I was completely happy with my original drawing of the head for “Our Hero” (otherwise known as the mystery solving librarian or “Secret Keeper” from the title of the series). This is his “at home” lounging round the house look. I managed to blow up the image on my copier so that it was exactly the right size relative to the “in profile” Prime Minister puppet.

Having completed the head I re-drew the torso as the original drawing was a bit sketchy and lacking in detail. I also wanted to show him in a profile rather than 3/4 view. I’m not sure if the finished image isn’t slightly on the skew, but I knew I was happy with it, (whether it was a true profile view or not).

I decided that “Our Hero”‘s character called for a more upright stance than the Prime Minister so decided to create a head nodding action in a different way. The Prime Minister has a head and neck joined together and the whole neck pivots forward and backward on the body. This time I made the decision to have a rigid neck with the head pivoting forward and backward on the neck (I hope that makes sense – if not look at the pictures). It made it a little more challenging to join the joints on the jaw and neck as the pivot points for both were quite close together. I am creating the joints using thick thread (the same kind as I use for the joints on the miniature shadow puppets in my Shadow Puppet Suitcase shows) which is knotted on both sides of the joint.

I secured the jaw shut with elastic in the same way as with the Prime Minister (which still allows the mouth to be opened when he needs to talk). The joint is not very flat because the elastic knot is quite big but the shadow on the screen looks fine.

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