World, Meet Mina.

World, meet Mina.

Or some semblance of Mina, anyway. Those aren't her glasses (hers will have eyes on them). And she needs a haircut. But still--!

As of 3:03am, I am officially considering myself done with these puppets. Am I actually done? Technically, no. But the remaining work is all non-essential touch-ups and about ten minutes of construction that I couldn't do tonight. So, for all intents and purposes, done.

Phew.

Today was excellent day, thanks mostly to my personal assistant (and best friend), Dayna. She was a huge help, not just for making my armatures and cutting up burlap, but for keeping me company and generally being awesome. Thanks!

And then Merci stopped by! It was a regular film-making party up in there today. Here's Dayna (right) and Merci measuring a tiny doorway for the set:

While they slaved away on that, I tried to figure out how to make the characters' heads. Cast them in latex? Stick with the Super Sculpey? I finally decided to go with the latter, so I hollowed out this head to prepare it for baking:

Once that was done, I hollowed out the eye sockets so we could pop in the eyeballs (harvested, like the clothes and wigs, from a bunch of dolls I bought at Target):

And then we popped in the eyeballs for the creepiest moment of the day (see above).

Not bad for a day's work.

For some reason, New Friend Rob was under the impression that I know what I'm doing and wanted to watch me sculpt today, so I subjected him to the ritual: Jurassic Park III in the background, running commentary under my breath, and eventually some kind of recognizable shape out of polymer clay. He made a couple of cute little figures (pictures forthcoming) and kindly refrained from commenting on my lobster.

Oh, and credit where credit's due: it was totally his idea to use dish soap to make it look like the water is boiling. My friends are so clever.

Super Sculpey, ~90 min.

Just FYI, she does have a head.

I've been up late sculpting every night, so forgive the lazy photo. I'm halfway through a couple of monsters, some other heads, and assorted other puppets, but they're not cool, "wow, the process is so interesting" works-in-progress...more like "wow, someone should teach Cari how to sculpt." So I'll refine a little more before I post those.

And now...a nap.

Catastrophe! I came in this morning to pry apart the little boy mold, and it crumbled in my hands. Well, half of it crumbled. So I rebuilt that half, and while I was waiting for it to dry, I started on the Monster #1 mold. That's this little guy!

He's going to be covered in fur, remember, so he'll actually look really different than this. But this is what he'd look like if he was naked, shaved, and blanched. So helpful.

In other news, the second attempt at the boy mold was successful, so I built a wire armature for the puppet and tomorrow I'll pour and bake the latex on top of it. I'd show you a picture, but I'm frankly so sick of looking at the dude that I couldn't bear it. So just use your imaginations.

Merci started bringing in set pieces and monster fur today, and I'm starting to see the whole thing coming together in my head. It's really exciting. :)

In which I describe why there will suddenly be a lot more posts and why all of them will seem so similar.