The Finished Skull Island Native Puppet

After the head was painted I glued it onto the aluminum wire armature with Zap A Gap glue. The next step was to hot glue foam rubber I had saved from an old mattress to the armature. When I thought it looked about right I used manicure scissors to carefully trim the foam rubber to the appropriate shape.

After test fitting the latex skin to see if it covered the foam rubber properly it was time to glue on the front and back skins. I used the same tinted liquid latex that I made the skins from to adhere them to the armature. I brushed a light coat of latex on the inner surface of the skin and the foam covered armature. Once it was dry I carefully tacked down the skins.

There was a little overlap of skin that had to be trimmed off. Then the puppet got a final thin coat of liquid latex over the seams and where the cast head joined the body.

When it came to dressing the puppet I settled on a straw like material I found at the local Arts and Crafts store. I hot glued it in place and wrapped it snugly around the waist with Dacron line. I applied Zap A Gap over the Dacron to lock it in place.

I made a cardboard template for the shields and traced them out on thin Bass wood. After sealing the wood with primer I painted them with acrylics and top coated them with Testor's Dull Cote spray. The spears were painted metal rods topped with Apoxie Clay spearheads.