Make a Human Ventriloquist Dummy

1. 01 Introduction: Hello. Hey, Danny. N hit Tony. And today, I'll be teaching you how to make a human puppet. I'll be teaching you how to make a human puppet. I obviously made myself. You can make a human puppet to look like yourself or someone you love or somebody you look up to because I just chose myself because there are all kinds of different people out there of different kinds of sizes, shapes, colors, whether you're a male, female, queer, transgender. There really is no limit. You can customize it to however you want. It can be a fantasy character or it could be yourself. I chose myself because why not? So, enjoy the module and have fun. Okay. Are you dining? Alright? Let's get started. 2. 02 Getting Started: Okay, so for this much we will be making. We will be needing a puppet base, so I have mine right here. You'll be needing that. This is the head, and I want to really start to detail the head. So the first thing you need to do is you need to determine which way is going to be the front. I'm going to say this side will be a front here. So this is the front, and this is where you need to start. So the easiest way there are several ways you can do this. It's like doing a self portrait. So you can use a photograph of yourself, a picture of yourself, or you can maybe draw yourself and then use that as a reference. It might be easier if you have a more cartoonized version of it first. Or you can just use a mirror, have a mirror in front of you and just, I'm going to be using my webcam for this. So 3. 03 Nose: I really think the first step that you should do is make the nose so that you know where the center of the face will be. So the nose, we're going to crumble into a very small, kind of like a small flat oval sort of shape like this. Okay, we're going to get the masking tape. Grab the masking tape and we're just going to tape so keep the shape up the nose. And it should come out looking something like this. Yeah, I should almost look like a tear drop would be a little better, but it's up to you. The shape is entirely up to you. If you want to have a round nose or if you want to have a triangular nose. This I'm thinking might be a little too big. Yeah, yeah, it is a little too big. So I'm going to trim that down. So you can use a pair of scissors if you want to resize something because I always do. Well, that's actually looking a little better. So we're going to use that. I'm just going to re tape it. There. Now you got to remember the gloves because I got these gloves here. This will protect you from burns when you're handling hot glue. And we're going to attach that right to the center. And remember, you can always move it. You can remove it and re glue it if you have to. I want to put it right about here. This is where the nose is I think I'll lower. It really is quite on the center. This is good enough. 4. 04 Ears: I would like to make the ears next. Now, I'm just looking at myself, and the ears are actually quite parallel to the nose. So they should be on the center of the face on each side. So we're going to grab some more newspaper. I'm going to take my clubs off because I'm not working with glue at the moment. Now, you can do this with cardboard, too. If you want to cut out a cardboard ear, that will work just fine. I want to try it with a newspaper. Because I want to actually be able to It'll be easier to actually tape it up and then trim it to look like an ear. That is a really good way. I'll show you in just a second, kind of like I did with the nose. That's already actually looking pretty good for an ear. Might be a little bit on the big side, but Okay, so it kind of, so it's not the most ear looking shape, but this one I'm talking about. You want to trim. You can trim here around until you get the right shape that you want. There, kind of like that. That's starting to look like an ear. Now, they get it on. Yeah, that's way too big. So I want to trim that. If you want to have it really big, if you want to do like a caricature or, you know, something kind of goofy, then you can. Again, this is your creation. I'm just showing you how I am making a human model puppet. This is there. So this is a pretty good looking ear because my ears are kind of going kind of onto the side, so it's going to be attached like that. So I'm going to make another one. Okay? So this is one. Yeah. So these are two ears. That's pretty good. So I'm going to glue them on. They can always be readjusted if you have to, but we have about two ears. So I wash. So we're going to put glue on here and attach it onto both. Both of them onto each side. I'm just eyeballing this, I'm not actually measuring this can get moved repositioned anytime. Right now we're just trying to get the face on. We now have the ears on, doesn't look too impressive, but it should start to look like something at this point. Eyebrows, we're going to do that eyebrows next. 5. 05 Eyebrows: Eyebrows, we're going to be using cardboard. I got a sheet of cardboard here where I'm just going to take a look at my eyebrows here. So it's got a there. So kind of like this is what I have for an eyebrow. So I'm going to cut this out, and then we're going to trace and we'll get ourselves another eyebrow. Eyebrows going to look like. I want to trace what I want to do now, so I want to trace over this eyebrow so I can have two exact one. My eyes here for a second. It needs to go. Is right around right up around here. So, yeah, that's looking pretty good. So I'm going to glue the eyebrows right around here. Now, depending on facial expression, you can have it looking like brouchy character, or you can have maybe, I don't know, maybe a paranoid one or it's up to you. I am going to glue this on. There we go. That's one eyebrow. Eyebrow number two will go on try to keep it to the same height level as you can. But it doesn't look like me right now. I know. But it's starting to look like I don't know, Sesame Street character or something, but it'll look like me. 6. 06 Eyes: The eyes next. Now, eyes, they're going to kind of look like oval shapes. Going to draw the human eyes just looking at my eyes here. So it's going to look like this is I know my eyebrows are not this thick, but I just traced myself another eye, and I'm going to cut this out. All right, so now. Okay, that's right. So we're gonna glue these eyes on just right below the eyebrow. Just give it a little space below the eyebrows here. There we go. And on hair. Alright, that's not bad. 7. 07 Hair: Now, once you get the hair on, that's gonna really start to look like. Well, it should help make it look like me. I've got short hair. I'm going to kind of style it just a little bit longer, not too much longer. It doesn't look too much like me. I mean, it's but it's going to. Now, I'm just going to take a little bit of newspaper. Here, it's kind of why I have it. Kind of like a little like I'll see. But we're gonna meet for the hair, which is crumbly newspaper on the top, and you can style it however you want. Why add sideburns even a mustache if you want this character has a mustache. We're just doing with the hair on top. I don't have facial hair, so Well, it's just a matter of scrunching newspaper on top. This is basically puppet hair. So just going to kind of Now, you could just crumple hair on the top and then cut it afterwards, like a hairstylist wood. It might be interesting. Just throwing out suggestions. Now, the reference I'm asking the hair that's the one that has my current photograph on my website. I kind of have that little you'll see. The kind of like that, and then we'll just give the rest of a hair. Let's just see. I'm just going to go look at my picture. This is how I'm going to position my u this is literally the most notable feature about my hair. I have that little hair rising here. I just I had my hair styled. We're going to clue this on top. Leave a little bit of space on the top. You don't want to have it right down below. Now, let your character has it like that. That's not bad. Yeah, the tremo can take care of any mistakes. And then we're just going to scrunch hair around it. So we just scrunch some newspaper around the top of the head where there would be hair. So this is the you just call this I don't know, paper hair or whatever. Is newspaper. Now, alternatively, you can use fabrics or a fake wig if you want to. There's no rule when it comes to this. I'm just doing it all out of paper mache because that's my forte. So again, we were just making those flat newspaper There. An just follow the same process until the entire head is covered up. A 8. 08 Paper Mache: A, 9. 09 Lips: In the mouth, I'm just going to use a piece of cardboard. This is going to be the lips, actually, or you can make a mustache you want this way, that's mine. I'm going to lower it down. Is a mustache, it should be right below the nose. I'm just going to leave this on. We'll paper mache that. Here, just wipe that. That's pretty easy. 10. 10 Shape the Ears: All right. So we're going to need to detail the ears a bit more. So we're going to cut the ears but they need to be kind of well, they need to be curved on the inside. I'll show you. We're going to cut the ears open, take out all the newspaper. Like that. At this point, I look like a mikey, but that's okay. Now, we're just going to glue it back in like that so it's not so deep. I just want to put that piece that you cut out back in there we're just going to glue it in so that it's just not so deep. Gonna raise that a bit, Ki. We'll paper Mich this one more time. Going to take this piece, we cut this piece out, putting it back into the ear. Hang on. Let's paper mache. This is what you have. It's just a little bit deeper now. Not all the way, but just about halfway. I just put it back in halfway. I'll look better once you have the paper mache on it. A 11. 11 Mouth Cell: The next step that we need to do is we need to cut the puppet jaw, we have the mouth on and shape the ears a bit. The mouth needs to go next. So we're going to cut an opening. It's the same process that's described in the miniature puppet base, but they're just doing the same thing here. So we're going to cut the mouth, which going to cut right across from here and we're going to knock that bit off. Alright, so I guess you could do something like that if you wanted to. I don't want it to be like that. I'm going to have it. It's going to be the same mechanics as the puppet base. So it's going to be the moving spindle version two. This one's going to have. So the one where the whole string is completely concealed, it's going to hang onto this piece. Now, what we need to do I want to make this a little wider if we're going to make the mouth cell and then we will make the bottom jaw. We're going to need to get some cardboard into this so that we can properly secure the puppet jaw from sliding in and out. As explained in the module, what we need to do if we need to glue the cardboard on the inside here, just kind of close it off. It's just kind of strip here. Yeah, this is good. I think I'm going to have to cut this back a little further. So I'm going to do that. Don't want to get right to the middle, though, because that's where the spindle will be attached. This is kind of the middle right half of this middle spot marked there. Yeah, that's good. We'll just take a strip there and we're going to glue that into place. Okay. All right. I'm just going to trim off the excess down here. Now, I'm going to close that off. I want to see if I can close it off from the inside. That might be a bit tricky. Yeah, that's might need a little help. I'm going to use the needle nose pliers just to help me put this in because this is they can be rather tricky. I don't know if this is going to work. Yeah, Yeah, I got an idea, so we're just going to glue this talk part here. And that goes right on the inside of this on the top. There we go. All right. There we go. That's good. Nicely tucked underneath there. I'm going to glue that so we don't lose it. So we're going to glue this piece onto the side. We're going to close off these two small little gaps here. That's Uh huh. I'm just going to do the same thing. And then once they are dry, I can just trim it off and I'll be all good. Okay, so now we have oh, yeah, look at my desk. It's already a mess. Alright, so we're just going to trim off all the excess cardboard. Let me shove something that looks like this. I'm going to just try this this little piece here. 12. 12 Ears and paper mache: Yeah, this is actually just perfect. So now we're going to use this to start the bottom jaw, so it'll give us the I'm going to paper mache. Actually the ears, I kind of want to just carve and just kind of shape the ears a little bit better. I'm going to use the dremel. Oh, I didn't use the microphone. Okay. I hope that wasn't too loud. Okay, cool. All right, good. Um, so it's just going to be paper mich inside here, and then we're gonna move on to the bottom jaw. We're going to work on this part. So I'm going to put that up here for now. I 13. 13 Bottom Jaw: So here's the bottom jaw. This is the part we cut off, we just we're just going to make it a little wider. Nos going to cut some cardboard. I want to use cardboard. There's not going to be super wide, but it's going to It's just trim that back a little bit here. And that's pretty good. No I's going to use some small strips, some small rectangular cardboard cuts. Okay, so it's kind of should look like this so far, kind of like a well, I don't know how to describe it. I'm just trying to I actually kind of wish I hadn't. Alright, now we're just going to close this inside part. Set, but this is what I have so far, so it should kind of look like a mail slot almost. We're gonna let that set there. Okay, so this is what you should have so far. We're just going to add a piece of cardboard on top right there. Here, it's going to be like that, and then we'll finish this off. I'm going to put some glue And once that is set, we'll just trim that and then we can paper mache it. So there's the job we have so far. We're going to paper miche that. It's a good idea to just double check just to make sure that it does fit. And it does. 14. 14 Pants: Okay, so we're going to take the puppet body. Turn it around. We're gonna make our access door. I'm going to I'm not gonna have it way up. I'm gonna have it down a little bit. Right about Ah, yeah. This will work. I want to just start cutting that. Now, shirt is actually going to hide this big hole here. So I'm thinking I don't I don't think I'm going to add a a door because it's going to be covered with cloth cause five nice thriti puppets have cloth on their backs instead of a door. So we're going to just do this cause I find with a cloth, it's easier because you don't have to open a door. You can just slide your hand in and start puppeteering. I just found that just so much easier. Okay, this is just but I am going to keep this cut out just in case. Okay. Okay, for the pants, I'm actually going to add a strip of cardboard around it, and the shirt is actually just going to go slightly over it. You'll see. 15. 15 Paint 1: All right, so we are now ready to start painting. So I got the puppet jaw mechanics installed. This very same mechanics as in the puppet base. So please referred to that module for instructions on there. I got the pants on here. So everything's attached. We have all our pieces, arms and the bottom jaw. I gave it a bit of a tongue there and everything's all ready to go. So all we have to do is just start splashing on the paint. Let's do that. Okay, so next part is we need to mix or paint here. If you're making yourself or I want to talk about skin tone. So I have light skin here. So I want to use a lighter color, but maybe if you have darker skin, you might want to add a brown or maybe your characters that different has different skin. I've seen all kinds of I've seen all sorts of different characters with all different colors here. So this entirely up to you since I'm making myself. It's a good way to check you see how close you are to that skin color on yourself, if you put it on yourself, I see how well it looks. I'm just going to mix this. This looks like it dried up a little. The lid dried up a bit here. Clear that. There we go. 16. 16 Dont forget to sign your work: All right. I put my name on myself. 17. 17 Shoe Laces: Alright, so next thing I want to do is I want to put some shoe laces on. And we're going to do that with actual string. You can use a real shoe lace, but I want to use white. I'm using craft wine. Wine. Wine sorry. So first thing we're going to do, we're going to drill some holes where we're going to put the string in. I'm just going to mark where I'm going to drill the holes. Let's drill the holes. All right. We're going to take our string. We're gonna start off with the top. It might be easier to do this. We're gonna have to cut the bottoms off. We're not gonna cut it right off, we're just going to make an opening. Should be able to access the holes. And we're going to feed these through the very bottom at the very top holes. So now, you want to get these two laces in. We just do it the opposite way. I'll just glue them from the inside. Now, we're just going to clue that back up. That's that's one shoe. We're going to do the same thing. So have your hole drilled out. We're gonna cut the bottom. And we're going to fold that down. I'm going to start by putting the We're gonna feed the string through the bottom on the top part. Now, tie the shoe like you would with an actual shoe. 18. Conclusion: There you go. Now you know how to make a human puppet. There you go. Now you know how to make a human puppet. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you in the next module. Let's keep going.