FLEA PILOT is underway........

Shel here, to introduce our second character for the new short (temporarily called LINE).....

meet FLEA PILOT.

i have to say this guy is the most exuberant puppet i've ever worked on. his enthusiasm and optimism are contageous, he kept me laughing out loud during his whole foam/paste process.

he bursts out of the oven every single time looking like this:

.......i kid you not. have you ever seen a puppet so excited to exist?
something must have happened in the oven, because his original designs are more intimidating (he IS our "bad" guy afterall).....and at the sculpture stage he was looking pretty tough too, he had alot more arms......we weren't sure we loved all the arms but we figured they would be easier to take off then to add on so Justin went ahead and sculpted them all (it's hard enough to get one set of hands to match, i was very impressed with his willingness to tackle FOUR).
Aedie had alot of fun helping with the mold (now that i think about it, she must have sprinkled some thing happy into the mix, and the big smiley face she indented on the outside of the mold must also have something to do with this guy's unshakable GLEE....).....in the end we went with the two arms because he looked a bit complicated with 4, and two will make for cleaner poses.

here's his two armed armature, this guy is aluminum wire (we're out of funds, so no cool ball and sockets for him). because he's wire, i made 4 copies in anticaption of inevitable breakage. i went with thicker wire for the legs (1/8") for support, and thin wire (1/16") doubled up for his arms, with even thinner wire wrapping all the limbs......we are discovering that the thin wire can take much more abuse than the thicker. and if i wrap them, then even if they break justin can often cheat his way through the end of a shot with just the wrapping. not the prettiest armature, but i think it'll get us where we want to go:this is the 4 armed version pre amputation:and the two armed army excitedly waiting for a paint job:

the real task now is going to try to get this guy to quit smiling and act tough!