Crafting Audrey 2 Puppets - Pod 1, Part 1

Pod 1 Foam Pattern

A lot of Audrey 2's I had seen across the internet were built out of paper mache.  In the beginning that was going to be my first choice but after seeing the finished product I wasn't so sure anymore.  I didn't see them durable enough to withstand high schoolers and I was looking for something light and with less texture.

Here are some useful links I found.

• Swazzle has a really good Facebook album on how they built their puppet.  It's not a tutorial by any means but it's a great inside look at how the pros do it. They also have great setup and operation videos that help you see how it all fits together. 
• Monkey Boys also has great videos but no behind the scenes photos.
• Hexlee has a great progress blog on using a pattern with green foam.
• PennyDreadful on muppetcentral.com has a couple of photos.
• Dan Stone shows pod three and four framing made from 1/2" PVC pipe. 

Countless other videos were used as well but a quick google search will turn up plenty.

From everything I had read and seen I needed to make a pattern to cut my foam out in the right shape. You could make a paper pattern by covering the shape needed in masking tape then using an x-acto knife to cut the tape in certain places and then peel the tape right off.  Take a piece of paper and stick the tape to the paper.  I used that to scale it with a transparency and overhead projector (yes, those are still very useful in the theatre world).  

This is a great tutorial by Ludi on Craftster that will show you how to make a pattern.  Here is my resulting pattern, I used a styrofoam egg half as my basic shape for Audrey 2.

Once I had my shape blown up to the correct size, I traced it with a marker on 1/2" green foam from Joann's, then I cut it out. On some scrap pieces I tested out how hot glue would hold and I didn't like it at all. I had some contact cement left over from another project and used that instead. It worked like a charm and if you can look past the strong fumes, that is definitely the way to go.

    

You are gonna want to use a throw-away brush for the contact cement.  I've been using the same one this whole time and its has a lot of layers on it.  If you have never worked with contact cement, here a crash course of sorts, but always read the label on the can for complete instructions. 

• It stinks. Work in a well ventilated room or open a window. My whole house stunk for a couple of hours. Hubby was grumpy :)
• You have to brush it on both sides of whatever you are adhering. It only sticks to itself when it's dry, but do not get it on anything else while you are brushing it on. It's kinda stringy and you can only remove it with acetone, so take your time brushing.
• When you are ready to stick the pieces together, line them up and press them. Contact cement can't be repositioned but if you take your time line up the pieces you shouldn't mess up.

Once it was I just went around my foam half and stuck everything together giving me this dome shape.  I made two halves, a top and bottom.

I laid one of my halves upside down on some chip board and traced out the shape. I then cut it out, brushed some cement on the edges of the foam and board and then pressed them together. This served as the "top" of the inside of the mouth and gave me a flat surface to glue red felt to later.