Hi everyone,

One of my long-standing obsessions in puppet construction is designing really good mouth plates that are flexible and comfortable. One of the things that I finally got around to doing (or rather, folks at the shop where I work got around to because I mostly design and don't build much anymore) was a vacuformed hand grip for the top portion of the mouth plate.

Here's a link to a picture - http://twitpic.com/3djijm

I used to build these things out of erasers, chunks of rubber and L200 foam. This is sooo much better! It's a little rough around the edges because it was a prototype, but it works just fine.

Also, here's a photo of the finished mouth plate insert in to what will be the puppet's snout - http://twitpic.com/3dud60

I just thought I would share in case this is of interest to anyone.

That looks very good - I bet it feels even better!  Looks easy to manipulate!

Pretty cool. So is the workshop going to make them to sell to other puppeteers?

We could, if there is a demand for it. They're relatively quick and easy to make, although the vacuform machine itself is expensive.

looks cool, its an interesting idea, i bet there will be quite a market for this sort of thing, i recon that it could be a good thing to sell to budding puppet makers, as i get inundated with emails from people asking how to make good mouth plates and grips. its something that i pride myself on, making really good mouths for my puppets that will take the abuse and still last the test of time. if you say that these are relatively easy to make and quite cheap, then why dont you put a few up on your site and see how they sell?
good work, im quite intrigued myself!!
Ben.

I like it. It looks alot easier and more precise (did I spell that right?) well you know. Good idea!

i think you could make a lot of money selling these!