Bill Schafer, at Subterranean Press, realized that he wanted to send out one other Coraline thank you. We couldn’t do another doll, because we had said that there would only be three of them. So I suggested a Coraline mask.

When I do a bid on a puppet, mechanisms are the most expensive part. They are fiddly things and no matter how many times you’ve built something similar, each puppet is radically different. This dog puppet, which I’m creating ears for, technically has four mechs in it since each ear is capable of two movements. The ears pull back for angry dog, and droop for sad dog.

As I was explaining to someone, I always quadruple the amount of time I think it will take to do a mech because it never goes right the first time. I’ve installed ear mechanisms on masks before. This was a thing I was familiar with. And yet…

I did a rough draft of the ears on Tuesday. On Thursday, I came back to install the final ears, but we weren’t sure where the puppeteer’s hand needed to be for the control. Saturday, I went in at three o’clock to install the triggers. I left at three a.m. Here’s what I did during those twelve hours.

While I had installed the ears on the exterior of the head, I wasn’t sure until I went in on Saturday where I would need to run the cables to control them. (Normally, you figure all of this out in advance, but there were some staging issues that needed to be resolved first, in this case.) The cable for the ears needed to move three inches in order to trigger the angry dog pullback. Unfortunately, where we needed to put the trigger, there wasn’t enough room for a lever to move that far. So, I needed to reduce the amount of distance that the cable had to move.

It’s sort of like a reverse block and tackle, because I was willing to increase the amount of resistance, to decrease the distance moved. But to do that, I needed to allow a length of line pass through the skull in a “v.” Another line would attach to that and pull it. So, I needed to cut a slot in the skull. I started by drilling four holes.

I then inserted a coping saw blade into one of the holes to cut out my opening.

Once the slot was cut, I tested the ear. Which resolutely failed to work.

After a bit of cursing, some internet time and a conversation with my dad, who is a very clever man, I realized that I had attached the pull line with a fixed point, and it needed to be a fluid point. Such a silly thing to do. After that, it worked exactly as it was supposed to. Whew.

Sorry this is a blurry photo. All the cables have to come together to a fairly tight point where they run down the length of the dog’s spine. I’m using goldenrod cable (a flexible push-pull cable for model airplanes) to get from the head down to the handle where the trigger will be. That’s the thin yellowish cable, with the brass fittings on it. I have to use cable in a housing, otherwise the movement of the dog’s head would trigger the ears as the distance between the head and the trigger changed. A housing keeps that distance fairly consistent.

For the trigger, I opted to go with a wheel rather than a lever. The cable exits the housing and wraps around the wheel as it rotates. Rather than centering it, I put the pivot point off-center to give the puppeteer some mechanical advantage. We tested it and it worked well. Happiness.

I installed the other mechanism, which was comparatively simple. Again, running it back to a wheel. Suddenly the first mech acquired a lot of friction. I couldn’t figure out where it had come from since the new one didn’t touch it. In desperation, I pulled the second one out, thinking that its mounting might be binding the first one somehow. Nothing. I tried activating the mech from within the head without using the cable. It seemed like it was within normal limits there, which meant that the friction was occurring somewhere along the length back to the trigger. I undid the mounting on the first one, checked it for crimps and reinstalled it. Still, it had that awful friction. It was unworkable. I was baffled.

I pulled the trigger from the other mech completely off the handle and–the first mech got easier again. It was still tight, but it wasn’t unworkable. What we were facing turned out to be a combination of factors. The trigger for second mechanism put the puppeteer’s hand in a weaker position. It also activated a mechanism that naturally had less resistance, so the first mech’s trigger hadn’t actually acquired more friction, but it felt significantly harder compared to the second one. At the same time, the monofilament that I’d used had stretched out. I normally avoid the stuff, but because the dog was so pale I used that instead of the braided dacron (which is black) that I prefer. It was a bad combo all around.

Unfortunately there wasn’t anywhere else to install a trigger. It was also two o’clock in the morning. Emily had to get on a plane with the puppet later on Sunday, to Ireland. I was tearing my hair out in frustration.

What you see here is a mockup of what I wanted to install. I used the connector on the end of the cable and a ziptie to create a thumbgrip. Elastic held it in place. One slides the thumbgrip back and the ears droop. You can still hold the dog’s handle and operate the trigger for the first mech in a reasonably comfortable position. It is far, far from ideal, but it works.

Here’s the proof.

This should have been a five or six hour job. My quadruple estimate was closer to being accurate. When Emily comes back with the dog, we’ll be able to fix it for the NYC shows in January.

As Gigi says, irresistible silliness.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Entirely Miss Reverend Lady Mary the Coherent of Kirkby Overblow Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

The jaw is creating two problems; it’s contributing to the ventilation issue, because it’s solid fiberglass, so is providing a shelf that the actor’s breath bounces against, shooting it up against the eyes. It’s also not fitting one of the actors well. This bear needs to be able to fit multiple people which provides challenges, since masks are usually built to fit one person. Particularly with a mouth that’s activated by the performer’s jaw, the mask needs to fit extremely snugly. The fiberglass, while providing clean movement if well-fitted, is too big for one of the actors.

So. To start with, I created a copy of the jaw in reticulated foam. I use a brand called drifast which is designed to wick moisture away in outdoor furniture. Hopefully, this will help with the venting issues. To get really specific and uber-jargony on you, I used 1-inch DriFast with 35 ppi (pores per inch).
Next, I stitched elastic to the exterior of it, in the same place I had elastic on the original fiberglass jaw. I also added a piece across the interior, which serves to two functions. It helps the jaw retain its shape and it also acts to cup the actor’s chin.
I lined the jaw with black fabric, and covered the exterior with fur. One of the things that I love about reticulated foam is that you can stitch to it very easily and it’s tear-resistant.
Once it was all covered, I installed it in the original location. To my surprise, this has better movement than the original fiberglass. Usually you think of going rigid for mechanism, but, I’m guessing, because of this is a really snug fit it responds more quickly to the jaw’s movement. Think of it like wearing a ski mask.

Sadly, the thing still fogs, but it’s slower and not as hot so that’s movement in the right direction. I’ve been reading about defoggers for scuba divers. Most websites recommend spit. Somehow, I can’t see myself recommending spitting into a mask that’s supposed to be worn around sick children. There are actual products, so I’ll see if I can find any here.

Before anyone recommends it–there is no place to put a fan in the bear’s head and even if there were, it would not solve the humidity issue. I think we have oxygen flowing in the mask now, but the humidity is the next hurdle to deal with.

If the defogger doesn’t work, then I’ll try putting a vapor barrier between the eyes and the nose, but this will likely make it uncomfortable, so I’m trying to avoid that.

(For the puppet geeks reading this, I buy my foam here. They ship.)

We’ve discovered that the bear has ventilation issues. I was worried about the heat buildup in the mask before I left, but it turns out that is only part of the problem. We have more of an issue with fogging in the eyes. If you’ll recall, the eyes are made of sunglasses and the mask, despite my cutting away for the fiberglass, is still a very closed environment. There’s nowhere for the humidity that the breath carries to go because the fur is too thick to vent.

I’ve started by opening the fur over the holes in the front of the mask.
Next, I filled the hole in with a fine net.
Using small plugs of Hringur bear’s fur, I carefully place them on the net. My goal is to create the illusion that the bear is still fully furred, while allowing more air to pass into the mask.

Here it is in the finished state.

Next I’ll replace the lower jaw with a foam one, which should allow for more ventilation.

Jane knocked on the door of Melody’s room, still glowing with the words of Mr. Dunkirk’s praise. Such a small thing, those words, but it was the first time she could recall coming to his special notice. He had always been courtesy itself when in her company, but her attachment to him grew more from how he treated others than from any sense of his having regard for her.

She leaned her head against the door, listening for sounds within the chamber. “Melody?”

“Go away.”

Jane sighed. “Dear. Let me come in.”

A long silence stretched during which she had time to examine the grain on the door and the subtle wear of age worn in the soft edges of its panels. “Melody?”

Cloth rustled within and the key turned in the lock, unlatching the door. As Jane opened the door, she was in time to see Melody fling herself artlessly upon the bed, where the rumpled spread showed how she had spent the better part of Mr. Dunkirk’s visit. Her golden curls lay across the bed in an intricate lacework and tears glittered on the end of her lashes like diamonds.

Jane closed the door behind her and leaned against it, regarding her sister. “Mr. Dunkirk sends his apologies for his tardiness.”

Melody sat up with alarming speed. Her face flushed. “Is he still here?”

Shaking her head, Jane crossed the room to sit on the bed next to her sister. “No. Papa let him understand that you had twisted your ankle while out walking.”

Placing her hands over her face, Melody groaned and fell back on the bed. “Now he thinks me clumsy as well as over-excited.”

“I am certain he does not.” Jane wiped her sister’s brow, which was hot with the force of her excitement. Reaching into the ether, Jane conjured a cooling breeze to soothe her sister.

Melody pulled her hands away, though she kept her eyes closed, and turned her face toward the breeze. “But he does. I stammer and blush when he is present. Do not tell me you have failed to notice.” She opened her eyes and glared up at Jane.

“Until today, I had not the faintest notion that you had any affection for Mr. Dunkirk beyond that of a neighbor. Indeed, I had thought you were no more fond of him than of one of our uncles.” Jane smoothed the folds of her skirt, praying that her own countenance was not as transparent to feeling as Melody’s. “Have you an understanding with Mr. Dunkirk?”

Melody burst into laughter. “An understanding? My dear, Jane, Mr. Dunkirk is gentleness embodied. He is grace and elegance and all that is good in a man, but with that he is also too conscious of propriety to betray anything beyond courtesy. This is why I had such hopes when he said he would come to call today. I had hoped that perhaps he might have begun to pay notice to me as myself instead of simply the daughter of his neighbor.” She groaned and rolled over, burying her face in her arms. “What did you speak of while I was out acting the fool?”

“Very little. Art. Music.”

“You see! I could not speak with him of any of those. I am talentless.” She clenched her fingers in her hair and for a moment Jane feared the Melody would pull her own hair out by the roots.

Such was Melody’s torments, that Jane gave away the comfort that she had taken for herself. “Not true. Ask Papa what he said about you.”

In an instant, Melody turned over, her eyes a vivid, sparkling blue. “What did he say? Do not tease me, dear sister.”

“He said, ‘Your daughter is a credit to you.’”

Melody’s face lit with an inner glow of pleasure, but it faded quickly. “He was surely speaking of you.”

“I was there, Melody. Why would he speak of me as if I were not present?” And as Jane said that, she realized that it was true. She had taken Mr. Dunkirk’s words to her heart as if he spoke of her, but he surely had not. Who else could he mean but Melody? Had his compliment been intended for Jane, he would have said, “You are a credit to your father.” There could be no doubt that he had meant Melody. She reached out and tousled Melody’s hair to mask the wet disappointment that slowly filled her. “You see?”

Melody sat and flung her arms around Jane. “Oh, thank you. Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course. We must find these small comforts where we may.” Jane held her sister and wondered where she would find her own small comfort.

Once I had the life mask of Rob finished, I was ready to start the sculpture. My first step was to do a full size drawing of the bear to make certain that I had the proportions correct.

Gummi Þor had already done a sculpture to demonstrate how the proportions would have to change from the drawing in order to accomodate a human. Using the sculpture as a reference point, I created the large drawing. (I took a picture of this, but the pencil lines didn’t show up. Sorry.)

With that information in hand, I started sculpting. My challenge here is to make it look as much like the drawing as possible while meeting the requirements of fitting on a human head. I started by placing the bear’s eyes, two semi-spheres which I put over the life cast’s eyes. Using these and the life cast’s mouth as my guidepoints I started sculpting. I sculpted the Polar Bear’s head out of clay. In this case I used waterbased clay. Everyone has perferences on clay but I personally like the feel of water-based better. It’s a textural thing.

As I sculpted I kept the drawing of the character open along with several pictures of polar bears. This one, in particular, was my reference. I like the expression on his face. My clients want the bear to be young, curious, and trustworthy.

I deviated from the drawing by making the nose a little shorter and the distance from the nose to the bottom of the chin smaller. Both of these are indicators of youth. On a more practical note, because my mouth/eye distance was locked in, there was a limit to how thick I could make the nose. Which meant that if I extended the nose out from the face as far as in the drawing it would taper to a needle-like point. I didn’t think this really expressed the huggability we are going for. So, shorter and broader.

Here is the finished sculpture. My next step is to cut the chin off and do some detail work on the inside of the lips. I’ll cast the chin and face in fiberglass separately. I’ll also remove the nose itself and replace it with one made of foam covered with leather so that it will feel right if a child touches it. The ears will also be be made of foam and fur so they are soft to the touch. The final head will look larger than this because of the fur, which will add about two inches to the apparent size of the head.

Oh, and if you are curious about the spoon in the lower right corner of the picture, I use it to smooth the clay. By rubbing it in circles across the surface of clay you can burnish the clay and make a smooth surface. It doesn’t actually matter what the surface is like for this one, because the whole head will be covered in fur, but I find it easier to tell if I’ve made the head lopsided if the bumpy bits are distracting me.

Listen to this lesson:

The human voice is very flexible and we’ll look at the ways you can manipulate it. Remember though, that the voice uses muscle and you can strain it just as easily as an ankle. Pay attention and stop if anything hurts.

Your basic tools are Pitch, Placement, Pacing, Accent and Attitude.
Pitch is fairly self-explanatory. To check your range, hum from your highest to your lowest note. Of that, you probably mostly use the middle when speaking. While it can help color a character, it isn’t a good idea to rely on pitch alone to distinguish between characters, simply because you use more than one note while speaking.

Placement

There are several resonators which affect the tone of the voice. Put one hand on your chest and the other hand on your nose. Now hum through your range again. As you do, you’ll feel your chest vibrate at the low end and your nose vibrate in the upper middle. These are both resonators.

The facial mask has several other resonating cavities, which you mostly notice with a sinus infection. Ever wonder why you sound nasally with a cold?

You can move the voice from the front of the mouth to the back of the throat. Broadly speaking Russian tends to be at the back of the mouth while British English tends to be very forward.

I will now attempt to explain how to do this without being able to demonstrate. (Oy. Why did I think this was a good plan.) Okay, start with the nasal resonator, because it’s easiest to find.
-Hold your nose, say, “Nnnnnn” and try to get your nose to really buzz.
-Now remove your hand and try to talk, keeping your voice as nasally as possible. Use the phrase, “What did you say?” as your experimental phrase.
-Try adjusting the pitch while keeping the nasality.
A little bit of nasality can be used to make a “brighter” sound.

Next we’ll move to the back of the throat. Open your mouth in a yawn. Let your soft palate rise. Try to talk. Does it feel like your voice is at the back of your mouth? Again, play with pitch. Placing your voice at the back of your throat can make a “darker” sound.

Next, we’re going to move a series of consonants from the back of the mouth to the front. As you do this, pay attention to where your voice feels like it is during the “aaaah” portion of each consonant sequence. It will be subtle.
The series runs like this. Guh, guh, guh, guh, Gaaaah, Kuh, kuh, kuh, kuh, kaah, (I’m not going to write them all out, I’ll give you the consonants and you can figure out the pattern.) G, K, D, T, B, P.
Reverse it, moving from Puh to Guh.
Try saying our test phrase, “What did you say?” at each “location” in the mouth.

Roughly, and very loosely, that’s placement. I’ll talk about other aspects of placement when I discuss how to create specific types of voices like children and older people.

Moving on.

Pacing

This covers everything from how quickly a character speaks to the types of rhythms they use. Is their voice quick, but fluid or is it staccatto. Slow and halting, or does it drawl?

Note: Generally speaking, always speak slower than you think you should when reading.

Attitude

You can tell on the phone if someone is smiling, right? Technically, it’s a combination of the things we’ve already talked about, but fundamentally it’s about attitude. If you know your character, you’ll know how they speak.
Take the phrase, “What did you say?” Say it as if you are angry. Now, curious. Disbelieving? Great. Now say it like you’re a parent and a kid has just talked back to you. That is attitude. Attitude is your friend.

Accent

Chances are, this won’t be something you need to deal with. If you do have a character who has an accent for God’s sake, make sure you can do it convincingly. There’s nothing worse than hearing someone butcher an accent, it will destroy the credibility of your story faster than you can say “Run fer the hills.” There are a lot of tapes that deal with learning accents for actors. If you’re going to do it, do it right.

So, those are the basic tools. The nice thing about character voices is that you can be fairly subtle. Most of the time the Attitude and Pace will be enough. If you can affect Placement, that’s even better. What you are looking for is a voice that is distinct from the other voices and appropriate to the character. Of course, which of these tricks you use for each voice depends on the character for whom you are speaking.

Still, there are some basic types of voices, so I’ll talk about how to make a child’s voice as an example, and then later talk about aging voices and cross-gender voicing. A lot of this will be useful for other voice types.

The natural impulse for people is to shoot up into falsetto for kids’ voices. The trouble is that it alters the placement of your voice so much that it sounds ridiculous.

In singing one speaks of the Chest Voice, Middle Voice, Head Voice and Falsetto. Each of these resonates in a different place. Most people speak with their chest and middle voices–this includes children. So when you raise your voice too high to match a child’s pitch you move it into a different place.

The human voice uses a number of different muscles to generate sound. Generally speaking, the longer someone’s neck is the deeper their voice will be. So a child, with a short neck is also going to have a higher voice. In addition to the changes that happen at puberty, this has a huge impact on the pitch you hear.

That said, we respond tone as much as pitch. So to make a child’s voice, raise your pitch a little, but don’t try to do a literal match with kid.

The next thing is resonance. There are different resonating cavities that simply don’t develop until you’re an adult. To make a child’s voice you need to kill the resonance in your voice. Part of that happens by raising up to a head voice, which gets you away from your chest resonating cavity. Next, keep your soft palate down. And now try to make certain that you aren’t resonating in your nose, which you can do by pinching your nose. (Remember those exercises?)

You also need to add a tiny bit of aspiration. Aspiration is what happens when you allow more air to pass through your throat than is needed to produce sound. Remember the scene in My Fair Lady when Eliza is learning to pronounce her Hs? An H is an aspirated sound. People will also say something sounds “breathy” Think of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday.” A little bit of aspiration helps make the voice sound less supported and younger.

Finally there’s the pronunciation. This is going to change depending on how young your child is, but in the under-10 camp things to listen for are more pronounced dipthongs and softer consonants.

Great, but what if there’s a piece with more than one kid? Remember Attitude and Pace. You can also still adjust placement by making one voice more or less nasal. Or having a voice that is breathier than the others. Again, with this or any character voice you don’t need to push far to make it distinctive.

With all voices, the main thing to focus on is telling the story, if a character voice prevents you from conveying emotion don’t use it.

Next week, I’ll talk about narrating.

The first shot on the call sheet today was Air Trixie. This was the first time that a full-body greenscreen puppet got used this season. Sarah worked Trixie’s head and torso. Emily worked the arms and I was on feet. For the shot, Trixie had to leap up and do a karate pose to the camera. It was fun, but difficult because I had to aim the foot in a extremely specific direction and had trouble nailing it. It’s hard to explain why it was challenging, because I’m sure it looked simple from outside. Certainly, I felt bad that I had trouble doing it. but in the end we had several takes that Jonathon (the director) liked.

After that I moved on to being Bessie’s live hands, which I always love. She was telling the story of the Three Little Pigs and the director kept asking for more dramatic, so I got to go over-the-top with some of her gestures. It was fun.

The next shot. Ugh. I was still Bessie’s live hands, but this time I wasn’t attached to a puppet. It was a close-up of Bessie’s hands as she falls from the sky and catches a tree branch. It’s the kind of thing I do a lot for the characters, but Bessie’s hair is so big, that it would be in view no matter how close you were to the action. First we put her wig on my head. That seemed like a good solution, but they checked the stunt puppet and realized that in fact, for the proportions to be correct, a tiny bit of her face was going to be in the frame. So they put the Bessie mask on me. See, there are times when they use kids in costumes so they have masks of all of the characters. Bessie’s mask hadn’t been worn yet. It had only one hole cut for air, and it lined up with my chin, which meant that I only had the air I brought into the mask with me. I also couldn’t see anything, except for what was directly in front of me. Gasp. This meant I had to act, instead of relying on a monitor to tell me what I was doing. Still, I think the shot turned out well.

The rest of the day was spent with various small live hand activities and fetching carts.

Today I worked a giant ball of stuff. I have such a glamorous job, don’t you think? The mayor needed to pull a giant ball of stuff out of the back of a car. So one puppeteer had the Mayor, someone else was working the arms, which left me with the giant ball of stuff. The only thing that was really tricky about this shot wasn’t in our control. The car had to drive into the scene, and we were using the car and wagon to mask ourselves. If they hit their mark even a little bit wrong, then a gap between the car and the wagon exposed us.

I was on set all day today being the live hands for one of the characters. It was wonderful and exhausting. Being back at work feels great, but it means lots of poses that would make a yoga master wince. Fortunately I only seem to be facing standard fatigue and show no signs of trouble from my fall last October. Whew.

Today I was hanging laundry. The problem is that I enter the puppet’s arms at her elbows, which means that she can’t raise her arms above her waist without my arms showing. Make sense? So we had to do lots of very interesting cheats, using different things to mask me. It was challenging and fun and we did some good work, I think.

I seem to spend a lot of time throwing things when I’m on set. This morning I had to throw a lollipop straight up. It kept going a little to the side. Try it. Put your hand over your head, and then try to throw something straight up. Now, do it without looking.

Last night our last shot was me catching the lollipop. That I could do everytime, and I couldn’t see it when I was catching. Because of placement, I could see the throw, the when the acutal catch happened it was in a space masked by the puppet. I can’t watch a monitor for things like this because there’s a three-frame delay, which means that everything that I do is a delayed reaction. Have to “look live”.