Hands and Little Feet

In this post im going to talk about how i make the hands for my puppets and the feet for the little boy.


Il start of by talking about moulding and casting hands.
I first start off by making the armature for the hands using twisted wire and milliput. I make the basic size  I want withe the wire and add milliput palm for strength and to the tips to help prevent sharp wire cutting mould

                                           

After the milliput was dry i used plastercine to sculpt and make detail for the hands on top of this.

With my hands made i used the same process as i done with my boys head in my earlier post making a two part mould. After the mould was made i could then remove the plastercine from my hands leaving me with my armature hands which fit nicely into the moulds.

I then began casting by first adding a very thin layer of latex (which i made skin colour ) to the mould. I allowed it to dry and repeated this a few times to bulk it up slightly. The reason for doing this is so the latex picks up all the detail of the hands without having air bubbles on surface as it is the most important part as we can see it.

(left hand side is the thin layer wet and right is when it is dry. latex dries a lot darker so you have to judge colour carefully)

Once the layers were dry i placed the armatures back inside mould.

I poured more latex onto hands then closed mould. I then poured more latex into the wrist and used clamps to keep it all together

When dry I removed hands from moulds

you are left with a seem around the hands which need to be carefully cut off with scissors

The final hands look something like this.

I decided to make my hands in silicone in the end to match my boys head and because it is easier to work with and a nicer finish. I just reused the same moulds and process but just added silicone instead of latex.

For the boys feet it was pretty easy as i didnt need to make them detailed i just needed shape and function as they were going to be under his onesie

I used the replacement feet i made for the boys armature and added metal foot plates. I done this so i had the choice of using magnets as well as tie downs to stand me puppet on the set. For the tie downs i drilled a hole in the foot and glued on a nut so i could screw threaded bar in to tie him down to the set.

 To finish I covered the armature in milliput to get the shape i wanted and to give the feet strength.