These puppets I made for an animation commission for a Dutch medieval history animation aimed at primary school children.
A family of three plus their two cows. The puppets were made with aluminium wire armatures in a small scale with lightweight materials. Because for the film the landscape of the miniature sets was very important to tell the story, the puppets had to be shrunk down to minimize space and costs of the set-build. The finished animation can be watched here.
See the gallery below for more info and pictures of the fabrication process.
Family puppets in progress, armature stage.
Cow armatures. The cow armatures were very simple because of budget and time constraints. It worked sufficiently for the limited performance I needed to get out of them.
Bulking out the cow body, hard core parts.
Father, son ad cow puppet in progress.
Shaping the farmer wife's body with foam.
Shaping the cow's body with foam.
Farmer's family and cow in progress.
Farmer and farmer's wife puppets in progress.
Farmer son's costume in progress.
Family costumes in progress, made from tights and latex.
Cow partly skinned with foam, latex and tissue paper.