The background: Starting a new site in the moderately near future.. Already have the domain, working on the visuals now for the site, starting to create offline content in preparation, and all the assorted things that go with it. I'm taking the advice of family and friends and I'm going to put my energy into a 100% clean, children friendly project. Theme is all set and I've been planning out things for almost a year on and off when I had the free time which lately has not been abundant.. But I'm putting in the late hours again to get this ball rolling. I've got 2 composers at the ready to work out the songs and routines with me and around a 1/2 dozen people that want to jump on board and be cast members. But it's missing 1 aspect for any "kid show" I would be interested in doing.. Puppets!

So that leads me down the path of needing some new friends. I'm starting with a Monkey and will be doing a few more animal-based characters in the future. Some mascot sized and some puppets. This monkey is going to be a puppet.

I'll keep updating as things progress but you always have to start at that first step, where you look at it and say "wow that's a LONNNNNGGG way from finished" so here's the first 2 pics of some roughed in foam shapes with lots of pins holding things together and some eyes dropped on for the sake of visual perspective while I work. Hours of carving, trimming, building on left to go but with all the cleaning the past 3 nights I needed to post up some monkey madness to get my mind out of this obsessive cleaning binge I've been on!

I really like the shape of the head! I also love the foam hair on top. Are you planing to paint or dye the foam hair or where you going to try and cover it in something. My vote would be for painting or dyeing.

Ohh! I can't wait to see the step by step progress on this monkey!!

Thanks, Still a bit more to shape but I have some ideas to try.

I might re-make some hair in white foam to take the dye better if samples don't work as expected. May also airbrush, or brush colored laytex. I'll run some tests soon to see which looks best.

I doubt I would cover in fabric since I want different texture on it..

I really like the shape of the head! I also love the foam hair on top. Are you planing to paint or dye the foam hair or where you going to try and cover it in something. My vote would be for painting or dyeing.

Very cool monkey indeed. If anyone is interested i found a site  with  a monkey pattern.

http://plushie-database.deviantart.com/favourites/38462219#/d2unn22

Tired tonight so I didn't get a lot done but here's 2 quick pics.

First is a little test I'm doing with some foam scraps. Acrylic paint, gloss coating, latex. So far looking at the results (pic was only from 5 min after applying to the scraps) I'll probably use acrylic and then the gloss coating.



Then a little more done to the head. Pinned on some eyebrows, tryed another eye combo idea which I think I will end up using instead of the big white domes, trimmed a little on the sides. Not a whole lot of work tonight I'll be more motivated tomorrow night for sure.

I like the new eyes! I am glad that you are going to keep bare foam on this and paint it. I agree with you that the textures will be really nice.

Looking good so far!

Bare only for some of the features. Hair, inner ear, possibly nose, and the backing surrounds on the eyes will all be bare. Also the traditional lighter belly will be foam brushed with colored latex for durability. That's how I did my mascots black nose, latex + acrylic paint and it came out great and has been super durable the times when kids honk it on halloween or whenever i'm wearing it.

I have an awesome looking monkey colored fur that i plan on using and then hand trimming for shape and contour.

Then again like most things I'm sure the plan will change twice for every part completed I'm down here early tonight, just about 11pm so I'm going to turn on some tunes, grab the camera to take pics when I remember, and get working.

I like the new eyes! I am glad that you are going to keep bare foam on this and paint it. I agree with you that the textures will be really nice.

Oh.. ok I guess you can use some fur on him.   No I think you are right on target. I like the idea of the nose being bare if you can work it out. Maybe even use the latex + paint combo on it also. I used spray on tool dip for a puppets belly once and it worked out pretty well. Similar to what you are doing actually.  The only problem with the tool dip is that color choice is limited. I wanted green and they had it in green.  I did use Design Master spray paint to shade the green and the sealed with the clear tool dip spray. It was a commission piece so I can't really say though how long it held up.