pictured above is a timid young puppet named Seán, who lives on Sign Street with the rest of his family and friends. Seán was constructed for my final year project 'Sign Street' for my Animation & Motion Design level 8 undergraduate degree at Limerick Institute of Technology. Sign Street is an educational television show focused on teaching basic Irish Sign Language to young children of both the hearing and deaf communities. Pictured below is a concept sketch for Seán, as well as his twin Sister Heidi.

The construction of Seán was dictated very much by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. I knew I wouldn’t have time to order new fabrics or materials online and all of the local stores were closed by lockdown. Therefore, fabric choice was dictated solely by what I had available. I began by constructing the skull with clay, covering half in masking tape, marking the darts and unfolding it in order to create a cutting pattern.

The cutting pattern was upscaled using a photocopier and the foam skull was then cut out and glued together with a contact cement. A mouth pattern was traced from the constructed skull, cut from a hard plastic basin and glued into place. I also glued some ribbon (not pictured) on the top and bottom of the mouth plates, inside the skull, for the puppeteers fingers to slip into for additional support

After the skull was constructed, scrap fabric was draped over the skull and then folded and pinned into place to create the skin pattern.

The skin and mouth were then cut using the new pattern, sewn together and pulled over the skull to create the head. Finishing details and appendages were then added. Unfortunately, this marked the end of most of my available materials and as I was unable to source more due to lockdown, sacrifices had to be made.

As I had expected before undergoing the construction process, I would need to disassemble one of my old puppets, Sam, for her body and neck. I did not have enough foam or fabric to make a new body. This is also why I decided upon the yellow head colour for Seán.

After attaching the body to the head, I did experiment with the eyebrows that are seen in Seán's original concept sketch but I figured they aged the puppet too much and ultimately removed them from the final design. Finally, the hands were made as gloves, tracing my own hand for a pattern, and sewing them onto the sleeves, and the arms were simply scrap fabric stuffed into the sleeves of the shirt. Creating the sleeves was the most foreign aspect of the puppet for me. The only other time I created a live hand puppet, it was a monster styled puppet with a large drape of fabric which concealed the puppeteer’s arms from view. This character had a tight sleeved shirt with nothing to hide the puppeteer’s arms. I ended up sewing a half sleeve onto the back of the elbow of each arm for the puppeteer’s arms to slide through. This way, any arm that may show would be much more discreet and match the sleeves of the puppet.