Goro Puppet: Patterning for Head and Resin Claws

The head of a puppet is the most work-heavy portion of the project. It does the heavy lifting of making this a puppet and not a doll. Today, I will show how I've patterned out the head which will be covered in fabric.

Patterning Process

First, the head was wrapped with saran and taped with masking tape. I made sure the jaw was mostly open while doing this. This will cause some "pucker" in the fabric around the mouth which I do want.

Next, I draw stitch lines. and color change areas. This is something I did by feeling and past experience making stuffed animals. I knew where the nose would be and where the eyes should go and their shape. I marked lines were the color will change from silver to white on the face. The other lines are just where I thought stitch lines would look good.

Then, I cut the masking tape along the stitch lines and removed it from the 3D printed head.

Finally, I cut darts until flattened. I do this by finding corners and cutting straight into the pattern from the edge toward the height of a curve. When I push down to flatten things out, those cut lines start looking like triangles or "darts".

For me the next phase will be to make a test out of scrap fabric. Because I'm using knit fabric, I have a bit of stretch so I can add "padding" underneath to make shapes.

Claws

It took trial and error and plenty of mis-casts but I've cast all the dragon claws for the front paws.

Original Clay and casted resin.

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