Hello, I'm Tioh - a hobby puppet builder from Germany (by trade I'm a computer scientist).
I have started building full-body costumes for myself in 2002. Since then I documented most of my projects, learned new skills and expanded my interests (animatronics, 3d-modeling and -printing, photography, ... puppet building).
I attended a very interesting lecture by Dave Barclay (http://www.davebarclay.com/ ) in 2008 that gave me the inspiration for building my first hand-puppet.
The puppet was built like a miniature costume (height 127cm) - the fur can be detached from the body and there is a mannequin-like structure inside the body.
I walked around with this puppet at the Eurofurence Convention in Germany (the body can stand by itself and it wore roller blades) and got asked by the director of the Pawpet-Show to build new puppets for their event.
The show grew over the years - resulting in more people being involved and a bigger demand for new puppets - too much work for me alone, so I started making tutorials and patterns.
Most people find it difficult to get the head shape right. Having not enough spare-time to build those by hand I made 3d-models for the head bases and print those using a 3d-printer.
I release most of my puppet head models on https://www.thingiverse.com/Tioh/designs under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ ) - so other people can use those too (no Commercial use permitted because I do not want to ruin other puppet builders businesses that sell head bases).
I made several tutorials to make it easier for new puppet builders - they are listed on http://puppet.tioh.de/
My latest builds are in my LiveJournal: http://tioh.livejournal.com/
Several friends of mine make puppets or help with the construction nowadays. Most of the puppets I show (especially the bigger ones like Ortha or Haze) are group projects - too big for one person to finish in half a years spare time.
I have started building full-body costumes for myself in 2002. Since then I documented most of my projects, learned new skills and expanded my interests (animatronics, 3d-modeling and -printing, photography, ... puppet building).
I attended a very interesting lecture by Dave Barclay (http://www.davebarclay.com/ ) in 2008 that gave me the inspiration for building my first hand-puppet.
The puppet was built like a miniature costume (height 127cm) - the fur can be detached from the body and there is a mannequin-like structure inside the body.
I walked around with this puppet at the Eurofurence Convention in Germany (the body can stand by itself and it wore roller blades) and got asked by the director of the Pawpet-Show to build new puppets for their event.
The show grew over the years - resulting in more people being involved and a bigger demand for new puppets - too much work for me alone, so I started making tutorials and patterns.
Most people find it difficult to get the head shape right. Having not enough spare-time to build those by hand I made 3d-models for the head bases and print those using a 3d-printer.
I release most of my puppet head models on https://www.thingiverse.com/Tioh/designs under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ ) - so other people can use those too (no Commercial use permitted because I do not want to ruin other puppet builders businesses that sell head bases).
I made several tutorials to make it easier for new puppet builders - they are listed on http://puppet.tioh.de/
My latest builds are in my LiveJournal: http://tioh.livejournal.com/
Several friends of mine make puppets or help with the construction nowadays. Most of the puppets I show (especially the bigger ones like Ortha or Haze) are group projects - too big for one person to finish in half a years spare time.
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