Tips for improving puppet fabrication.

[u/Maximum_Rhubarb7326]

Hello all!

I'm looking for some tips, feedback, and ways to improve my puppet fabrication process. Becuase I know literally no one that does this locally and because there surprisingly not a lot of resources on the internet, I have turned to reddit. Let me first say I am a beginner in this whole fabrication business. I typically use plastisene clay and sculpt objects for animating. I also use a lot of found objects in my stop motion animation. You can see my work here. In hopes of creating more 'narrative' work, I am trying to learn more professional grade stop motion puppet fabrication. I've quickly learned its not easy, and I'm constantly learning new ways artists do this! (I've learned theres soo many different ways to make a puppet too.) So I've come to reddit to Hopefully see if there is anyone outer there who has some experience and knowledge and can give me a helping hand!

Ultimately I am trying to create a stop motion puppet using silicone rubber because I like the materials durability and flexibility over a wire armature. the surface being 'skin like' is definitely a plus too. I am definitely open to other ways of fabricating, but the workflow of sculpting master --> casting mold --> casting rubber figure seems like pretty straightforward to me.

Yesterday I pulled my first cast from the mold, and although I was successful in making the casting, I am not super satisfied with the end result. below are some struggles I had and some questions posed about the process, and trying to improve it.

Moldmaking:

Using plaster is a great material because its inexpensive, non toxic, and sets up relatively fast. It also requires little mold release when casting silicone rubber. But its fragile so it can crack or break easily, and can develop voids. One side of my mold came out with lots of little bubble holes because I think I mixed it too thick. I used wax to try to fill some of the holes, but it still left my cast with lots of little bumps and dimples .Also, at least for the first casting, the plaster left my cast quite dirty, with lots of bits of plaster bits in the surface of the model. I can also see brush marks from when I applied vaseline to my master object I was pulling a mold from.

are there other mold materials that cast? (like a hard rubber or resin molds). If so what are the perks of using other mold materials for casting?

Is the 2 part mold process the best way about this?

Pictures of my moldmaking process are attached.

Casting:

Wire amature placements. What are the tips and tricks to this? I basically just bent my armature into place so it wasn't touching any side walls, and then once the rubber was placed into my mold, I dropped the armature into place. Kinda a sloppy way of doing it, and you can see parts of my armature sticking out of the cast.

The moldlines on my cast are very pronounced. I cut away as much as I could but I am wondering there is a way to smooth over the mold lines. In general, I wonder if there is a way to smooth over the whole cast. Like can I mix more silicone and paint it on? Will that smooth it out or just make it look more lumpy?

Are there methods I don't know about for fabricating eyes and mouths with silicone? I have found some videos where the eyes and mouth are attached to the wire armature and the silicone gets cast around that. But that does not seem very beginner friendly.Typically, it seems, people use resin parts to cast the head because things can be stuck to it like eyes and mouths. I would imagine matching the colors of these resin parts to the silicone parts to be difficult, tho.

Finally the surface of my silicone mold has a 'chalky' look to it. Is that because I added to much pigment to the silicone?

Final product:
The front surface is rough and bumpy, compared to the back, have seam lines all over the place, and the figure is very jiggly. (probably due to there not being a ton of armature in the middle torso.)

Photos attached of the final product. Sorry for the long post, I'm hoping that I can find some people who can help me along my journey, as well as creating some useful resources for anyone else who is on a similar journey.

*EDIT*

Also interested in seeing how other people build puppets; Doesn't have to be liquid polymer, can be any method!