I’m still playing around with ways to attach joints to puppets and make them move smoothly, but now I’m focused on three dimensional puppets instead of the flat shadow puppets from yesterday. I struggle with posting on days like this because sometimes experiments kinda look like nothing-even when they’re very helpful to me and my thinking process.

Today I experimented with some woodworking tools -some of which were new to me- to build a prototype for a ball joint arm socket that I think will work well with some of our puppets. I got the idea from a workshop that I took at the AGO a couple of years ago with @clunkpuppetlab . We were making hand puppets that used this type of ball joint as part of the head. I had the idea that the same technique would work for the arm sockets of a puppet we’ve been struggling with. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like it might work.

I dismantled some toys today too! Seriously, I sometimes find hardware that works with puppets in STEAM building toy sets. Those sets often contain plastic replicas of “real” hardware that’s a lot easier to work with and smaller than the hardware from hardware stores. I’ve also found that I can get very inexpensive pieces or cheap small sets to dismantle which keeps it affordable. We now have a bunch of random pieces in our workshop that we occasionally find a use for. Often pieces need modification and a few extra holes drilled, but that’s what small drill bits are for!

I also began playing with various hinges , screws, and nuts to see what might work for shoulders and arms.

It doesn’t look like much yet, but this messing around will help me solve technical issues with puppets down the road.