hello everyone, Now I need a little bit of advice I am using a stage built from pvc pipes which comes down into sections I have been toying with the idea of actually making my stage one of the puppets in my shows using it as a narrator tye character for some reason I see it as a Mrs Doubtfire type accent lol. Anyway I have thought about making an extra rectangle with the pipes that can be fitted into the stage with its own curtain etc so no one can see it. it needs to be a flat face but with working mouth and eyes. I have no idea how to achieve this can someone point me in the right direction for this type of build? I have seen books that have the flat face and wondering if anyone new of a pattern or if they could advice how to make my own pattern on this?

Thanks
Booster

I don't know how to pull it off, but it does sound interesting and I will be watchin to see other peoples ideas.  As for control, my first thought would be using foot pedals, similiar to what drummers use for bass and cymbals.  One pedal controling the mouth and one for blinking eyes. 

That's a great idea I was gonna stick a puppeteer there to do it its the actual flat face that im struggling with

Well one easy way would be to use a flat piece of wood or cardboard that has cutouts for the eyes and mouth. Behind this you put painted eyes and mouth complete with eyelids and lower lip/jaw. Moving these pieces up and down gives you animation of eyes and mouth!

I assume the book you have seen is Axtell's talking book.



No pattern for this that I know of although I think others have made something similar. Since this is an Axtell puppet it is more then likely a molded piece but you could get the same thing using soft sculpture.  Again your eyes are pretty much cut out holes with they eye mech behind them. Since you are dealing with a flatter plane the eyes don't really have to be a round ball they could just be a flat piece painted that slid side to side.  You then would have to rig the eyelid as a flat piece the moved up and down.

Then the mouth could be as simple as a piece of elastic in the lower lip that was rigged with a string to pull down on the middle. Maybe to keep the shape of the lower lip better you could create a hard inner core that had elastic at each corner that was then covered in the fabric. You would have to make sure your fabric had two way stretch or make sure you put it on with the stretch going up and down.