some animation sites online.

 

Ron G.

has anyone tryed to cover there puppets in rubber latex?? i know that you can mix coloured paint in with the latex, but has anyone tryed painting it over the top of a foam puppet ??

It works very well and you have a puppet that will withstand a Nuclear Blast...lol

I does take alot of latex only because the foam absorbs the latex. Once you have a dried skin of latex, everthing else sits nicely on the puppet.

Shortcut: Add Acrylic paint to the latex. match it as close as you can to the color you want.

Remember: Latex dries darker with the acrylic. So dont go too dark with the paint.

Tip: Get ready to get messy! Where gloves and long sleeves. I made the mistake of slappin' latex all over the place and got some on my arm hair. I had to shave the latex off. Where crumby clothes. One drop will ruin a shirt...yes just one. You cant get that stuff out.

My Zombie head was foam and latex. I was messy, but Zombies are just like that

I post some pics soon of my other foam/latex puppet.

You are such a great asset to this site, Sonny - thanks!



Ron G.

draw back is it adds a fair amount of wieght to the puppet

i just frond the weight thing out i think it will be bank to the covering in cloth

Here's a site in a related area (haunted house effects)  with a bunch of projects that use latex.  Very similar to Sonny's results on his zombie heads.  Look for what they refer to as "corpsifying" projects.

http://www.halloweenmonsterlist.info/

While you are there, check out the FCG or Flying Crank Ghost animatronic.  It's a 3 sting marionette that is controlled with a low RPM gear motor.  Very cool under black lights.  Down side, parts for one FCG run around $150.

Marty

Cool site Marty!  If found this tutorial on it for chilling fog - http://www.geocities.com/liemavick/Fogchiller.html

The "ice" they refer to is dry ice not regular ice.  It takes the normal smoke from a smoke machine and makes it hug the ground.  One thing to remember when you do this is that the ground the smoke is "on" can get a bit of a residue on it that can be slippery. Normally this is more that the exit area of the smoke so since the pipe bend up that may not be as much of a problem. This normally only affects dancers since they need sure footing.