(no subject)

[sabbitha.livejournal.com]

ive been making puppets recently, and these are two for a client. they wanted two australian monsters as cute puppets for an exhbition.

so introducing the Bunyip and the Doolagah!







Bunyip: Their main goal in life is to cause nocturnal terror by eating people or animals in their vicinity. They are renowned for their terrifying bellowing cries in the night and have been known to frighten Aborigines to the point where they would not approach any water source where a bunyip might be waiting to devour them. Some say the bunyip looks like a huge snake with a beard and a mane; others say it looks like a huge furry half-human beast with a long neck and a head like a bird.

and the Doolagah:



Doolagah: the ledgend of the Doolagah reaches far back into koori culture. he is a dreamtime ledgend, a wild man of the australian bush. he's big and hairy and smelly, but he doesnt hurt anybody. he lives in the bush of the south coast of NSW, he protects the enviroment, looking after the land and the sea. there have been encounters with the doolagah when camping in the mountains and surfing in the sea.

excuse the shitty pics and myspace angles, its actually really hard to hold a puppet up with one hand and photograph it with the other.



and for those of you who work with toy and fake fur, the best thing i ever learned about that is when youre cutting it, dont use sissors and jsut hack away like you do with material, because you always end up with short hairs at the cut and makes it much harder to hide seams. instead, turn the fur over and gently slit the backing material with a razor or scaple. that way you part the material without cutting the hair in any way. SO useful i needed to share it.

and for those of you who are wanting to make foam puppets like these (how the muppets were made) i cannot recommend more highly the book 'The Foam Book, an easy guide to building polyfoam puppets' by drew allison and donald devet