And now my husband wants me to watch "the Fly 2" with him, said he's recognized a name...

Ok, now I'm both depressed and creeped out. You made the Gremlins? Seriously where is that rock to hide under...?  
Gremlins, The Dark Crystal, Neverending Story and Harry and the Hendersons remain to this day movies/shows that creep me out still. (Ok, I got over The Dark Crystal)

Harry and the Hendersons creeps you out? Gremlins and the others I get, but I remember Harry as a pretty straight comedy?
Well, I'm having an extreme learning experience with my first muppet/human puppets. Making friends with the sewing machine, learning my ladder stitch, struggling with fleece and more. Here's where they are now;

So the basic puppets are together and it's time to turn them into characters (if I can). My question for today is what's the best way to make shaped noses? I mean something more complex than a button nose or a single bulb style. I'm thinking I may be able to use some denser foam to cut and shape the nose and then glue the fleece carefully over it? The shape I'm after will only disappear if I use regular polyfoam (one of the things I'm learning is how exaggerated forms need to be under the fleece).
I see that my biggest challenge is going to be designing patterns, something I really haven't done much of in this kind of application. Something tells me it's going to take me at least a half dozen puppets before I start feeling comfortable making them and getting the results I want. But that's the fun of it, isn't it?
Chris

Shaping noses? Well, I did bring her up before, but you might like to have a look at this: http://lisalichtenfels.net/
Even though this is not simple, really.

Harry and the Hendersons creeps you out? Gremlins and the others I get, but I remember Harry as a pretty straight comedy?

I'm not sure why - it could have been a fear of anything furry and non-human; probably a bit of the 'uncanny valley' thrown in for fun. I was very young when it was shown here so it's not really that surprising. All of the age of 5 for the movie
I suspect I watched the TV show and got freaked out too.

As for your puppets - they're looking fab! One trick I learned from the forums here somewhere is to create a drawstring 'pouch', which you can then stuff, close up, and tie off. Then you have a maleable stuffed nose which you can shape to your desire. I take a simple circular piece of fleece and make various nose shapes once it's stuffed; pears, bulbs, oblongs, etc. Of course, that works best if you don't also want detailed lumps and bumps... although I suppose one could do hidden stitching to get that to work. But if you do want detail it's probably better to go with carved foam I think.

And yeah, I think with puppetry the motto should be "practice, practice, practice"

L200 or minicel is a good foam for making noses, teeth etc.  If I'm making a nose with a lot of detail such as for a caracture, then I glue a few layers together to for a block then cut away the excess.



I have a couple more examples, but they are a surprise forna bride and groom, so I promised not to post them until after the Wedding, March 18th.

Unfortunately I don't think I took photos of the foam before I covered it. I covered the nose with the Antron, then glued the middle back and hand sewed the edges so it blended well.  Shading also helps.


Julie

Great info! Lisa Lichtenfels work is absolutely stunningly beautiful. Really great art pieces and what a fascinating technique. I wonder if the cotton batting would work with fleece as well?
Na, I think I came across some photos of the drawstring technique here in the gallery. Is there a tutorial hidden here somewhere? It looks like an extremely handy technique.
Julie, this is exactly what I had been thinking and I did a test with the L200 foam. I think this is the way I'll go, but I'll need to color the foam as it showed through slightly. Hopefully, I'll get to it today.
Many thanks, friends.
Chris

I think you should be alright as long as the material is "strechable" enough. You might not get so much detail as with nylon, but on the other hand: Do you need quite so much detail?

Yep you might have seen the drawstring technique here in my gallery album. http://puppetsandstuff.com/community/index.php?action=gallery&g2_itemId=255  Also the nose does not have to be round to do this the red monster puppet you see on that page also has the same type of nose but it is more oval as opposed to round.

Daryl aka Stiqpuppets makes noses out of model magic then lets them dry and covers them in fleece. http://www.blogtv.com/People/StiqpuppetsLive He did a video on it. I can't find it on his BlogTV page but it is over at his YouTube account. In fact he shows how to use both L200 (I call it EVA foam) and ModelMagic
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https://youtu.be/MMmguoNW7h0
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https://youtu.be/XzmvGHbb9EA
http://www.youtube.com/user/StiqPuppets/videos?feature=context&sort=dd&page=1&view=u

P.S.  The puppets are coming along great!