How to make a puppet arm??

Question

i've recently brought a rod arm puppet. and i find that my puppet's arm is a bit too short and it doesnt have an elbow which makes it hard to move and create some hand gestures. i intend to redo both arms if possible. i want to make the arms something like the one on avenue Q. ( they have elbows and longer arm especially kate monster and lucy-from what i observed) i've seen the one from expert village stuffed with some filling( like many other stuffed toys and cushions) and its the one my puppet is made of now. help?

Answer 1

Hi:

I noticed this question, and thought I would also try to give you an answer.  I have a sculpting background, so I'll try to answer this from a soft sculpture perspective.  If the puppet has a soft sculpture exterior, and you want an elbow joint, you probably will want to create an armature for the upper and lower parts of the new arm along with a hand section, out of fairly stiff wire or other similar material.  

You might check out the excellent sculptor supply company, Compleat Sculptor.  I got a two part component called Magic Sculp that you can mix together and it cures very hard and you can coat the wire with that to make it unbend-able.  I'd probably make loops at the end of the arm piece that could be affixed in the fabric.

You probably then need to sew a tube of fabric and flip it inside out and place that over the wire, and then stuff the space with soft polyfill material.   I'm pretty sure that different types of polyfill have differing properties for items like stuffed toys - like softness or density - so you may want to pay attention to what you get.  I've seen some doll makers use the opposite side of stretch velvet for making soft doll faces, but depending on your particular puppet, you could probably use a slightly stretchy, somewhat plush fabric such as polar tec.  If you get the polyfill material that is in fibers, you may want to wrap the armature with it, and then cover it with the fabric and fill in any gaps as you need to.

I sort of have an idea about how I would do this, so if you need more information or advice, feel free to email me and I'd be glad to try to lend a hand.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

My best advice is to go to Puppets and Stuff.com, a forum for puppet builders, and post some pictures of your puppet and a description of what you're trying to do. Without seeing the actual puppet it's hard to know what the best method is. Also, there are a number of good threads already there about making puppet arms.

I recommend instead of destroying a nice puppet, make your own specifically to what you want and need. There are a number of good free puppet patterns here:

http://puppetsinmelbourne.com.au/index.p...

and Project Puppet.com has some excellent (pay for) patterns that teach you how to make a muppet from scratch. A number of people use them to make puppets similar to those in Avenue Q.