Armature Building

I gathered my materials and tools around me, ready to build the armature. I decided to make the bones from epoxy putty rather than polymorph, as with my previous puppets, as I wanted to see the comparison. I have used epoxy for my miniatures and that worked out well, since polymorph would have been too stubborn a substance to sculpt that small.

I measure out all my wire first, twisting it together. I do this by getting the lengths of wire, wrapping one end of them around a spoon and then holding the other ends with pliers. I twist the spoon while keeping the pliers still. As long as you keep the tension, the wires twist together neatly.

I used 3 strands of 1.5mm aluminium wire for the spine and neck, to give extra strength, 2 strands of 1.5mm wire for the legs and arms, 1 strand of 1.5mm wire for the feet and 2 strands of 1mm wire for the wrists and hands, as they are more delicate.

I made the hands by taking a length of wire, going to the middle of it and twisting it there to make a finger. I then move along and twist another one beside it. Once I have all the fingers and thumb I then take the two ends and twist them together, but not all the way to meet the fingers, so that there is a gap for the palm. 

I then trimmed down the fingers and thumb to the right size.

When I make the bones I will trim down some of the wire which is currently too big, but apart from that the wire making stage is now done!

Next I used epoxy putty to make the palms, you can see the front and back of the hands in the above photos. I used a cocktail stick to sculpt inbetween the fingers. 

I initially tried using epoxy putty for the bones of the armature, but I decided I prefer polymorph, so switched to that. I prefer polymorph as it is far lighter and also, importantly, will not break! If too much pressure is placed on the epoxy, especially if it is quite thin, it will break and the armature will fall apart. Polymorph can take whatever you throw at it (except warm water...) and so it is only the wire that you need to worry about snapping after much use. Polymorph is also good because if after using the puppet a while the wire in the armature breaks, you can melt the polymorph and replace the broken wire, then remould the polymorph bones. Whereas if a breakage occurred with an epoxy putty armature, it would be harder to remove any of the bones. The bad thing about polymorph is the very brief time you have to work with it before it hardens, so it is a little difficult to sculpt to the desired shape, so with miniatures I think epoxy is best as since it has the consistency of clay you can sculpt it easily to however small a bone you need.

I put the polymorph in boiling water and then molded it around the wires. I pressed the nuts into the feet, making sure they were flush with the bottoms of the polymorph bones. I have the bolts screwed into the nuts while I push them into the polymorph, as this prevents any polymorph spilling out into the centre of the nut, which would then prevent the bolts screwing in and securing the puppet to the stage during animation. I made that mistake the first time I made a polymorph armature...

Once everything had cooled I used epoxy glue to secure it all together. When gluing the nuts into the feet, I screw the bolts in once again, as this prevents any glue seeping into the thread of the nut and clogging it up. I leave them in while the glue is curing. Sometimes they get a bit stuck but you can get the bolts out by using pliers to unscrew them.

The armature is not quite finished yet as I have not glued the head on, as I am going to paint it first and I have not glued the hands on as I am going to cover them in latex first. In the pictures the wrists look slightly long, this is because I have left a little bit of extra wire that I will trim off once the latex has been applied.