Here's a little Melody for whichever Holiday you choose to celebrate this season. Melody is the finished product from what I posted a week ago. She only took me two nights to finish. Of course, by "nights" I mean from midnight to 7 in the morning, but since school is out for the winter I figured, why not?
Melody- as I've named her since she is a music note- was built for my friend as a Christmas present. She works in a correctional facility where one of her jobs is to conduct a class that utilizes music therapy techniques. She thought it might be nice to see how the guys would react to the puppet.
It is my belief that you can appeal to any audience so long as you find what it is that they've come to see. One of my favorite things as a performer is getting to do the same show multiple times a day with a completely different audience each time. I love the challenge of changing things up ever so slightly, in order to find the point where the audience and the performers all connect. Now I know Melody's use will be a little different, but I'm anxious to see how my friend will be able to use her in class.
As for the construction side of Melody...
I started off with no idea of what I wanted the finished product to look like...except for that I wanted it to look like a female music note. As for the shape of her head...I played. I thought I'd try a slight overbite, but nothing too drastic.
I considered lips but couldn't find the right color fabric that could avoid clashing with the inside of the mouth. At the last moment, I found the right color for the eye lashes. The pictures don't pick it up as well as I'd hoped they would, but I used a sky blue that really pops against the black.
My friend loved it and is excited to show it to her class. I'm pretty happy with the results, especially since the whole project only took about 15 hours (with a few hours of playing with shapes).
On my next project, I think I'm going to stray from the using the same dome eyes. I love them, but I don't want to get into the habit of producing the same work every time.
Let me know if you think our puppets all look to much alike. I'd be interested to know how they come across.
