I made the fox hand-puppets for the Eurofurence 18 Pawpet-show (an over 2 hours long show). My rat-puppet got a role in the show too.

The mouth is played with the puppeteer's hand. Eyelids and ears are moveable and can be controlled via Bowden cables.

The heads were made with foam and plastic mesh. Teeth and nose are hand-sculpted with Plaast (a polycaprolactone - biodegradable polyester with a low melting point of around 63°C).

The eyes have LEDs in them that, but we did not need those for the show - so I did not install the batteries and switches. The bodies are made of foam and hollow.

The puppets can be played thru the back of the neck or the body. The arms and legs are built with flexible joints. The hands have a bendable steel wire in them. The hands are connected to aluminium rods. There is a metal disc attached to one finger in each hand that can be used to attach props with magnets.


I made a lot of photos during the construction and several patterns too. If anyone is interested I can share them.

They look and move great! Yes of course we would love to see pics of the build process and the patterns. Nice work congratulations.

Pattern for the body:




Foam body:


Hands:


Hand-grip for the bowden cables:


Metal disk attached to a cable tie:

Sweet! I like your design/pattern for the body. I can see that it would allow for some really nice movement. Thanks for posting these! Always love to the see the inner workings of a puppet.

They're wonderful!! I really like the one with blue eyes...Congratulations, you've done a very good job!
regards from Spain!

These really are so incredibly stunning. I am in total awe of you. Fabulous work!

I think you have totally outdone yourself, as they are amazing and they kind of remind me of 'the mongrels' from british t.v., you should totally think of putting together an instructional DVD or something to teach people how you build your puppets and the mechanisms, i would totally buy it and i know i would gain alot from the methods you use to create your puppets as they are so different to what most of us do to make our creations!!! id love to learn a few things from a great fursuit maker, and im sure others would too. im going to have to stop feeling so jealous of your fantastic work now!!

I am in awe!  They are wonderful!!!

Eyes (ping-pong-balls) with movable plastic eyelids:

I build the eyelids by modelling plaast (polycaprolactone) around a metal ball that has the same diameter as the eyes.

The teeth are made by modelling plaast around a metal pin (each tooth separately - the pin was used to get a better grip on the material). I reheated the base of each tooth and attached it to the jaw.


I glued the fur to the head working from the nose to the back of the head (sewed the fur where I wanted to trim it - to hide the seams):


Many hairstyles were tried to find out what looks best (I pinned it on before glueing it):


I painted the eyelids and trimmed the fur:


Cut the long NFT-stretchfur:


Added eyebrows and eyelashes (glued the brown fur directly to the backing of the white fur):

(The fur on her ears was trimmed later)

Some random puppet photos:

So is the nose plaast also?  Great work!  The teeth are really cool looking.  You're an Artist.