Zzzzzzzzz...

Zzzzzzzzz...

It's 2am and I'm still not done for the night. But that's ok, just a few more days and all this will be over. Shooting starts on Saturday morning, bright and early, which means it would be nice if...oh, I don't know...my puppets actually had heads by then.

Because they don't.

So I spent 6:30-1:30 at the studio, patching and painting the puppets. I finished three of the nine completely, two more just need heads (a minor detail), and the other four need one more coat of paint before they catch up to their headless brethren. Which means that now, I'm going to sit here and catch up on House while I sculpt a half-dozen heads as fast as my little hands can go.

Oh, and here's Marion and Monster #1 for my mom, because I promised a picture days ago but didn't finish until now:

For some reason, New Friend Rob was under the impression that I know what I'm doing and wanted to watch me sculpt today, so I subjected him to the ritual: Jurassic Park III in the background, running commentary under my breath, and eventually some kind of recognizable shape out of polymer clay. He made a couple of cute little figures (pictures forthcoming) and kindly refrained from commenting on my lobster.

Oh, and credit where credit's due: it was totally his idea to use dish soap to make it look like the water is boiling. My friends are so clever.

Super Sculpey, ~90 min.

There were three things John Watson loved in this world: a good pipe, Sherlock Holmes, and their bull-pup Gladstone.

Super Sculpey, ~30 min.

Woo! Lots done yesterday. I made the very last of the puppets (Monster #2, above) and started the epic trim/patch/paint process for the remaining eight puppets. I took the night off tonight to see my friend Colin who was visiting from out of town, but rest assured that I have no plans to see the sunlight tomorrow at all.

This weekend was ROUGH, you guys. Dayna (my new PA) and I were at the studio until one in the morning last night, so you have my apologies for not posting anything until today. I'm about to head over there again right now, but here are a few highlights from yesterday.

We managed to finish making all the latex bodies (yay!!!), so now it's just a matter of trimming off all the excess, patching the holes, painting the bodies, and sculpting the heads. It's a lot of work, but fortunately most of it can be done in my living room.

Thanks to Dayna for all these pictures!

The anatomy of a puppet.

Mixing the foam latex.

Pouring the latex into the mold.

Trimming the excess latex.

Lots o' puppets, in various states of completion.

Today was excellent day, thanks mostly to my personal assistant (and best friend), Dayna. She was a huge help, not just for making my armatures and cutting up burlap, but for keeping me company and generally being awesome. Thanks!

And then Merci stopped by! It was a regular film-making party up in there today. Here's Dayna (right) and Merci measuring a tiny doorway for the set:

While they slaved away on that, I tried to figure out how to make the characters' heads. Cast them in latex? Stick with the Super Sculpey? I finally decided to go with the latter, so I hollowed out this head to prepare it for baking:

Once that was done, I hollowed out the eye sockets so we could pop in the eyeballs (harvested, like the clothes and wigs, from a bunch of dolls I bought at Target):

And then we popped in the eyeballs for the creepiest moment of the day (see above).

Not bad for a day's work.