In case you thought I was dead…

…I'm not.

Here's the continuing saga of the silicone puppets (no, I'm not talking about Hollywood).

The National Parks book is on hold for a while. I did manage to get the silicone body molded for the Boy With No Eyes.

This was my first silicone mold holding a wire armature. I don't make stop-motion animation—yet—but learning how puppets are made is fun, and I use it in my illustration work. I wanted to create posable forms, especially fingers and hands, and in the past I've sculpted individually posed, baked clay hands for each puppet illustration. I could continue with that technique, but why not learn something new that could be beneficial? You never know where life's path will lead you, and it's good to learn all sorts of new things on the way.

He has plenty of flaws, but he turned out fairly well, considering. Clothes will cover up most of the flaws in the silicone skin. The seams (called flashing) where the front and back sides of the puppet meet haven't been trimmed yet—I'll use a teeny tiny cuticle scissors to do that, cursing the entire time, no doubt.

You can see where there was an air bubble in the silicone at the heel of his right foot, and the wire armature got a little too close to the silicone skin on the right leg. Live and learn.

So Boy With No Eyes will be stored for a while until the National Parks book comes back, or if I use him for something else.

Moving along to Madame Teeth:

She's looking rather zombie-like here, showing her bones and detachable limbs. Our girl stands roughly 14 inches tall. This is entirely my own fault for making her so large; I sculpted her head a little too big, and I hope the puppet's size doesn't bite me in the butt when I'm ready to pose her and find her legs can't manage her height. I figure if this happens, I can reinforce her legs under her voluminous skirts—she is from the late 1890s, after all. Didn't you know women from that era had mechanical unmentionables?

I decided to make her limbs detachable in case the armature wire eventually snaps—this way I can simply replace a part instead of having to rebuild the entire puppet.

Also, only her arms will be coated with a silicone skin because everything else will be covered with clothing. It's a good way to save bucks on Dragon Skin, the silicone I use here.

I don't need an excuse to play with Legos, but now they have a purely utilitarian use. Here I'm preparing a two-piece plaster mold. The Legos act as a retainer wall for the plaster. I've sculpted Madame Teeth's arms and have them halfway embedded in clay. The plaster is poured over them, and after it hardens I flip the whole thing over, peel off the clay, and pour plaster onto the other side of the arms to form the second half of the mold. The embedded sphere shapes in the clay are called keys—they help guide the two halves of the plaster mold together for a perfect fit before the silicone is poured inside.

See? Here are the completed, hardened two-piece plaster molds. The Legos retaining wall just pops right off, and I can use them over and over

To the left is the clay piece in which the sculpted arms were embedded. Inside the mold are the detachable wire armature arms. Since the fingers are so small, first I'll paint a few thin layers of silicone inside the molds, then place the wire armature inside so it rests on top of the silicone. Then the molds are fitted together and the rest of the silicone is poured inside the mold.

After a few hours, the silicone has cured and the arms are popped out of the mold. The flashing needs to be trimmed off for a smoother look. They came out pretty well; there are a few spots where either the silicone is too thin or else there was an air bubble between the armature wire and the silicone, but otherwise…not bad. This takes practice.

Now Madame Teeth has posable arms and fingers, even though untrimmed they look kind of Creature from the Black Lagoon-ish here.

Next she will be padded with foam and made respectable with clothes.

I found some really nice laces and silks, and the brocade will make a nice vest for Mr. Absinthe. 

Oh, I didn't tell you they were a couple?

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One more thing. I received this for my birthday last year, and it makes me laugh every time a USB cable is plugged into it. My own TARDIS.