Getting dressed for the show

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Finally Tonic has some clothes!!! I know it's been a long time... you might have forgotten who Tonic is... or my newer readers probably have never even seen him naked! To refresh the memory, the name is short for his full name Catatonic Drunk (working name only... not the character's actual name in the film). This is one of the heads Scott Radke sculpted for me long ago, that I promised to grow little homunculus bodies under and bring to life... the stuff we animators do, right? I made the bodes some time ago but hadn't made clothes for most of them yet. Now it's time.

So far everything is just cut and wrapped around Tonic and held in place using Fabri-Tac glue. It's working quite nicely I must say. I always try to use stretch fabric for puppet clothes when I can... it can help them stretch into those awkward poses they otherwise couldn't reach. Where edges of cut fabric will show, like the tie, I strengthened it first with some Elmer's glue so it wouldn't fray. Also, having recently learned on the message board that it's common practice to never use white I washed over anything white or close to it with a brown acrylic wash - same thing I did for the bottle labels and the posters recently. I think I need to find some kind of dye for fabric though, or something that doesn't stiffen it as much as acrylic paint does. There are times when you want to stiffen the cloth, but for a shirt or something you want it flexible. And stretchy.

Don't make me repeat what I wrote under the other pic!

Here's a closeup of one of his hands. This time I decided to wrap the fingers all the way to the wrist before creating the palm part. I used Fabri-Tac again, wrapped two layers of cotton string on each finger, and then made little tiny epoxy putty wedges for in between the fingers... then I covered the palm section with fabri-tac and wrapped more string around it all to hold everything together. Over it all I wrapped a little of the infamous athletic underwrap. After dipping several times in latex and painting the hands up I'll just have to make him a jacket and he'll be done. But geeze Louise!!! This is taking so freaking LOOOONG!!!! Mostly waiting for things to dry. I think for the rest of the puppets I need to get an assembly line method going.

More to come.