Stop Motion Puppet Construction

Over the Christmas holiday I decided to try my hand at creating some stop motion puppets. This type of puppet is fully posable and used in the film industry to create stop motion animation in movies like Coraline.

I thought it would be fun to create my interpretation of the strange creature that crawls up from the pit in the 1933 version of King Kong.

I began by carving a wooden skull for the creature and adding some Apoxie sculpt teeth.

Next I used aluminum wire to create the spine and front legs of the creature. Here is the lizards head added to the spine. The small human figure is one of the lizards intended victims.

The wire body of the lizard is then wrapped with cotton.

Then chunks of foam are glued to the armature using liquid latex. It is then trimmed to shape and covered with a foam tape overwrap.

Next I sculpted the lizards head and lower jaw over the armature in clay. I then made a two piece plaster mold of the clay head. I brushed a mixture of acrylic paint and liquid latex into the mold halves.

After peeling my lizard head pieces out of the molds I brushed some liquid latex onto the armatures skull and glued the sections in place.

Next I glued down the neck section onto the lizard and added some spikes I had formed using liquid latex and cotton.

For the lizards skin I made a textured mold into which I brushed a thin coat of tinted liquid latex.

When the latex was dry I brushed talcum powder over it. This prevents it from sticking to itself.

Then I carefully peeled the latex skin from the mold.

Here is one section of the completed skin. I'm guessing I will need about 3 or 4 sections to cover the entire lizard creature. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the puppet up this week.