Wonders in the workshop

This past weekend we have played host to our good friend Phil from the Gluvets. Phil is an expert puppeteer and puppet builder, and this was a wonderful oppurtunity to meet up and exchange ideas. Over the course of the weekend we worked on a brand new puppet project which you can see very soon. This puppet will be finished off shortly - as soon as the sewing machine recovers from its over active weekend!

One of my personal highlights of the weekend was getting to "meet" some of Phils great charaters. Here you can see me with a brilliant dragon puppet Phil made recently. I think you will agree that the character is very special!

I was also pleased to introduce Phil to Pierre and the crex81 crew. On the left you can see Phil meeting Moony for the first time. Phil and I made a couple of videos with Pierre and Lab Rat, but as i spent most of the time laughing it's hard to know how much of them will be useable. We did however get plenty of great photos which will doubtless find their way onto the Hellyer's myspace and The Gluvets' myspace.

Keep your eyes open over the next week or so as I try and get the best pics and videos online. Also there will be a brand new character getting a crex81 debut as soon as he is completed.

In the mean time check out this timelapse from the workshop. You can tell by the work - joke ratio that it was a productive, but very funny weekend!

All the best - Dave

Experiment Complete

As I told you before I have been experimenting with different glues and construction techniques recently. Late last night I put the finishing touches on an as yet un-named character.

It's funny how things work out isn't it... I bought the eyes used on this character almost exactly a year ago with a completely different character in mind, yet re-painted and with a small amount of trim they look completely at home on him. That's one of the reasons I tend not to throw anything away - you never know when it might come in handy!

Having reduced glueing times enourmously by using hot glue rather than contact adhesive, I am now waiting for the biggest time saver of all to arrive... the sewing machine! Well that's not strictly true, I have the sewing machine (those of you who watch my videos will know bizarrely I have 3) but I don't have the skills to use it yet. However I have promised myself that this was the last puppet I would hand sew! The arms on this particular character took an hour and a half each to sew and then stuff... that's too long, I will easily double my output when the machine is up and running.

Following feedback from the first pictures of Sketch he has been re-dressed and is looking much more "at home" as a cowboy. My brother commented this on the video that I first showed him in and grudgingly I have to say I think he was right :)

You can see in this picture much more clearly just how big a feature his nose is... it seems that with all my characters to date I have had an "all or nothing" approach to noses, this hasn't been intentional but it is quite amusing to look back through my pictures and see the trend.

Thanks again for checking out the blog - thanks especially to Adam, Mark and Lewis for your comments. Any name suggestions for the new character greatfully accepted, at the moment I am considering Roni... let me know your thoughts.

All the best - Dave