Author Archives: Collette Knowles

Unknown's avatar

About Collette Knowles

I am artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre, and I have been performing and making puppets since 1999. I have a Drama and Arts Education degree from the great Bretton Hall College, (Yay!). I started the great loves/obsessions of my life in about 1997, (Celebratory Arts, Street Theatre and last but definitely not least Puppetry). I am also an actor, artist, musician and all the other different roles necessary in the field of puppet theatre.

Making the Prime Minister

Posted on by Collette Knowles
Reply

This puppet is the first of the in profile “hero face” puppets that I designed. I decided to give the in profile puppets a nodding head and articulated mouth but not moving eyes like the face-on “hero face” puppets. At this stage I was using cereal packet cardboard (both for environmental and financial reasons) but it was quite hard to do the detailed cutting out required for this character and style of puppet.

  • I discovered that I didn’t need to re-draw the figure but that a scaled up photocopy gave me the exact size I wanted and I was very happy with the image as it stood
  • Chopping out pin-stripes by hand with a scalpel blade
  • I made 3 photocopies, 1 for the body, 1 for the head and 1 for the lower jaw. These were then glued with a dry glue stick to cereal packet cardboard and I cut straight through both layers
  • Having used cereal packet card I painted this black on both sides which strengthens the card and stops the cereal packet picture showing through on the screen.
  • The pieces are laminated and roughly cut out
  • I initially made the overlap section for the neck with 4 cut away sections with a rim around the outside (looking like a wheel). The cut away sections are to show off the cut outs on the section of the body which it overlaps. I decided that it would be okay to cut away even more of the “wheel” so that the maximum amount of cut out on the body would be exposed.
  • The lamination plastic on the edges is trimmed off as it shows up too much when used on the OHP flatbed. I attached the neck joint using string
  • I attach the lower jaw using thick thread so that the fastening doesn’t mask any of the cut out work.
  • I braided three strands of bead elastic together for extra strength. This is used to secure the jaw in a closed position so it doesn’t waggle or flap about and stretches to allow mouth movements when they are required. It may also allow for a thread control mechanism to control the mouth movement rather than a control rod.
  • The puppet is complete (apart from controls)
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£50.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£10.00
£20.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Happy New Year…..Happy New “Hero Face” Puppets

Posted on by Collette Knowles
1

I have not been posting on the blog regularly for a while because I only have a limited amount of time each week to work on our Rough Magic Theatre projects.

We decided the time would be best spent actually making the puppets, as they are very time consuming. Trying to make the puppets and promote the project on social media at the same time was proving a bit much.

However, it is now a New Year and a bit of a progress report seems like a good idea and hopefully might cheer a few people up in these difficult times.

It feels very hard to motivate myself to keep going with this project (working in a vacuum as we are) but I do feel as if I have made good (if fairly slow) progress.

I have completed front and and profile view “hero face” puppets for Hugo Knox our main character (the crime solving librarian), his daughter/bodyguard Artura, the Prime Minister of the City and I have nearly finished a profile puppet for the Police Chief. So, we have a front face view to complete for him plus puppets for the President and the King of Junk Town.

After those are complete there will be a whole load of single-use puppets and sets to do to complete the first episode.

This video shows a practical experiment at how the front facing “hero faces” will work. We used the “Jabberwocky” poem from our shadow puppet suitcase show for this lip-synch experiment as it is something Tim and I already know off by heart. Tim is controlling the mouth movement and I am doing the eyes/eyebrows. This is not the voice or the words we will actually be using for the Artura character in the finished show. We saw from this that the design for this “hero face” does actually work and so forged ahead with making more for the other main characters that will need re-usable hero face puppets like this.

I also designed profile puppets with nodding head and working jaw for the Prime Minister and Hugo which I am happy with but have not come up with controls for them yet. We will have to experiment to see what sort of controls will be least visible for them.

The Prime Minister of the City (Profile view puppet)

People who would like to support the project can make a donation below:

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£50.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£10.00
£20.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

Thanks so much for contributing to our work! 😃👍

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly