It’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers…puppetfied! Ian Klein sent us pictures of his puppet caricatures of the members of the band a few days ago. The puppets are based on Project Puppet’s Roly and Pinhead puppet patterns.

But that’s not all. Ian writes:

I had been considering making puppets of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for quite some time so when they announced they were having a contest to make a music video for the new single Charlie, I knew I had to do it. I decided early on that I would focus on hair, noses, dress, instruments, and tattoos as the main elements of distinguishing their character and personality. I later found that another important piece of that puzzle was their teeth. Although it was fun to see the progression of these guys from beginning to end, there wasn’t anything quite like performing them.

Be sure to watch the music video submission to the contest, and check out more pictures of the puppets on Ian’s blog - kid-space.blogspot.com.

Great work, Ian! We wish you well in the contest.

Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Michael Frith talk about puppet design and more. Just watch the video. You’ll love it.

Here’s the Adding Facial Features to Your Puppet Characters tutorial in a nifty package. Enjoy!

Initial Planning
New Tutorial
The Character Sketch

Creating the Foam Base
Work Inside Out
Setting Up the Base
Planning the Features
Laying Out the Shapes
Carving the Features
The Big Picture

Covering the Foam with Fleece
Making the Fleece Pattern
Making the Fleece Pattern (Part 2)
Making the Fleece Pattern (Part 3)
Making the Fleece Pattern (Part 4)
Sewing the Fleece

The Final Assembly
Putting It All Together
Any Questions?

We hope you have enjoyed the Adding Facial Features to Your Puppet Characters tutorial over the past few weeks. We tried to be as thorough as possible in explaining each step of the process, but, just in case we missed something, now’s your chance to let us know. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post to the comments section of this post. We’ll be happy to answer any questions or clarify any step of the tutorial that may be unclear.

Any questions?

Now it’s time to put everything together! We simply placed the foam snout in the fleece “skin” and secured it with a little hot glue (in the places indicated by the arrows in the picture below).

Next, we finished adding the mouthplate and foam skull according to the directions in the Roly Puppet Pattern. And that is one way to add facial features to your puppet characters!

This wraps up the Adding Facial Features to Your Puppet Characters tutorial. Of course, our pig character is not finished quite yet. We’ll finish him up in the next few weeks, give him a name, and share pictures of the final puppet right here on the blog.

After cutting the pattern pieces from the fleece, again paying attention to the grain of the fabric, sew the parts together! You may want to refer to the previous tutorial, Working with Antron Fleece, for tips on dyeing and stitching.

Check how the various pieces fit the foam understructure as you go along, and be sure that the pattern pieces are sewn inline with each other. For example, in the two pictures below, notice how we marked the snout front along the edges in three places. The top mark is the center mark of the snout and the bottom two are where the seams of the snout side and snout bottom pieces will meet the snout front. By ensuring the marks and seams line up, we can avoid giving our pig character a crooked snout.

Brian Hogg, over at dotBoom, has posted pictures of the newest characters to be added to the dotBoom cast - Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose. Both were created using the Pinhead Pattern. The two new characters are not the first from dotBoom to be based on Project Puppet patterns. In fact Brian has used the Project Puppet patterns extensively in creating his web-based puppet series about the interoffice activities of a web development company located in Toronto, Ontario. Check out more pictures of the new characters on Flickr or the dotBoom Blog!

Warning: dotBoom’s content is not for young audiences.

Meet Robin (left) and Otto (right) made by Alex from Paris, France. These two characters are Alex’s second and third puppets made with the Project Puppet patterns. Alex’s first puppet creation was Hairy Henry which was one of the entries in The Glorified Sock Puppet Pattern Contest of last year and received two out of five votes from the contest judges.

Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work, Alex!

We really love to receive pictures of puppets from folks who are enjoying the Project Puppet patterns. Paul Burnham from the UK sent us the pictures above of his very first puppet creations! In fact, Paul wrote that he hadn’t touched a sewing machine in his life until now. Great work! The top two puppet characters were made from the Glorified Sock Puppet Pattern, both of which he created in two days. The bottom puppet was made using the Pinhead Pattern for the head, but with an awesome custom body pattern that allows the puppeteer’s hand to serve as the hand of the puppet character.

Again, excellent work, Paul! And thanks for sharing your characters with us.

Unpin the pattern pieces from the foam understructure. Now we have our pattern!

Next, trace the pattern pieces on a sheet of paper or poster board. You’ll notice we added arrows to indicate the direction of the grain. We’ve also labeled the pattern pieces and added a couple of notes. We plan to mirror two of the pattern pieces, thus eliminating two seams. By mirroring the pattern where we can, the snout of our pig character will be covered with three pieces of fleece sewn together instead of five.

Below are the final pattern shapes.

Notice that we did not add any extra to accommodate seam allowances. We plan to sew the fleece covering by hand, so adding an allowance is unnecessary. If you will be sewing your character on a sewing machine, you may add for a seam allowance in the appropriate places now.