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.

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.