Hi Everyone.

My husband posed a question to me today.Why do puppets only have 3 fingers and a thumb?My guess was that 4 fingers would be to thin to sew and turn right side out.But that was just a guess.Coul some one help me out?

Thanks

Brenda

Why do puppets only have 3 fingers and a thumb?

Because they fall under a cartoon character and most of them all have 3 fingers and a thumb, check your local comic section of the paper and you will see this rule.  I would say that it isn't a hard fast rule because Kermit has all four fingers and a thumb.....and so do many others....especially if you want them to have a more human/realistic character to them.

I could not answer why the cartoon world decided to make this a general rule to make hands with one less digit.  Maybe they were saving ink....because it was to expensive and most cartoonists were starving artists.  I am kidding about this....but maybe someone will come by and explain where this rule came about.

Hope this helps to clear some things up......

Daryl H

I was an animator once,  I can tell... )
Four fingers and a thumb, is far too many fingers in a drawing. It just look like a mess of "sausages" in a cartoon hand. And in art composition, three is better than four, is a non even number. Three is balance, five also. But two, four, is not.   Three fingers: Good balance.

I do it because when I sew the fingers, there needs to be a little extra spacing between them. I tend to stuff up where the fingers meet the hand, and if I space out the fingers a little more, the sewing is easier. Otherwise, I might try five fingers.

Besides, this depends on what kind of puppet; I've seen marionettes and bunraku puppets with properly numbered fingers. Whereas it's more usual with muppets to have one less.

Yes, I agree.....the reasoning is based on animation which looks too jumbled having more than three fingers and a thumb.  I like the reference to a bunch of sausages....LOL....that is so perfectly descriptive!!! 

Aloha,
Nikole

Folks,

it's a matter of money...in animation it's cheaper and quicker to do three instead of four...I can only estimate is the same for puppets!

Of course I did have a cartoonist instructor tell me one time.."it's bein lazy to do 3 not 4"  so I dropped her class! LOL!!!

Spoon

I think its one of those things where a cartoonist years and years ago drew a cartoon with only three fingers and a thumb because he thought it looked better or at least it looked the way he wanted it to look.  Other people liked it and it has developed into the way that cartoon characters are generally drawn.

I've seen some cartoonie style puppets with four fingers and a thumb (eg. some of Nice Braga's puppets) and they look great.

We can try to figure out why we like things certains ways but in the end the only really important thing is that we like them.  With my bug puppets I only give them two fingers and a thumb.  Why?  That's the look I like for the bugs.  It's more bug like to me.

Conclusion.  We make them that way beacuse we like them.  That's my two cents.

Conclusion.  We make them that way beacuse we like them.  That's my two cents.

I'll buy that Jon !

Billy D.

My guess was that 4 fingers would be to thin to sew and turn right side out.But that was just a guess.Coul some one help me out?

Hi Brenda,

I read some books on the subject in the past and it was written in them that the reason why they only did 3 fingers instead of 4 was because it saved alot of time for the animators. And the quicker they did it, the faster they could do their movie, it saved them time, and money. And the faster they delivered their movie, the more money in their pocket from not only the save from the production, but the money they would get from the movie theathers.

I hope that it answers your question,
Puppet hug,
SHould

Yes it all comes from animation but I have made a five finger puppet before its looks strange but not bad.