I asked my mother in law Annemiek du Cloo and my friend Danielè Knirim to sew the clothes of the puppets. They are very good in making detailed work and are very precise. I was very glad they wanted to help me!
I still had to think of a way to make suitable eyebrows and eyelids. I came up with the idea of make them out of paper to match the rest of the design of the design and set.
How big do the eyebrows need to be?
The final eyebrows with the eyelids
By using the lasercutter at Rogier Wieland's place, where I also could build up the set and make the animation, it was possible to cut the eyebrows and eyelids and a lot of spare ones when the original pares where used or lost. I used some Blu-Tack to make them stick on the face of the puppets.
I used the same modelling and moulding technique to make to necks of the puppets.
Afterwards I started to make a first detailed model with plastiline clay. I liked the result. It pretty much looks like the 2D character Julia Jager drew for me.
I had to make a decision where to make the cutting line for the jaw replacement. I also carved away the mouth to make a hole to put white plasticine in, so I can in-between the animation of the mouth.
The next casting steps were almost the same as when I made the hands and feet of the puppets, but this time I made a silicone mould for the plasticine head and replacement.
I made a few tests to know for sure I could get rid of the bubbles in the PU resin.
And eventually put the neck into the silicone mould and casted the PU resin head.
A recording that shows how the magnetic jaw replacement works
Plasticine mouth tests
Facial replacement, from Norbert's to Molly's
Failed replacement castings...
Mostly because of air captured inside the mould
Modelling Molly's hair
Casting of Molly's hair
Colour tests on replacements and hair
All kinds of expressions; the replacements are finally finished!
These are the expression sheets I made of Norbert and Molly for each scene in the film. By making these sheets I know which facial expression I have to model in plasticine clay on the PU resin jaw replacements of each puppet.
The hands are finished! Now I am going to make the feet of both Molly and Norbert. The design of the feet is not that important, because they are not often to be seen on screen. That's why they don't have to be too detailed. I didn't want to lose a lot of time modelling a left and right leg, so I made one universal foot for both characters. I started with Molly's feet because it was the most difficult model to make.
The two parts are ready. So let's clean then up.
First foot done! It worked out just fine.
Just had to add some extra black silicone on the shoe to fill up the white moulding lines.
Let's model Norbert's feet
First part and second part of the mould
Drying, waiting, ping!
It wants to break free!
I made a quick casting test with transparant silicone
Adding the first layer of coloured silicone
Norbert's left (or right) foot is finished!
The second foot is in the making
Et voilà!
UP NEXT: Modelling and casting the Poly Urethane resin heads of Norbert and Molly.
