So About That Giant Puppet...
As a puppet fabricator, I’ve always wanted to build a giant puppet but never had the space nor time. But now with plenty of both, I decided the time was nigh to build something enormous for Halloween.
This was vaguely the plan. I wasn’t quite certain what the character would be or how I’d do the skin, but I knew I wanted it to be 12-15 feet tall and was planning to use a lot of cardboard.
To get started, I borrowed the back harness from my friend/mentor Lynne who’s the president of the San Diego Guild of Puppetry, so I wouldn’t have to worry about how the puppet would stay attached to my body.
I then started building out the skeletal structure using PCV pipes and dowels, with strips of cardboard taped to them to give it volume. This way the puppet would take up space but hopefully not weigh too much. I also made a body structure out of hula hoops and rope, kind of like how petticoats give structure to a ballgown.
Then it was time to dress the puppet in fabric. I used 3 old bedsheets in total: 1 for the arms, 1 for the legs, and 1 for the body. I sewed, stapled, and taped the fabric onto the frame wherever I could to cover the skeletal structure.
Then I cut up and spray painted the fabric to make it look more monstrous and aged. I mainly used gold, grey, and black spraypaint to add texture.
I also made a head piece by cutting out a large disk of cardboard and hot gluing crumpled strips of packing paper to it in order to sculpt a sort of face. At this point with the sandy tan and sky blue bed sheets, I decided the character would be aquatically themed and named it the Sea Witch.
I added some extra tule I had laying around to the head to look like strips of matted hair, and finally made some hands out of more duct tape and strips of cardboard.
All that was left now was a visit to the beach on Hallow’s Eve to show the Sea Witch in her natural habitat. After a grey overcast day, the sunset DELIVERED.
After so many months spent inside and working in front of a computer, it was really fun to build something real and get to take it out into the world to share some Halloween magic.