PUPPETS - The Eyes Have IT!

 When I first design a puppet, I begin with the eyes. The eyes must convey a wide range of emotions, either fixed or with animation. The Puppets for LILI all have some form of eye animation, so the eyes must be produced individually with that function in mind. Above is a preliminary sketch of what CARROT TOP might look like. The finished puppet may look nothing like this, but to establish scale and measurements I must first make a preliminary sketch....

 Here we see the eight "eyes' for the four needed puppets, drilled and gessoed & ready for painting. CARROT TOP and MARGUERITTE will have open / close eye animation. Much like a doll, their eyes will be able to open and close with a flick of the puppeteers finger. REYNARDO, the fox and GOLO, the giant will have side to side animation. Their eyes will be able to shift  back and forth with the same slight movement of the puppeteer. The base for the eyes are 1 & 1/4" diameter wooden drawer pulls from the hardware store. These are slightly flattened at the back with a 1/8" hole pre-drilled. I drill another 1/8" hole perpendicular to the pre-drilled one which will either allow the eyes to swing up and down or side to side on a wire base

My style for eye painting is something I have perfected over the years. It must be remembered that these puppets will be at least 30 feet from the audience, so texture is very important in conveying the overall look and "feel" of the characters. Realistic or "plastic" doll eyes would not "read" at that distance, so the painting must be done with bold strokes which look very rough close up. Here I lay out the basic eye color and shape using a round foam brush. I will later fill in the shapes by hand with finer and finer paint brushes, adding the white and black elements of my stylized eye...

Finally I cut fine grooves into the eyes of CARROT TOP  & MARGUERITTE in order to fit slim trunk-fiber eyelashes into the wooden balls ( eyelids for REYNARDO & GOLO  will be built up over the shiting eyes as the face is constucted later). A small clear rhinestone is cemented in place within the pupil of each eye. These will glisten under stage lighting to impart an extra measure of "life" to the characters eyes. The last step is a wash of polyurethane varnish over the eye to create that wet texture that all true eyes have. Here from bottom to top are CARROT TOP's eyes (green), MARGUERITTE's eyes ( blue), REYNARDO's eyes ( brown ) and GOLO's eyes ( black ).

Once the eyes are ready the woodwork involved in making the controllers for these rod puppets can be started. That will be coming up next week.....