Hey there, so here are some pics of my second puppet 'Bucky'.  Bucky took a long time to complete and I learnt a lot of new skills.  His head is an altered version the Bashful Puppets round head pattern.  I shortened his lower lip/chin to give him an overbite as he was supposed to be 'Bucky the Buck Tooth Monster' however the fur was so thick that you can't really see the overbite. The fur is long and messy and proved to be a bit difficult to work with, I ended up whip stitching most things as you can't see the seams through the fur.  This was my first attempt at using the draping method, which I used Adam Kreutinger's youtube video for guidance. Bucky also has posable hands and arm rods, once again both firsts for me.  I finished Bucky quite a while ago, but I hated how he looked, his eyes were all wrong and the teeth made him look evil.  So I put him aside and got to work on my next puppet which I have completed (and will post pics soon...).  So then it was time to come back to Bucky and make some changes.  I removed the teeth, eyes and gave him a haircut, made him new eyes and positioned them differently.  While I am not completely stoked with how he turned out, I learnt a lot!

mmm, not sure why the pics are sideways.  I had modified them in my gallery before posting them.  Can somebody please tell me how to fix it.  However at this moment, if you click twice on the image it will take you to the gallery image which is the right way up.

Kudos Krafty! I really dig Bucky! His eyes are very expressive and give him uber amounts of character - awesome job! What did you use for arm rods? Have you managed to track down the infamous piano wire in Aus???

He looks really good! I think the eyes are not quite right by about this much >.<  ... but then I never got eyes right myself anyway

He looks great. I think giving your fur puppets a haircut is important. For me it is part of the process of "sculpting" the features of the puppet. If you think about it on animals the fur is normally not all one length.  I really like the eyes on this guy. I realize they are not set to the traditional straight forward but that is part of what gives him personality.

Got the thumbnails fixed for you.  Not sure why the system keeps doing that. I'll have to look at the code when I can get a chance. I had to manually change a few things myself to get it to work.

Thanks for all the comments.

LL - I have managed to get piano wire.  I get it from a hobby store where the sell radio control cars and slot car sets and stuff, it's a couple of dollars a length which I think is about 60cm and is available in a bunch of sizes.

Na - Thank you.  I will post a pic of how he originally looked before his makeover - then you will see some really bad eye placement.. hahaha

SS - Thanks, I was nervous about cutting the fur, just because once it is gone then it's gone forever.  But I was so unhappy with how he originally looked that I felt I had nothing to lose.  I am really happy that I did because it gave his head shape, which he needed.  And thanks for sorting the photos!

In terms of cutting the fur, use the old standard: cut less than what you think you need to. If you need to cut again, then you always can. But if you cut a lot, then you can never go back!

Thanks for the info about piano wire - now I'm going to have to see if I can find some for shadow puppet rods!!