Day #87: Winging It!

Our new show features a Great Horned Owl as one of the major characters. I've looked at bazillions of images -- they are pretty amazing birds. They have great expression and loads of texture and color. I feel lucky that they were the best choice for the show as an owl local to the region in which the show is set.

The wings are a key feature in this puppet, of course. They need to be expressive (like the hands of an Italian!). To begin our process, we looked at wing structure and made a mini-wing out of paper.

Rey drew this. Didn't she do a great job?

We looked at lots of youtube footage featuring birds in flight. We also watched "Guardians of Ga'Hoole." OK, so we used the project to justify our watching of the film -- but it's great for looking at owls. (And I totally loved the credits!)

I am making this puppet using wool and wet-felting it. This is the primary wool roving that will be featured in our creature:

Jacob roving dyed with natural dyes. Purchased last year with this owl in mind at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest!

Then I began laying out the fibers...Pandora was playing an '80's station...

See -- there Iam!

These will be big wings -- but the fibers will shrink a bit, so not quite this big.

Melanie is working on some raccoon parts in the background. Pool noodles are awesome. It's great that they are a TOOL.

We scaled up a bit to compensate for the fiber shrinkage...let's hope our guesstimates are accurate!

Ready for the next step...tomorrow!

And tomorrow...we will wet the whole thing out, flip it, lay out side two and begin ROLLING! (I have a pool noodle, and I know how to use it. Watch out!)