Building A Better Hedge Knight: Part 1

I created my last stop-motion puppet with an armature of pencils and tape and while it was somewhat successful, it now seems to be pretty brittle. I really wanted to refine some of those ideas… so I built another one. Using a modeling compound called Super Sculpey I sculpted the top part of the head on an aluminum wire and the bottom jaw on another. Hypothetically I can then move the mouth around a bit and make this guy talk on camera.

I wanted to build a sturdier armature, so I bought a medium sized wooden dowel rod, cut it to the correct sizes and drilled holes into the end of each piece. I insert a fairly thick piece of aluminum wire into the holes to connect the dowels together and create a moveable frame. I cover all the aluminum wire joints with hot glue, which will accomplish several things. It will keep the wire from eventually breaking from heavy use, makes the wire joints a bit more rigid and permanently connects the wires and the wooden dowel together.

This guy is big, so in order to keep the weight down I cut up chunks of foam to create the body mass. I also add some really soft foam to the knee and elbow joints.

Finally I wrap the arms and legs with some scrap material (old socks) and then sew some more scrap material (a really fine green sweater I rocked during the 90’s) over the entire thing to keep all that other stuff in place. This gives me a solid base to start creating on.

4 Comments on “Building A Better Hedge Knight: Part 1”

Jeff
April 23, 2013

That’s zactly how I built my kids! Love it

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Clayt Ratzlaff
April 23, 2013

I love your creative approach. Keep up the great work! Thanks for sharing your progress.

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Ross
April 23, 2013

Can’t wait to see him finished!

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mark cotnam
April 24, 2013

Great looking armature [sp?] I just finished reading a book about Ray Harryhausen & it had photos of some of his early stop motion sculps & yours look like the next generation…

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