Puppets

Above is a “puppet family photo” I took shortly after graduating from CalArts. Below is a collection of photos of some of the puppets I have fabricated along with some details about them.

Rocket Saucer

In The Other Space, Otis blasts through space in this trusty space traveling vessel. Fast and nimble, it handles well through smooth sailing through the galaxy as well as rough sectors full of asteroids.

Inspired by late 50s and early 60s automotive design, I tried to infuse this flying saucer with callbacks to both classic sci-fi and mid-century design. Modeled in Blender, I 3D printed the ship in over 32 pieces on my Neptune 3 in PLA. I sanded, filled, and primed these before assembling it and installing the lights and wiring. The ship features 5 rigging points, liftable windshield, replaceable landing gear, working headlights, interior lights, and practical lit flames. I animated multiple procedural animation cycles in Blender and printed them in a transparent yellow PLA.

To support the Rocket Saucer I built a custom winder rig that rotates on 3 axis with the ship as a nodal point. In addition it can move up, down, side-to-side, and forward-to-back. This allowed me to save enormous amounts of time animating the many shots that featured the Rocket Saucer as I never was able to rotate the ship without losing its position in 3D space.

Fantasy Pacman Frog

This puppet was inspired by the beautiful Surinam Pacman Frog. I drew this character for my first Inktober drawing for 2020 and instantly fell in love with him. He was begging to be brought to life. I’m still working on coming up with a story for him, but rest assured more animation is coming soon.

His head is roto-cast urethane resin with posable painted wood eyes and a replacement mouth system. The lower jaw is held on magnetically. Inside is a wire, ball and socket hybrid armature using pre-made ball and socket joints for the spine and neck and wire for the arms and legs.

Otis in real life

In real life Otis is battling cancer. It might confine and constrain him for a little while, but nothing can keep him down indefinitely.

Otis was built with a custom ball and socket armature made by Dave Hetmer. His head is roto-cast urethane resin with sticker mouths and brows. His hands and neck are latex dipped foam-latex-build-up.

Doctor

Inspired by the oncologist that treated me, the doctor in my film had the tough job of walking Otis through his treatment and what that would entail. I wanted to depict a doctor that showed the same level of gentle understanding and respect that mine did.

He was built with a roto-cast urethane resin head with sticker mouths and brows on a wire armature.His hands and neck are latex dipped foam-latex-build-up.

Cancer Creatures

The imaginative representation of Otis’ cancerous cells, I designed these creatures to ride the line between too scary and just scary enough. Just enough to represent the weight of their impact without unnecessarily scaring young kids.

These were built with a unique build up of melted foam and hot glue on a wire armature. The organic build process created a natural representation of the chaos that cancer causes.

Sci-fi Otis

In my short film, The Other Space, Otis imagines himself on a sci-fi adventure. Decked out in retro-futuristic armor he imagines himself going head to head with his real life struggles with an imaginative twist.

Otis was built with a custom ball and socket armature made by Dave Hetmer. His head is roto-cast urethane resin with sticker mouths and brows. The chest piece is sanded MDF with a practical LED light that is routed through Otis’ companion Ivy.

Ivy

Otis’ imaginary friend the anthropomorphized I.V. machine. She accompanies him on his journey, supplying him with chemo to kill his cancer and a dry sense of humor to keep him sane.

I designed Ivy in blender and 3D printed her in PLA. She features dimmable lights for her eyes and mouth as well as a removable chemo tank on her back.

Copper Bot

Copper bot was one of the first puppets I ever made. After drawing him I was inspired to make him a real object.

The main body block is a cut down tomato paste can, the arms and legs are kit-bashed Legos and other misculanious bits of plastic and metal pieces. For the head I press molded epoxy-sculpt into a dome and built up a cylinder by hand.

Open the portal Bot

This was my first assignment as an intern at Open the Portal. Design my own take on their logo and animate it. Robots naturally came to mind.

The main body elements are kit-bashed plastic parts. The eye is a hand-made, functional aperture I designed in blender cut out of paper.

Spring Thaw frogs

For my grandpa’s revenge story, I decided to depict him, his brother, and dad as frogs. The year after I completed The Spring Thaw I made another film with two of these puppets, Don’t Lose Your Head.

Each of them was built with died latex dipped, latex-build-up foam on a wire armature. I sculpted sets of replacement eyes for each of them to give them squishy frog like eyes.